Chapter 9
NINE
My door flew open as I was strumming a tune that I couldn’t quite get right on my guitar. Talia burst in, still wearing an oversized CFU shirt that she’d cut the neck of so it draped off her shoulder. “We’re having a girls’ night.”
“I’m practicing.”
“You’re brooding,” she corrected. “There’s a difference. Come on, Ayanna’s already setting up snacks and Rachel’s threatening to do face masks whether you cooperate or not.”
I sighed but set down my guitar. Maybe some mindless girl time would help me stop thinking about the psychology project from hell and my equally hellish project partner.
When I got downstairs, Rachel and Ayanna had transformed our living room into what could only be described as a spa meets snack bar. Wine, chips, cheese, chocolate, and an alarming number of face mask packets covered every surface.
“Finally,” Rachel said, patting the spot next to her on the couch. “Sit. Drink. Stop thinking about whatever’s making you play angry guitar.”
“I wasn’t playing angry guitar.”
“You were definitely playing angry guitar,” Ayanna said. “We could hear it downstairs. Very punchy.”
I grabbed a glass of wine and collapsed onto the couch, wishing I could tune out the thumping bass coming from next door. “I hate that we can hear their stupid party.”
“It was a good game though,” Talia said, stealing a handful of chips. They’d gone to the hockey game tonight against NMU, but I’d opted to stay home for obvious reasons. Like hell would I be caught dead at a hockey game looking like I supported Dumontier.
“Drew’s goal was insane. He stole the puck and just—”
“I don’t care,” I said flatly, cutting her off.
“Right.” Talia grinned. “Because you hate him.”
“I do hate him.”
“We know.” Rachel exchanged a look with Ayanna that I didn’t like at all. “Speaking of the hockey house, I may have invited some people to join us.”
My stomach dropped. “What people?”
The doorbell rang and my stomach swooped with foreboding.
“Those people,” Rachel said cheerfully, jumping up before I could stop her.
I heard voices in the entryway—female voices—and then Rachel returned with two girls trailing behind her.
I recognized Sam from around campus and seeing her come and go from next door. The other girl with light brown hair was Abby Walker, whom I hadn’t known until she started dating Foster Kane, the captain of the hockey team.
“Harper, Ayanna, Talia—this is Sam and Abby,” Rachel said. “Abby is Foster’s girlfriend. You guys know Sam moved in next door. I thought she might like a break from the testosterone in her house.”
“Hey,” Sam said, as she dropped onto our couch with the easy confidence of someone who always fit in wherever she went. “Thanks for letting us crash girls’ night.”
“Of course,” Rachel said. “Wine?”
Sam and Abby both nodded. I tried not to look too obvious about studying Sam while my roommates chatted with them. I couldn’t decide if she was the enemy yet. She could be the best person in the world, but she lived with Dumontier—by choice—which made her judgment questionable at best.
“So how’s living in the hockey house?” Talia asked, like she’d read my mind. “I feel like that’s either the best or worst decision ever.”
Sam laughed. “Honestly? It’s not bad. I’d gotten to know the guys pretty well when Abby started dating Foster, and they aren’t nearly as bad as their reputations make them out to be.” She glanced at me as she said that last part, a question in her gaze that I pointedly ignored.
I grew up with two of her roommates in a small town where everyone knows everyone. I think I knew them better than she did after only a few months.
“Foster played a great game tonight,” Ayanna said to Abby.
“He did,” Abby said, her whole face lighting up. “I’m so proud of him. They’re on a five-game winning streak now. Hopefully they can keep it up for tomorrow’s game too.”
“Drew’s goal was incredible,” Talia added. “The way he just read that pass and took it all the way—”
“Can we not talk about Devil Dumontier?” I said, taking a long drink of wine. I was already thinking about him more than I was comfortable with because of this godforsaken psych project—part of me wondered if this was the universe having a laugh at my expense.
Sam made a sound that was somewhere between a hum and a snort, and my hackles were immediately raised.
“What?”
“Nothing.” But she was smiling in this knowing way that made me want to throw a pillow at her. “It’s just funny.”
“What’s funny?”
“Well,” Sam said, settling back into the couch like she was getting comfortable for story time.
“He complains about you a lot. Like, a lot. How you’re impossible to deal with.
How the universe is punishing him by making you his project partner.
How he’d rather do the entire project solo than have to spend another minute working with a Tinsley. ”
Good. Let him be miserable. I was miserable too.
“But here’s the thing,” Sam continued, and her smile shifted into something more thoughtful.
“He talks about you constantly. Like, we’ll be eating dinner and somehow the conversation turns to you.
We’ll be watching TV and he’ll randomly mention something you said in class.
Liam and Gordy have started a tally of how many times your name comes up in a day. ”
I blinked. “What?”
“The record is seventeen, by the way,” Sam said. “Seventeen times in one day, Harper. For someone he supposedly hates, you take up a lot of space in his head.”
