Brawler Read Online Free Page B

and it just ended.”
    He couldn’t say something like that and not expect me to pry a little further. So, pry I did. “What happened? I mean, if I can ask. I had a pretty bad one too, and believe me, that fucker just ended. From great to gone in one day. It sucks, but life just kind of sucks sometimes.”
    “I don’t think life sucks. I think things happen. Things that are out of our control.”
    Now he had my complete interest. “So are you going to tell me what happened?”
    He gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, out into the street. I waited for him to drop the bomb, expecting something totally insane. Expecting a story of how he caught his girlfriend with one of his friends, or that she gave him some weird STD, I sat quietly and waited. While I formulated my response in advance for whatever it was he was going to tell me, he closed his eyes and let out a sigh.
    He opened his eyes but didn’t look at me. “She uhhm. She was getting gas. And some guy came out of the gas station and just started shooting. He’d robbed the place. They said the bullet ricocheted off the pavement. It. It uhhm. It hit…”
    He tapped his temple with the tip of his finger. 
    Openmouthed and speechless, I sat and stared. My stomach turned. I felt sick, and I wished I hadn’t pried. I wondered if she was paralyzed or had died, but there was no way I could ask, even if I felt I wanted to.
    “We’d uhhm. I used to smoke, and she hated it. We’d been in a fight about it. She told me to quit, or else.” He coughed out a dry laugh that quickly got emotional. “I uhhm. I never cared much for someone giving me an ultimatum, so I told her I’d quit when I was ready. She left, and it was the last time I saw her alive.”
    I stared down at my bag, not really knowing what to say. I tried to swallow, but my dry mouth prevented it. A long silence followed. It wasn’t a tremendous amount of time, but it was enough that I grew uncomfortable and filled with guilt.
    “You know,” he said. “I wonder about things. Like if I would have agreed to quit, she never would have got mad and left. If that would have happened, she’d be alive, you know.”
    His thoughts must have weighed heavily on him, because he paused for what seemed like an eternity before he continued. “If I wouldn’t have been so stubborn, I wonder if things might have been different. Eventually, I always seem to remember what the pastor said in church when I was a kid about this world being God’s world, and not ours. And then I think that for whatever reason, God decided it was just her time.”
    He looked right at me. “Either way, it sucks.”
    Sometimes I wished I could just haul off and kick life right in the balls. He was right, it sucked. I was glad he told me the story, but felt terrible for all but forcing him to do so.
    “You’re right,” I managed to say. “It does suck. And, I’m sorry.”
    Saying I was sorry seemed shallow and simple, but I didn’t know what else to say. I wanted to console him, but knew there was really nothing I could do or say to provide him with any degree of comfort beyond what he already felt.
    I decided to try anyway. His eyes seemed distant and sad, which didn’t surprise me at all.
    “You quit smoking, right?”
    He held my gaze. “Yeah.”
    “I bet wherever she is, she’s proud of you.”
    It wasn’t much, but it was all I could come up with.
    His eyes narrowed. He appeared to be considering what I said. After a moment he shifted his focus to the street. Then, he chuckled. It seemed strange to hear him laugh, but I accepted it as being better than a lot of things he could have done.
    “I never looked at it that way,” he said. “I like that. Thank you.”
    I decided at least for the time being that silence ruled, so I simply smiled and chose not to speak.
    He smiled in return.
    On that night, his laughter and his smile satisfied me so deeply that I believed moving to Austin was for that reason and that