Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,96

leader among them. A captain. We have one, but we don’t know it yet.”

He looked right at me.

“I want her to know this has nothing to do with me clocking her in the eye,” he continued, “and everything to do with the fact that she not only pushes herself as hard as anyone—and that’s saying something—but she also wants, more than anything, to push this team to the next level.”

I was as frozen as the ice pack against my face.

“Susan Klintock, if you want the job of captain, I think we’d all agree you’re more than up to the task.” He was looking at me like he’d gotten down on one knee to propose marriage. And I would have said yes.

“Me?” I said, my eyes widening, which just made the left one hurt again.

The team erupted into cheers.

“I’d love to,” I told them.

And that’s how the day I got my first black eye became the best day of my life.

Twenty-Six

My mom wasn’t happy about my black eye. Which, okay, it would be a stretch to imagine anyone’s mom being thrilled to see her kid come home with a puffy, purplish encroachment surrounding his or her eyeball, but my timing for a facial atrocity was also lousy.

After answering her initial questions, which were all variations on “What the hell happened?” with my answers all being a variation on “It was an accident,” she rooted through the freezer to find a bag of frozen peas that she alternately pressed to my eye and removed to see if the discoloration had magically disappeared. “What are we going to do?” She huffed out a sigh.

“Hide me from polite society?” I offered.

“Very funny,” she said. “We’re lucky Polly’s such a nice person, or she’d think we did this on purpose to ruin the wedding photos.”

“I doubt she’d think we did this,” I said, taking the peas from her as I sat at the kitchen table for a dinner of baked beans and cut-up hot dogs. I thought of Joe’s fondness for the meal and decided not to be disgruntled that captains of the football team probably got celebratory steaks. But then I hadn’t mentioned that I’d been given the captain spot yet.

“Well, we need to make sure Polly’s not blindsided by this,” Mom said, letting out a grim laugh at her unfortunate pun. “She’ll be nervous enough for her big day.”

I scooped six beans and one hot dog slice onto my spoon. It was a good ratio. Maybe this wasn’t the worst meal. “Don’t you think it’s a little weird that you’re this concerned about Polly having a nice wedding day? Shouldn’t you be at least kind of amused by my wrecked face spoiling the harvest dream?”

Mom’s face suggested this was not amusing. “What kind of hypocrite would I be if I divorced your father so I could pursue a better version of myself but spent all my time angry that he’s trying to be a better version of himself?”

“Is he, though?” I asked, thinking of my dad’s posture on the couch as he watched the Bears game. He didn’t seem any different.

“I think he is. I just think it’s more subtle.” She sat down next to me and put down two glasses with two ice cubes in them, then poured a tiny bit of whiskey into each one. “That eye’s going to start to hurt. This will help you sleep.” We clinked glasses. I took the tiniest sip, the way she did. The only alcohol I’d drunk was stuff like beer and the schnapps at our team party, some sips of church wine with Candace, never whiskey. A radiant, warm burn bloomed under my chest, like if a Red Hots candy had exploded next to my heart.

“It’s good,” I said. Not the taste, but the fact that it fuzzed up my insides.

“And it’s not only for the black eye,” Mom said. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have said what I did about things being easier for you than they are for me, like I was jealous.”

“It’s okay,” I said, surprised she was broaching this topic.

“Drink your whiskey, young lady, and let me talk.”

I laughed at that, and took another small sip.

“I know, for one, that it’s not easy for you—at most, it’s a little less hard. And I wish it were easier. I suppose what I said came from thinking it should have never been so hard in the first place. Did you know that until a few years ago, I couldn’t