Page 92 of 6 Clues Your Nemesis Loves You

During lulls, my mind slides to Maggie. I picture us laughing together, walking hand in hand behind the Yard Goat Gallery. More dangerous fantasies hit too—her naked over me, moving her hips, taking me deep. I have to bite my cheek to kill the memories. The speed with which our relationship ended still grates on me, but I’m sad more than anything. Fucking devastated that she won’t be in the future I imagined for us.

At least Mizhir and I have started to reconcile.

“If I saw your father now,” he says, scowling as we discuss my sojourn in WITSEC, “I’d probably slash his tires.”

We’re at our campsite, huddled under a hung tarp, cooking food on my small camp stove.

He passes me his flask of bourbon.

I take a healthy pull. “Turns out he also has another family. Two boys he apparently loves and dotes on.”

I still don’t understand why I care so much. Nothing he does should affect me, but I find myself curious if his boys are obnoxious like me or volatile like Des. If they’re creative like E, bossy like Jake, or congenial like Cal. I don’t know if we got our traits more from Mom or from Dad. Maybe neither. Maybe we’re just us, and they’re just them. Half brothers who might need a collection of Bower boys to back them up if their father resumes his role of Life Wrecker Extraordinaire.

I rub my eyes. “My father is such a dick.”

Mizhir flings a stray branch into the darkness. “Fuck him.”

“You can say that again.”

He looks at me dead on and says, “Fuck him,” harder.

I pull in a lungful of cold air, resentment frothing hotter in my gut. “Fuck him,” I mutter, wanting to taste the words for myself. Feel their power. “Fuck him,” I say louder.

“Fuck him!” Mizhir shouts, his head tipped back.

“Fuck him!” I scream, picturing my unemotional father at the diner, his dyed hair a brown stain on his scalp. “You’re a motherfucking asshole shitbag prick!”

I clamp my mouth shut, worried a family might be camping somewhere on this trail. But damn, that felt good. So good and liberating I can’t help wondering if Maggie was right about my confrontation issues.

Maybe all this angst did fester because I didn’t yell at my father and tell him how I truly felt, relying on trusted jokes instead. If I’d yelled at the diner, Dad wouldn’t have sat there silently. He would’ve replied with a rebuttal, and I would’ve had to take it. Faced whatever he might have said in return, even if that “whatever” was hurtful and insulting—a possibility that has my heart racing. The erratic beat pounds so hard it gets tough to breathe, like that’s the issue I’ve been battling. Fear of rejection more than fear of fighting.

I certainly never asked Mizhir why he quit keeping in touch when he went off to college. I never pushed with Maggie, demanding to know why she wouldn’t talk to me at school. I assumed she was obsessed with her public image and Mizhir was happier without me, both conclusions dead wrong. Maybe self-doubt kept me quiet back then. Fear that Maggie would say I wasn’t jock enough or popular enough or cool enough to associate with her. That I’d never be good enough.

Everything back then was Dad’s fault and Mizhir’s fault and Maggie’s fault. I was the good guy who forgave and forgot. But I didn’t forget, did I?

Like I can’t forget Maggie now.

chapter thirty-three

The next day is cold but dry. The sky is blue. The mud-caked ground is firm from the chill, my steps surer and steady. I lift my head as I walk, easy strides with Mizhir at my side. We hike and talk, taking in the sentry of trees around us, some branches naked and resolute, the evergreens obstinate and spiky, undisturbed by winter’s hand.

Eventually, we arrive at a lookout—our last stop before our trails split apart.

“My dad isn’t fully why I bolted on this camping trip,” I say on an exhale.

“Maggie” is his reply.

Goddamn Maggie Edelstein. “How’d you know?”

“Windfall is the size of a Petri dish.”

I laugh. Isn’t that the truth. “We had a fight, and I didn’t speak my mind. Barely pushed back, kind of like the way I dealt with you as teens. I mean, a lot was going on. She had to rush off, and I had my family meeting. But when she lashed out, I assumed she was ending things with us, which seems to be a pattern of mine—making assumptions without all the facts. Except maybe she wasn’t breaking up with me. Maybe she just needed space before we talked things out.”

I should’ve waited before taking off, spoken to her after the dust settled, been more honest about how her abruptness had hurt. Insisted we talk things through.

I should’ve fought like hell for the woman I love.

Mizhir stands beside me, the two of us watching an eagle soar on the wind. “Sounds like you two have unfinished business.”