“That’s because I make his life difficult,” I said, but my voice sounded weird even to me.
“Maybe.” Sam shrugged. “Or maybe he doth protest too much, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I was the first to look away, grabbing my wineglass for something to do with my hands.
Abby broke the heavy silence that had settled on the room. “Okay, I have to know. What’s the deal with you two? Why do you two hate each other so much?”
I twisted my wineglass between my fingers. This was family business. Private stuff. But maybe I could make them understand why this rivalry would never end.
“Our families have hated each other for three generations before we even came along,” I said. “Since our great-grandfathers.”
“Three generations?” Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s—”
“Insane? Yeah.” I took another sip of wine.
“I know. But each generation does something that buries those roots of hatred just a little deeper. Our great-grandfathers were best friends and business partners. They had a construction company together and co-owned some land. And then they both fell in love with the same woman.”
“Oh, shit,” Talia breathed.
“Yeah. According to my family—according to what I’ve been told my entire life—James Dumontier seduced her. She was my great-grandfather Robert’s very serious girlfriend. Supposedly he was about to propose when James betrayed him and convinced her to leave Robert.”
The familiar anger rose in my chest, generations of it passed down like an inheritance.
“My great-grandfather was devastated by his best friend’s betrayal and the loss of the woman he loved, so he cut James out of the land agreement and the construction company.
I mean, of course he wasn’t going to work with the man after what he’d done.
But the Dumontiers claim the Tinsleys stole the land that was their birthright and have been trying to one-up us ever since. ”
“Jesus,” Abby muttered.
“So one stole the girl, and the other stole the land?” Sam said slowly.
“Basically.” I drained my wineglass. “And now both families are convinced the other one is pure evil. The Dumontiers think we’re bitter and vindictive. We think they’re liars and con artists. Because they are.”
“But wasn’t that like seventy years ago?” Abby said carefully.
“Doesn’t matter. My dad refuses to hire Dumontier Construction for anything.
Drew’s dad apparently does the same with Tinsley Construction.
They refuse to be in the same room at community events.
Our families won’t even bid on the same projects anymore.
” I laughed, but it sounded hollow. “It’s been passed down like some genetic disease. ”
“Isn’t it kind of hard to avoid someone when you live in a small town, though?” Sam asked.
“You have no idea.” I picked at the edge of a throw pillow, wondering if I should voice the secret I’ve kept locked away for years. “Drew and I were actually friends once. Sort of. In sixth grade.”
All five women leaned forward.
“You were friends?” Rachel’s voice went up. “You never told me that.”
“It was barely anything.” I kept my eyes on the pillow.
“We got paired for a science project. Turned out we worked really well together. He was actually—” I stopped and swallowed hard, the memory, and the hurt that followed, bringing up feelings I thought I’d long buried.
“He was nice and made me laugh. He even helped me when I got stuck. For like three weeks, I thought maybe we could just be normal, like maybe we could be different from everyone else in our families.”
“What happened?” Talia asked softly.
“There was this winter choir concert. I had a solo I’d been practicing for weeks, and Drew had been helping me with it. He’d listen to me practice and encourage me when I got frustrated.” I twisted the pillow fringe between my fingers. “I thought he actually cared about my music.”
I hated that I’d believed he was different. But I hated even more that talking about this now still made my chest ache the way it had when I was twelve.
“After the concert, I went to find him. I heard him with some of his friends. They were teasing him about spending so much time with me.” My throat felt tight. “And Drew said I sounded like a dying cat. They all laughed.”
“Harper,” Ayanna said quietly, trying to soothe me, which only made the hurt turn to anger.
Fuck Drew Dumontier.
“I was so hurt and angry. I went back to my friends and called him a loser. Said he was pathetic and I’d only been nice to him because I felt sorry for him.” I finally looked up. “I didn’t know he was standing right behind me. That he heard the whole thing.”
The room was quiet.
“Wait,” Sam said slowly. “So you both said awful things about each other? On the same night?”
“And neither of you talked about it?” Abby asked.
I shook my head. “Why should we? That night proved what my family had told me about Dumontiers all along. After that, we just avoided each other, until the pranks started and it escalated, and by the time we got to high school, we’d been enemies for so long that neither of us remembered how to be anything else. ”
Sam leaned forward. “Harper, I grew up with three brothers. I know what it looks like when someone genuinely doesn’t give a shit about another person. They don’t come up at all. But you and Drew? You come up constantly in each other’s conversations. That’s not normal enemy behavior.”
“Maybe we’re just that good at making each other miserable,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. “Not everything has some deeper meaning, Sam. Sometimes people just hate each other.”
The look she gave me suggested she didn’t believe it for a second, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in psychoanalyzing my relationship with Drew Dumontier.
We’d inherited seventy years of hatred with no end in sight.