He’s not a bad guy,” said Evan, leaning back in the conference room chair, his box of takeout lo mein in one hand, fork in the other. No chopsticks allowed in the conference room.

“He’s a threat,” said Callum. “A distraction. We’ve got too much going on, to worry about Lucas Phelps right now.”

Ash had already pushed his food away. “Losing our land isn’t a distraction.”

Once or twice a week, the Cray men got together to talk. Phones silenced, email left unchecked. The business had gotten so hectic that they needed time to sit, uninterrupted, so they could talk strategy. It was a chance to decompress, without losing sight of their goal: To keep the Cray fortune intact.

Callum didn’t seem to see it that way though. “That’s exactly what it is, Ash. The land belongs to Dad. He needs to pay his bills. Who cares? It’s a few acres. Meanwhile, since you’ve made a problem out of it, Lucas is suddenly all up in our business.”

“Lucas knows something he’s not telling me,” said Ash. “Something that could make all this make sense.”

“It makes sense already,” insisted Callum. “Just let Dad do what he needs to do.”

“You guys make me tired,” said Evan, setting down his box of noodles. “This is why I’m glad I’m an only child. Back and forth, back and forth. Let Dad sell the land, no, it’ll destroy everything if he does, no, it’ll make everything better, no—”

“Surely, of all people, you have an opinion on this,” said Ash. “Dad stole your trust fund to prop up the business! Don’t you want him to stay in jail?”

“Do I get my money back if he stays in jail?” asked Evan.

“Well…no, of course not.”

“That money wasn’t doing me any good anyway,” said Evan. “Now I feel like I’m doing something meaningful, working with you guys. At least, when you’re not bickering like children. That doesn’t mean I forgive Uncle Archie for stealing my money. Far from it. But I don’t want to base all my life decisions on Archie, either.”

“See?” said Callum. “Listen to our cousin. Let Dad worry about his appeal while we get on with the real work here. And quit bringing Farm Boy Phelps into the office. He’s going to get the carpet all muddy.”

“You know, he’s not a dumb hick, as much as we’d like to think that about him,” said Ash.

Had he said it louder than he’d meant to? Callum looked startled.

“I’m sorry, Ash, I didn’t realize you were in love with him.”

“Come on,” he said. “Don’t you think we owe him a debt?”

“Us? We owe Lucas something?”

Callum knew what he meant, but it was another of those areas they’d carefully staked out, another border they weren’t allowed to cross. Ash couldn’t talk about what happened with him and Lucas back in high school, any more than he could talk to Callum honestly about Dad.

They’d been cruel to Lucas back then. Needlessly, pointlessly cruel. Oh, back then, when they were teenagers, it had seemed like there was a point to it, it had seemed like the most important thing in the world to teach Lucas a lesson.

We were so stupid back then.

* * *

“This is…quite a room,” said Ash, looking around Lucas’ den. Board games lined the shelves, with traditional games he knew from childhood, others he’d never seen. There was a baize poker table, complete with cup-holders, but no cards or signs of chips, and a pool table, with a Tiffany-shaded light over it.

Lucas looked bashful, as though he were expecting criticism. “Game night is a big deal for us. Other kids were playing cops and robbers or soldiers or whatever, but we always wanted games. My friend Karl always says it’s because board games have the rules we wish real life had. I don’t know, I think it’s mostly nostalgia.”

None of us escape our pasts, thought Ash, trailing his fingers over the green felt of the pool table. But while Ash felt in a constant battle with his past, with the things he understood about himself now that he was older, Lucas seemed at peace with his. Seemed to enjoy reliving it.

Have I ever been happy?

“It feels like enemy territory in here,” said Ash. “Like I’m on dangerous ground.”

Lucas picked up the cue ball from the pool table and rolled it in his fingers. For a moment Ash found himself watching, not the ball itself, but the way the tendons and muscles in Lucas’ forearm moved as he rolled the ball. “Are we still enemies?” said Lucas.

“According to Callum, we are,” Ash answered. “I can’t tell, for myself.”

Why was he so troubled? His emotions felt stronger here. Was it being reminded so much of his past? Was it the stress of all these recent events?

He allowed his mind to slip back into calculation. Emotion was uncomfortable. You couldn’t understand emotion. It never made sense. It followed a shadow-logic that could not be trusted.

That’s why things never worked out between you and Lucas. You can’t stand who you are when you’re around him. He makes you unpredictable. He makes you follow your emotions instead of logic. It scares you to death, the idea of following your feelings.

Calculation was the only thing you could trust. He considered his next words carefully.

“We have a common enemy,” he said.

“Your hypothetical rich guy.”

Ash nodded. “Whoever he is, he knows exactly what he is doing. He has to understand that, whatever good our fathers think will come from this deal, it’s going to hurt us. Don’t you think he knows that?”

