Page 63

DEKE

When Davina invited me to her place, I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for it yet. I was hit with a wave of discouragement knowing it was once a house she shared with another man.

I could never compete with her husband, and frankly, I never wanted to. But sometimes I wondered if she looked at those pictures and longed for the traits in him that she couldn’t find in me.

It was tricky thinking of the comparisons, but I had to remind myself just as Camille reminded me over and over again: love is different with every individual.

While Davina finished tossing a salad, I set up the table for her. When the food was ready and she’d prepared the plates, she set one in front of me, and it was piping-hot homemade lasagna.

“Oh shit. Let me find out my girl can cook!”

“I’m okay at it,” she said, sitting in the chair next to mine. “Octavia is the one who can throw down. I make a mean batch of pancakes, though.”

“I’ll have to try some of those soon, see what they’re all about.”

She smiled at me, and we dug in. It was really good, by the way. She had to stop discrediting herself.

“So, I don’t want to push too hard, but I am curious, Deke.”

I glanced at her as she cut into her lasagna. I already knew what topic she was about to bring up.

“My dad,” I sighed.

“Yes. I’m sorry, I just keep wondering what happened, then I think about your brother, and I’m just trying to connect the dots.”

“Yeah. I did promise to tell you.” I took a sip of sweet tea. “To put it simply, he’s an alcoholic. Well—according to my sisters and my mama, he was one. He’s sober now.” I scoffed at the thought, taking another bite of lasagna. “Anyway, uh, he used to drink a lot in the afternoons. Every day he’d have a six- or twelve-pack of beer. Sometimes he’d go to the liquor cabinet. Didn’t matter what kind of alcohol it was, so long as he was drunk.”

Davina nodded, with sympathetic eyes.

“Whenever he drank, he became hostile and violent. He didn’t get heavily into drinking until I was around eleven, but before that, he was all right. He’s the one who got me and my brother into basketball. He showed us the fundamentals, taught us how to be respectful. He even taught us how to ride our bikes. To see him go from a stand-up dad to a raging alcoholic was shocking to me. My mom says it was because he was injured on the job and they let him go. He worked in construction, broke his arm somehow, and when they said it was his fault for not following protocol, they fired him.

“She said he was broke, injured, and angry, and that’s why he resorted to drinking. He was struggling to find another job that could pay him enough to provide for four kids, so my mom would do double shifts at the hospital. She was a triage nurse—still is to this day. I can only assume he wasn’t pleased that she was bringing in all the money and that he couldn’t find a job, so he started drinking.” I paused, swallowing thickly.

“It started slow, you know? Like a snowball effect. It started with him shouting at us, telling us to pick up our stuff or to clean something, and he only ever directed it to me and Damon. But we listened, because, you know, he was our dad, and back then, he was still a good man to us. But eventually the yelling shifted to grabbing and shaking. Then he’d slap us or push us, tell us to buck up and stop acting like girls. And then it progressed to punches and beatings.

“He never did it to our sisters, though. Camille was already on her way to college, and Whitney was hardly ever home. Damon got the worst of it, though. If Damon lost a game, there my dad was throwing shit at him and punching him. Shouting at him about how sorry he was. If I lost, he did the same to me. Sometimes he took out a belt and hit us. Sometimes he grabbed us by the backs of our necks and would drag us all the way outside, force us to grab a basketball, and run drills until we were bone tired. And during all this, my mom would try and stop him, but whenever she did, he’d hit her too.”

I sucked in a breath, realizing Davina’s hand was on top of mine. I met her eyes, and they were glossy, her mouth trembling. “Deke,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the worst of it. The thing is, back then, Damon was the weakest of us mentally. He constantly doubted himself, constantly worried, but if there was one thing he was confident in, it was protecting us. There was one night when our dad was beating on him so bad for something I did. I can’t even remember what it was about, that’s how stupid and minuscule it was. Damon took the fall for me, and our dad beat him until his eye was swollen and his bottom lip was busted.” I clenched my other fist.

“Deke, you don’t have to keep going,” Davina whispered. “You can stop if this is triggering you.”

