Josh
He’d won. He had secured the team’s vote. He could leave Ryder to take out his frustration on the oars. Or…
“Hey, cuz… win some, lose some.”
Ryder whipped around. Furious.
“I want to win them all,” Ryder spat out.
He clearly hadn’t done his meditation yet. Not that Josh had given him the space for it. But enough was enough. “Look, do you really want to compete with me for the rest of our lives?”
“I didn’t make the rules.”
“Neither of us did.” He sat down, hoped Ryder would, too. Pressed on when he didn’t. “What if we decided to change the rulebook? Do whatever’s best for us individually, instead of what’s best for the family?”
Ryder barked a laugh. “Right. Like you’d ever give up stroke.”
He shouldn’t be stroke. He knew that. But he had to. For his dad. “If you had a heart attack tomorrow and died, do you think stroke seat would be the thing that mattered most to you?”
“It wouldn’t to you,” Ryder shot back, “since you’re the one sitting in it.”
Bad example. Josh studied his hands for a minute, trying to think of how to say what really needed to be said. To claw away this toxic mess. “We used to be friends.”
“If by friends, you mean you had me as a sidekick, yeah.”
That hurt. Hurt because it was true. Past tense. “You’re not a sidekick anymore. Listen, Ryder. What can I do to make things right?”
Ryder stopped banging stuff around and looked at him, like he was trying to figure out if Josh actually meant it. He did. He hated this cousin-on-cousin war. He missed the days when they had fun together. Goofed around.
“You want to be friends?” Ryder asked.
He did. He really did.
“Give me stroke seat.”
Josh wanted to. With every fiber of his being. But he just couldn’t. He got up and walked out with Ryder shouting behind him, “You know you don’t deserve it!”
Yeah. He knew.