Antagonym

Chapter 35

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!"

Sebastian thudded his head against the glass table in our dinning room and groaned in agony while I scoffed at his attitude and rolled my eyes at the game, setting my hand of cards down, face up. Two queens, one ace, a seven of spades and two different jacks.

"I swear to God, you have a second deck up that sweatshirt," Ken called Axel out while I scrubbed my hands over my face.

"If he does, I'm going to beat is ass," Beck muttered from my right.

"Ditto," Sebastian echoed from the head of the table.

"Next week," I told Axel, pointing my finger at him and resting my elbow on the table, looking at the blonde sitting across from Beck . "You and I are going to Foxwoods and hitting the poker tables."

"And who says I'm sharing my profits with you?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"How about I fund your rounds?" I bargained.

"Deal," Axel responded in a heartbeat while laughing. The past five rounds of five hundred rummy, Axel blew the four of us out of the water. At this point I was almost in the hole, having gone negative the past two rounds. I was almost as bad as Ken, and that was saying something.

"For the two math majors in the room, you and Ken fucking suck at a statistics game," Sebastian pointed out my exact thoughts while adding up the scores.

"In my defense," I quipped while handing Beck my six cards to shuffle. "I'm a physics major. That's more calculus than anything. Ken is the statistician."

Ken mocked offense, putting a hand over his heart. "Okay, fuck you, Riley. Nerds are supposed to stick together." Ken turned to the rest of the group. "Maybe Danny and I just have shitty gut feelings. If this was a math competition we would smoke you all."

"Please," Sebastian begged. "If we get to the point where we're arguing about who knows numbers better, someone fucking slit my throat."

"I will if I don't off myself first," Beck muttered while dealing the red and white cards. I counted off the seven in my head for some pointless reason before picking them up. My heart dropped again when I saw the cards. Two of spades, three of clubs, nine of clubs, five of diamonds, king of clubs, and a seven of spades. Please, someone tell me how any of those cards even remotely go together.

I literally can't anymore.

The round dragged by, the highlight of my hand ended up being three twos but by the time Sebastian laid down his whole hand, I was still holding a hearty twenty seven points. My favorite.

"I think this is a sign," I announced upon officially hitting the negatives with Ken. "Betting on horses and playing blackjack are not viable career paths for me."

"I could have told you that," Axel snorted.

"I think we all could have," Beck chimed in. "Stick to hockey, Danny. That's the best bet you'll ever make."

"You guys are so supportive of my potential career paths," I drawled sarcastically while handing Seb my cards. I stood from the table with my empty beer bottle in hand. "Anyone want another drink?"

"I'll have another glass of wine," Axel flashed me a thankful smile as I picked up the empty glass.

"You want another, Seb?" I asked, nodding at his empty wineglass.

"Might as well," he shrugged his broad shoulders. Beck took the glass and stood up with his own empty bottle between his fingers. Ken refused another drink, sticking to the diet he was supposed to have for baseball season as it was imminently approaching in the coming months. The four of us probably should have been sticking to our no alcohol diets, but that's was asking a lot of twenty two year old college students in their last semester, no matter how close to the hockey championships we were.

I didn't drink for three months in October and even that was a stretch. We weren't alcoholics, but a drink once or twice a month was a social thing for our little group. It wasn't like every other night we were pounding beers and jungle juice. This was just a bad week where I happened to have one too many shots last sunday. But two beers on a friday night? That was fine. I'm just saying Ken had a lot of willpower.

My bare feet padded on the floor of our apartment as I passed the island to get to the sink. Axel's glass was set on the marble before I rinsed out my beer bottle, taking Beck's brown one from his hand as he passed by me to get a bottle of white wine from the fridge. Connecticut offered deposit on glass bottles so all I had to do was rinse them and put them in a garbage bag under the sink to take next time Seb or I went to the grocery store.

I heard the sound of the cork coming out of the new bottle of white wine as Beck opened the bottle, my own hands tuning off the tap and placing the bottles in the white garbage bag under the sink. My arm brushed Beck's back as a passed him to get to the fridge, pulling out two more beers. "You saw Aras today, right?" I asked, knowing he went to Westport.

"Yeah. I saw Ace too. They were playing soccer in thirty degree weather. Which incase you were wondering, was all Finn."

I couldn't help but snort. "Of course it was fucking Finn. My brother's an idiot. If I thought Sylvia or Aras' mother let them outside when there was frost on the ground, you would need to find me a neurologist immediately." For that to have happened, I must have had to hit my head. "How is he feeling? Well enough to play soccer obviously."

"A lot better than he has been, that's for sure. His cancer is calming down now. They think he might be free of it by summer." I could hear the hope in Beck's voice. I wanted Aras to be cured more than anything. He was so young. And selfishly, I didn't want Ace or Beck to feel the loss of a best friend and brother. Aras was a sweet kid and I'd been seeing more and more of him at Finn's house as the months went on. I never realized how close the two boys were until Beck started coming over with his brother. They might as well be considered part of the family on account of the amount of times they had dinner with our family and vice versa. "I really believe Sylvia saved his life, Danny. I still can't express how thankful I am for you and your family."

I offered a kind smile, "Sylvia knows, Beck. She's just glad she could help." I pried the cap off the two bottles, placing them both on the counter while I watched Beck pour two glasses of wine.

"Did you ever talk to you Finn about your mother?" Beck asked cautiously.

"Yeah," I exhaled in exhaustion. "We're in agreeance that neither of us want to speak to her. I think he wanted to tell me to ask my dad for my brothers' number, but he didn't. Finn doesn't want to push me. In all honesty, I think the only reason he went to see me when he was eighteen was because of Sylvia, no matter how much he insists she had nothing to do with it. She had to have been a subconscious pressure on him even if she couldn't care less and he knew it."

Beck considered my words, deciding how to react to that as he put the bottle back in the fridge with a black stopper in it. "Well you said last week you weren't in a place to see them, so don't think about what Finn may or may not have been thinking."

"Cheers to that," I tipped the neck of my bottle towards Beck. He picked up his own and clinked the top against mine, both of us bringing the cool glass to our lips.

"Are you two going to keep flirting over there or are you going to come join the game?" Seb called out from the dinning room. I rolled my eyes at Beck as he shook his head with a smile.

"One day your going to get a girlfriend, Seb. We're never going to let you live it down," Beck told his best friend, picking up Seb's wine glass as I picked up Axel's. I handed it to the blonde when I sat down at the table, the cards already dealt.

"Yeah, yeah, keep talking out of your ass, Sampson. Now let's finish this game and beat Danny's ass."

"I need new friends."

"No you don't. We're the best you're going to get."

Tell me about it.