“No.” I swallowed again and stared down at my plate. “Because this shit haunts me, Davina. I feel like it’s my fault Damon killed himself. After my dad beat him like that, my mom was hysterical. She said she was calling the police, and there was a big argument between them. She kicked our dad out that night, and I used to share a room with Damon, so I saw all the mess in there, the broken chair, blood on the floor. When he got back from the hospital, he was crying harder than I’d ever seen him cry before. He was moaning —I can still remember the sound of it.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “It’s been embedded in my brain—it wakes me out of my sleep sometimes, D. Damon kept saying he hated his life that night, that he was tired, that everything hurt. Me and Whitney tried comforting him, and he did eventually fall asleep.

“The next day, me and Whitney went to school, and Damon stayed in bed. My mom had to work a double, so no one was home with him, but he knew how to take care of himself, so we figured he’d be fine. When I got back, I saw he was still in bed, but he wasn’t moving. I tried waking him up, but I—I found a letter in his hand. All it said was ‘I’m sorry. It’s all too much.’ I saw deep gashes on his wrist, and there was so much blood beneath him. I saw a knife. I ... fuck . I didn’t know what to do, so I just started screaming for Whitney to come to the room.

“Whitney saw and called our mom, but it was too late. Damon had just started his senior year. He had so much ahead of him. He ... he sliced his own wrists with a kitchen knife. He bled out on that bed by himself. I really don’t know why he’d taken such a drastic approach. I mean, I knew he was sad, I knew he was hurting, but I just ... I never thought he would kill himself. And that note in his hand, I kept reading it, knowing exactly what he meant.

“Our dad was an abusive asshole who was too hard on us. He coached me and Damon for years and taught us everything we knew, but he was too much. He was too strict, too harsh, just ... over the fucking top. Even before he started drinking so much, if we lost a game, he’d punch us dead in the chest for however many points we lost by, but we considered it tough love then. Damon was talented, but I remember him getting to a point where he didn’t want to practice or play anymore because he hated the consequences of losing.

“But of course, our dad kept making him. He wouldn’t let him quit, and Damon was good—hell, he was better than I was on the court, and my dad made sure to let me know that. I guess it all came crashing down on him, though. It had to for him to take his own life. My dad got arrested for what he did to Damon, but my mom dropped the fucking charges just so he could attend the funeral. I was so fucking mad, D. My anger has always gotten the best of me, and I was so heartsick and pissed off because he was just back in our house like nothing happened, groveling to our mom, manipulating her while she was sad and weak, but I saw right through that shit, so while my mom was sleeping, I told him he needed to leave. And if he didn’t leave, I’d tell the police that he’d been hitting me too.

“He left for a couple hours but came back later that night. He was so fucking drunk, stumbling through the house like an idiot. I was in my room and all I could hear was him screaming my name, ‘Declan! Declan! Declan! Who the hell do you think you are? Get the fuck out here, Declan !’ Then I heard a bunch of commotion. I heard my mama screaming at him, so I opened the door, and my mama was trying to push him back down the hallway, but he was so drunk and furious that he pushed her to the side, and she hit her head on one of the picture frames. She hit it so hard the glass cut her head. I saw her bleeding, but I had no time to go and help her because my dad charged toward me and wrapped his hands around my throat.

“He shoved me back on my bed, and he kept choking me and yelling in my face. He kept telling me I would never be as good as Damon, that I’d never amount to anything, that I should’ve been happy to be trained by him and that I wouldn’t have any of the talent I had if it weren’t for him. He kept saying I should’ve been the one to go, not Damon. And in that moment, I was so scared. But not because he was choking me out or anything. It was because his words were sinking into me like seeds, planting themselves there and taking root.

“I knew I’d never be as good as Damon—and I didn’t want to be. I didn’t care. But I also knew that since Damon was gone, I was going to have to carry on his legacy in some way. That’s why I wear the number seventeen. That was his number and the age he died. I was scared people would see me as this fraud, or the person who wasn’t worth a damn, you know? I was scared that he was right ... that I’d never amount to a damn thing. But here I am, best of my team and one of the biggest faces of the NBA franchise, and there’s still this hollowness inside me,” I said, tapping the center of my chest with the tips of my fingers.

