Josh
We’re kids, Dad.
So here he was wearing a stupid-ass apron at the winner’s clambake.
“Losers serve the winners,” his dad announced.
Thanks for pointing out the obvious, Father.
Richard Regis strutted up to the catering table Josh was standing behind and held out his plate. Josh dropped a tong full of salad onto his plate. Some of it landed. Some of it didn’t. Who cared, when all Josh would be eating for the foreseeable future was crow.
“Aww, babe.” Britney appeared in front of him, lowering her plate so he could see her boobs better. “You’ll get ’em next time.”
He pinched a cherry tomato between his tongs and put it on her plate. That was pretty much all he had left to give today.
Britney refused the potato salad Teagan was glopping onto plates next to him and flounced off to find her mom.
“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me,” he hissed at Teagan once Brit was gone.
“Or maybe you could’ve stuck with the plan and not rushed the slide,” she spat back.
“She’s not wrong,” Ryder piled in. His cousin had been itching for a fight all day. “Your catches were shit, Josh.”
Josh’s vision blurred and when it cleared, it was like everything had gone all slow-motion and hyper-pixelated.
Like he’d been dropped into a virtual reality version of his life, where everything looked almost the same but everyone’s roles had changed.
A version where Ryder thought it was okay to talk to him like that.
Publicly call him out. Question his judgment. “Excuse me?”
Ryder gave Josh a look so full of disgust you could almost smell it.
They’d had fights over the years. That’s the way it was when one kid was always going to be superior to the other one. But revulsion? How fucking dare he?
Furious, Josh turned his anger on Teagan and blasted her with words. “You’re shit at coxing and you know it. Do the right thing and put us out of our misery. Quit.”
Cam, shoved between them, chest puffed out, inflated by his Robin Hood complex no doubt. “Leave it, Josh. It was a bad race. No need to cry about it.”
He wasn’t crying! He was steaming. A volcano about to blow.
“This isn’t a fight you want to jump into, Cam.”
Like Cam had even the slightest clue what he was talking about. None of them did. Not Ryder. Not Teagan. Not Coach. Not even his parents.
There had been so much more at stake with this race than having to wear a stupid apron with Loser printed on it.
The stakes were life or death. Literally.
He’d poured every ounce of power he had into that race and it still hadn’t been enough.
News that would go straight to his grandfather, the head of the Regis clan.
Josh had failed to prove he was powerful.
Not strong enough to take the helm of Regis Airlines when his grandfather decided to retire.
Lacking the level of command needed to override Teagan’s pathetic strategy.
He had to get out of there before his brain exploded. Or worse, his heart. He yanked off the apron, threw it at Ryder, and jogged down the beach in a way that made it clear he was leaving that pack of losers behind by choice, not running away.
He needed time alone to think. To process. To figure out his next move.
He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting on a big boulder staring out at the lake, willing it to tell him what to do, when a hand clapped down on his shoulder.
Luckily, even when the chips were down, Josh still had the reactions of a ninja. The fist he’d formed relaxed when he realized it was his dad.
“Pull me up?”
It was probably another test. The kind where, when their hands were clasped, Richard pulled his son down onto the beach and did a victory dance on top of him. But instead, his dad took his hand and used Josh as ballast as he pulled himself up onto the boulder.
They sat side by side. Josh waited for whatever was coming his way.
“Good race, son.”
Josh huffed a laugh. “Yeah, right.”
“You know,” his dad said, looking out to the lake instead of at Josh. “I lost my first alumni race. To your grandfather.”
Who else would he have lost it to? Didn’t change anything. Josh had fallen to the bottom of a mountain he’d stupidly thought he was about to summit.
“That anger you feel?”
His dad was talking in a way that reminded Josh of the wise grandpa characters who teach valuable lessons in cheesy movies.
“That fire that’s fueling you right now?” His dad thumped his own chest, correctly assuming doing the same thing to Josh’s wouldn’t end well. “That’s the fuel you use to win.”
No comment. Josh stared straight ahead.
“My second race?” His dad’s voice shifted tone from inspirational to “spoiler alert.” “I beat him by a boat length. You’ll get us next year, son.
I’m sure of it.” Josh didn’t look, but he was pretty sure his dad was giving him an encouraging smile.
He was positive when his dad slung his arm around Josh’s shoulders.
Weirdest feeling ever. The hand on his shoulder tightened its grip. “I expect nothing less.”
Ryder was the one who threw the first punch.
To be fair, Josh had all but begged him to throw it.
When in doubt? Insult a guy’s mom. It works a treat.
Ryder had spotted Josh coming back from his inspiring father–son talk and, sensing it hadn’t gone well, asked him to join him for a swim to cool down.
Josh had said something about it being too tempting an opportunity to drown a traitor, and Ryder, instead of punching him, had been nice. Asked him if he was okay because he knew Josh’s dad could be a dick sometimes.
The international rule of families goes like this: An immediate family member can say whatever they want about each other.
Cousins outward? Against the code. So Josh had gone for the jugular.
In truth, he didn’t know Ryder’s mom well enough to know if she was a grasping, status-hungry leech, but it had been enough to make Ryder launch a fist.
It quickly devolved into a WWF-style assault. Punching. Kicking. Flipping each other this way and that. He was vaguely aware of Britney screaming for someone to stop them, but this crowd was more likely to live stream the fight.
Somehow, he managed to pin Ryder to the ground.
His eyes looking up at him all wide and scared, bugging out of his stupid red face.
Josh cocked his arm, pumped up with the anger his dad had told him to use to win.
He’d win this at least. This stupid, long-overdue fight.
He cocked his arm, stared at his cousin’s face.
Time to establish his dominance over Ryder once and for all—
“Oh shit!”
Out of nowhere, a cascade of ice rained down on him and Ryder.