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Remington Wilde is the oldest son of my family’s biggest rival.
His family’s heir in training.
Just like me.
I’ve been raised to think of him as my nemesis.
I don’t know what I expected him to look like. Certainly not so… normal. He could be any other teenager at my high school. Like me, he’s taller and broader than average. He’s got a basketball tucked under one of his arms and is dressed like he’s been playing.
“Who the fuck are you?” he says just as combatively.
“Hayes Rivers,” I answer and straighten my spine. The same surprise I felt flickers in his eyes for just a fraction of a second before he schools his expression—but I don’t miss it.
Then, he starts dribbling the ball. His hand meets it every time it springs off the ground, but his eyes never stray from me. I’d heard he was a major basketball talent. But he attended the public high school, Lamar, and I attend the private Strake Jesuit. Our teams have never played each other. But if his playing is anything like his skillful but absentminded dribble, he was clearly born to hold a basketball.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he says and draws my eyes back to his.
“Neither are you,” I shoot back.
We stare each other down. The longer I look at him, the more I’m sure I’ve seen him before.
He narrows his eyes at me, crosses his arms over his chest and curls his lip. “I came to get a ball that came over the wall. But you look like you’ve been making yourself comfortable back here.” He nods at the sleeping bag that’s stretched across the huge boulder in the center of the clearing. I’ve been coming here since the day my father died. It’s been my escape from an endless stream of people who have been at our house to pay their respects.
“So?” I respond with a defensive shrug. I nod at his arm. “Looks like you got your ball. Why are you still here?” I ask.
His eyes narrow briefly, but his expression stays neutral.
“I thought your old man’s funeral was today,” he says casually, quietly. And yet, the reproach in his tone hits me like he yelled them inches away from my face. A flush of shame washes over me.
Of course, he knows. Everyone does. His mother, the widely-respected Tina Wilde, sent flowers.
Eliza hurled the vase against the wall when she read the card, and they were not invited to the funeral. But I know their family must be watching ours closely to see how things change now that my father is gone. I wonder, too. He looks nothing like the mythical foe I’d imagined he would. But, our families have shared nothing more than the wall that divides our properties for the last—nearly—fifteen years.
He glances at his watch, frowns at it and then looks back at me. “It can’t be over already? At nine o’clock in the morning?”
I imagine St. John’s United Methodist Church packed to the rafters with people, pretending to care that my father is dead, mingling with the handful that really do. I’ve been handed so many business cards this week by people hoping that the Riverses will continue to be customers.
I’ve thrown them all away.
“Nah, it’s probably just starting.” I kick at the leaf-covered ground and avoid his disapproving gaze.
“So … why are you here and not there?” he asks.
“I already said goodbye,” I say with a shrug of my heavy shoulders.
“What about your mom? Your brothers? They good without you there?” he asks. Kindness softens the disapproval in his tone.
I don’t like it.
I don’t want it.
But, I do feel a flush of shame that I’m not there for my brothers. I push that down and say words that are much closer to the surface and less problematic for me.
“She’s not my mom,” I say.
“Oh, she’s not?” He looks genuinely surprised.
“Nope. She married my dad when I was seven,” I say.
