“Not a soul,” Carver lied. Nicki pushed his chair back to get plates for them both.
Alice eyed our brother. “Liar.”
“Sister! You hurt me!”
“You’ve never not cheated at spades,” I pointed out, leaning back in my chair to grab a slice. My hand was absolutely terrible and I was losing, but I was too stubborn to give up. The loser had to clean up the kitchen—and it was not gonna be me. I had skirted that responsibility for ten years.
I’d be damned if I was gonna start now.
Carver thanked Nicki for the plate and casually kissed him on the cheek. We were all still technically in our wake clothes, but we’d lost our jackets and shoes and most of our jewelry by then. A half-empty bottle of Maker’s sat on the table, along with everyone’s glasses.
“I am, by no means, a cheater. Nicki, tell them I’m a good and honest man,” Carver went on.
Nicki patted Carver on the shoulder. “You are honestly something.”
“Babe!” he cried.
Ben chuckled against his shoulder. I didn’t think he noticed me watching him, not at first, not as he took in my family. Alice and her chipped black nails and Carver and his boyfriend sneaking soft touches to each other and Mom humming “Build Me Up Buttercup” quietly to herself as she rearranged her card hand again and again. It was endearing, the way he pushed his fingers through his hair, and leaned forward to sneak a look at Carver’s hand, and how he laughed whenever Alice mumbled something smart to herself.
And I thought—with a pang of sadness—how much Dad would’ve liked him.
He finally caught me staring, and quirked a thick black eyebrow. I was in the middle of shoving pizza into my mouth, and quickly looked away. “So, where were we?” I asked between a mouthful of cheese, setting the pizza down on the table like the heathen I was. He didn’t catch me looking, I lied to myself.
He didn’t see anything.
“Nicki and I were about to kick y’all’s asses,” Carver replied.
Mom sat quietly at the head of the table. She took another sip of her drink. “Now, now, sweetie, Xavier and I never raised you to lie.”
“Mother! Now I’m getting sniped from both sides?”
“Obviously I’m winning,” she added, and with that drew a card from her hand and set it down on the table. A jack of hearts. Which meant, in spades, that if you had a heart, you had to play it, and we had played hearts only once before during this game. If you didn’t have a heart, you could trump with a spade.
I, sadly, had a heart left. Two, actually.
Alice flipped a card out of her hand. She tossed it into the middle. A four of hearts. Excellent. Carver played an eight of clubs. Which meant he either didn’t have hearts or spades . . . or he decided to throw a card. Because he knew Nicki would win the hand.
Carver made a ticking sound with his tongue. “Your turn, sis.”
I chewed on my thumbnail.
“Or do you got nothing? If you lose this hand . . . it’s dishes for you,” he added.
“Thank god I don’t have to do them for once,” Alice sighed.
Ben eased himself off the counter and came around the kitchen. He leaned over me, his hand anchored on the table, a hmmmmm soft in his throat. Where he was near me, my skin tingled with cold. It felt like when your hand goes numb, quite the opposite of if he were alive and leaning so close. I wondered what he had smelled like when he was alive. What cologne he used, what shampoo, what he looked like naked— “Tough choices,” he mused. “You’re in a real pickle.”
“Shush, I’m trying to figure out what to do,” I said, telling myself that my cheeks were burning because of the whiskey, and drained the rest of the glass. The ice clinked at the bottom.