“Thanks for saying that,” said Javi.
Jack smiled and gestured toward the foosball table. “Wanna play one last game?”
“I think I just need to be alone, if that’s all right. Keep my head clear.”
“Okay, yeah. No problem,” said Jack. Evidently he was wrong to think one small apology would suffice. “I, uh, I just wanted to give this to you before you go.”
Jack handed Javi a thin white envelope. For my best friend was written on the front. Javi slid his finger under the seal, and a weathered prayer card, worn at the edges from so many decades of clutching, slipped out and into his palm.
“I can’t take this,” Javi said.
“Of course you can. You deserve it more than I do.”
Javi shook his head. “Really, Jack, I can’t.”
“I know you’re Catholic, and this is a Jewish blessing, but . . . it’s all the same God, right?”
“It’s not that,” Javi said, placing the card on the bookshelf near him. “That’s your family legacy. Not mine.”
It hurt Jack to hear him say it like that. Javi had been more of a brother to him than any of his actual kin. Javi was the only one who knew how Jack truly felt about the Hunters, about the army, about everything.
“You are my family,” Jack said.
Javi was silent for a moment, only the muted sounds of the traffic outside filling their apartment. “I appreciate that, Jack. But I’ve been doing some . . . reflecting . . . and I think I just need some time to myself right now, with my family, away from all the Hunter-Rollins drama. No offense, but . . . they cast a wide shadow.”
Jack sighed. He couldn’t argue with that.
“You know, the only Hunter who ever owned that card was my grandfather,” Jack said. “And it was given to him by his friend Simon, to keep him safe. That’s all I was trying to do.”
“And it’s a nice gesture, Jack. But I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”
Jack could sense the quiet frustration in Javier’s voice. He had dropped the biting tone of their earlier fight, replaced his ire with something more like sadness. As if Jack were no longer worth yelling at. A hopeless cause.
“Okay, then, I guess I’ll get out of your way,” said Jack, awkwardly shuffling toward the door. “But I’ll leave the card there, in case you change your mind.”
Javi turned his face away, and as Jack stood in the threshold, he took a long look at his friend. His gaze landed atop the knotted laces on Javier’s sneakers—two strings tied together, like his and Javi’s would forever be.
Jack was truly grateful that giving Javi his string would allow his friend to achieve what he had worked so hard to earn. But they both knew that Javi’s dream was only part of why Jack had suggested the switch—and a small part, at that.
Jack gave Javier his string to save himself. And Javi never called him out on that, never once made him feel like a coward. That was all Jack’s own doing.
Javi didn’t want some old, washed-out prayer card that never belonged to him. He told Jack exactly what he wanted, during their fight at the boxing studio, and yet Jack couldn’t give it to him. He couldn’t confront his uncle, the way he could never confront anyone in his family. And now Anthony was the heir apparent, the potential president, while Jack was the same as he had always been. The last teammate chosen at the annual Hunter picnic. The son abandoned by his own blood.
What the hell was Jack doing? Allowing the family that never truly understood him to drive away the only person who did?
Jack thought that he knew what loneliness felt like, a perpetual outsider among his kin, a mistake. But that was always the absence of love. Here, with Javi, it was the loss.
And losing something felt so much harder, so much lonelier, than simply going without.
Jack couldn’t lose Javi. Not now. Not years before he had to. And certainly not when his own weakness and fear were to blame.
Jack looked at his friend and former roommate, tearing up against his will.
“I promise I’ll find a way to make it up to you, Javi, to earn your forgiveness. And your respect. Because I have so much respect for you,” he said. “I know you’ll make the army proud.”
Ben
When Ben met Maura for drinks in September, she had asked him for a favor, setting up a surprise for her girlfriend while they were away in Italy.
So, once they had left for their trip, Ben took the subway to their building, walked up three flights of stairs, and pulled out the spare key that Maura had given him at the previous support group session.