“There’s this part of me who knows all of this wasn’t for me , Davina. I have this life and this fame because I wanted to prove that motherfucker wrong. A lot of what fueled me was heart and passion for the game, yes, but what really got me going was the rage . I’d see my opponents on the court, and all of them had one face: my dad’s. I’d run circles around them. I’d prove my point, I’d win, and I’d walk away.” I felt my eyes getting hot, burning from the unshed tears.

“My mom managed to get him off of me and call the police, and this time he was locked up for a while. It was only eight years, but it was enough for us to uproot. When he was out, she divorced him, and I thought that would be the end of it. I thought we’d never have to see his face again, but here we are. About to have Thanksgiving with this motherfucker.”

“My goodness. I can’t imagine how scared you were or how much pain you were in over your brother, Deke. I’m so sorry that happened to you. I get why you don’t like talking about it now,” Davina said.

I shrugged. “The pain never left, honestly. Just got easier to manage.”

Her throat bobbed, and her eyes were lined with tears. One blink and they’d fall.

I huffed a humorless laugh. “The worst part is that, to this day, I don’t know if I’m angry at my brother for leaving me back then or envious that he escaped that hell.”

The tears dripped down Davina’s cheeks. She pulled her hand away to swipe at them, and I stood up, taking her hand and leading her to the couch.

I held her in my arms, and the emotion in my throat thickened. I was so close to crying, myself. I hadn’t cried about my brother in years, and didn’t want to start now. I wanted to be strong for Davina. I told my story, and now she knew. It was up in the air and off my chest, and frankly, I was relieved.

“Don’t cry for me, D,” I whispered in her hair. “I’m past all that.”

“No,” she muttered. “You’re not, Deke.” She sat up to look at me. “Listen to me. You’re an amazing person, okay? Your life is yours . You built this for yourself. You are talented and handsome and smart. Everyone loves you, Deke. Everyone wants to be you.”

“Yeah, but what they see isn’t the real me. That’s just a front I put on to prove I’m okay and to tell myself that my past will never define me.”

“It doesn’t have to define you, but you can’t run from it either. I see the real you, and I know your heart. You’re worthy, baby. You’re so worthy. Don’t let your dad or anyone else in this world tell you otherwise.”

I felt a hot streak fall down my cheek, and I closed my eyes as she used her thumb to swipe it away.

When I opened them again, I said, “This is why I could understand you and why I wanted to be patient with you. Because I know that pain. I live it every single day, and I know how hard it is to let people in when you’re hurting. It took me a while to step out of my shell when Damon died.”

“Thank you for that. Seriously.” She laid her head on my chest and was quiet for a few seconds. “Is that why you don’t like to be called by your real name? Why you corrected me every time when we first met?”

I had a feeling she already knew the answer to that, but I responded anyway. “Yeah. That’s why. When anyone calls me that, all I can hear is my dad shouting my name down the hallway. All I can remember is his hands around my throat, my brother’s blood on the mattress. You wanna talk about triggers? That fucking triggers me.”

She tilted her head back, peering up at me. “You can’t let him have your name. He took enough away from you. You were born with that. Don’t let him keep it.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “My mom says the same thing.”

“See? And if she raised you, I’m sure she’s a wise woman.”

I gave her a peck on the cheek before consuming her lips. When our mouths parted, I hugged her tight, because there was nowhere else I wanted to be than with her. Outside of my family and a few people who knew Damon, no one else was aware of his suicide, not even Javier. I’d purposely kept it buried when high school was over and never wanted to revisit it again, because when my dad was in jail, I worked on becoming a new man.

Telling Davina took a weight off my shoulders, though. One that’d been dragging me down for nineteen long years. And for the first time that night, as our lasagna went cold and we curled up on the couch, I felt nothing but sweet relief.

For the first time, I lit a match to my past and warmed up to the flames.

“Will you join me for Thanksgiving?” I asked.

Davina rubbed my arm. “Of course I will.”