“It makes sense,” Lucas agreed.

“So here is what I don’t understand. You’re holding something back. You know something, Lucas, and you’re not telling me.”

“What? No I’m not.”

“I’m convinced of it,” said Ash. “I’m not sure you realize you’re holding it back. Consciously, I mean. I look at your face, and I see you struggling with something. Something you don’t want me to know.”

Lucas’ brow furrowed, and he touched his face, as though testing what his expression was giving away. “Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about. It seemed like we were getting along fine for a minute there, but if you’re going to come here and accuse me—”

“No, don’t get me wrong. I’m not accusing you of anything.” He leaned against the pool table and looked over at the board games on the shelves. Anything not to look at Lucas himself.

Lucas set the cue ball back onto the table and sent it spinning. It hit the side of the table softly and rolled off at an angle. “I’ve been racking my mind, trying to think of any way to figure this out,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve got any great secret knowledge that will help, though. You know as much as I do. More, probably. You’re the one with all the resources. I’m just sitting here watching my family’s legacy die. The one thing I know is, if this deal goes through, my dad will want to sell more of the land. More, and more. God knows what he will do with the money. Waste it on himself, I assume. Then where will I be?”

“Rich but rootless,” said Ash, feeling a strange sympathy for the pain he heard in Lucas’ voice.

“I should have been like you. I should have gone into business. It was obvious my dad would never reopen the farm. He hates it. Instead, I’ve sat here waiting for something that'll never happen. Thinking something would change, while opportunities passed me by.”

Ash shook his head. “It’s not like you’re an old man, Lucas.”

“No, but isn’t this the pattern of my life?”

“Is it? I don't know you well enough to say.”

Lucas stared at him then, and Ash felt something he could not name. A sense of danger. Something he had only felt a few times before in his life…and each time, with Lucas. That sense of being on enemy territory was even stronger now.

“I think you know me pretty well,” Lucas told him. “You should. What happened between us has helped define my whole life.”

Ash realized he was gripping the side of the pool table with his fingers. “Aren’t you being dramatic?”

“Am I? Do you know what me and my friends do in here? We don’t just play games. We talk about that day back in school. We call it The Battle of Cray’s Quarry.”

The Battle of Cray’s Quarry. Ash felt a chill run up his spine. The hair stood up on the back of his neck.

This was so damned dangerous.

“You mean the day you guys threw rocks at me and Callum?” he asked, as casually as possible.

“You know what I mean,” said Lucas. “Don’t accuse me of holding something back, and then pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“We were stupid kids back then,” said Ash. He wanted to run. He didn’t want to think about this.

“Look, we can’t keep dancing around this. It’s one thing to keep everything secret from our friends and family. But between us? You and Callum beat the living shit out of me, Ash. Over a guy.”

“That’s not how I remember it,” said Ash, his voice weak.

* * *

School had been agony for Ash. If he’d gone to a private school, things might have been different. He’d asked his father again and again, send him away somewhere, a good place with other rich kids, somewhere with horses and painting and smart teachers. “Don’t leave me down here where everybody hates me,” he’d said to Archibald.

“Their hate is the only thing that will make you strong,” his father had replied.

(“I didn’t want to be hated,” he told Lucas. “I didn’t want to be feared.”)

Boys were scared to strike him out at softball because their fathers worked for his father. No one would tackle him at football.

He worked that much harder to excel. It wasn’t worth anything to be at the top of the heap just because your father was one of the richest men in town. He studied harder than anyone. He practiced harder than anyone. If he was going to get the rewards of life, he wanted to earn them.

(“…and that included Ricky Talbot,” said Lucas. He handed Ash a beer and gestured for him to keep going.)

Yes. Ricky Talbot. The greatest prize school had to offer, back then. The Boy From Out Of Town, with intense dark eyes, and a forelock that kept falling over his brow giving him a look both innocent and rakish.

Suddenly, Ash and Ricky were together. It only made sense that the richest, most talented guy in town should get the exciting newcomer. But it couldn’t last, because Ash had a rival: Lucas Phelps.

Their rivalry had brought back all the talk of the Cray/Phelps feud. Lucas practiced even harder than Ash. Pushed himself to run faster, tackle harder, throw further. He was the only one who wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t enough for Lucas to win; Ash had to lose. Had to be humiliated.

And not just on the field. When Lucas saw Ricky on Ash’s arm, he knew he had to have him. He worked quickly, buying Ricky presents, taking him out on dates. Was he really attracted to Ricky? No one knew. What they knew was that he was trying to get Ash as jealous as possible.

(“That’s not fair,” said Lucas. “I mean, he really was cute.”

“Are you telling this story, or am I?” asked Ash, and Lucas raised his beer bottle in salute.)

Finally, Lucas pushed it too far. Ricky broke it off with Ash, and Ash was furious. Ricky was a newcomer, an innocent, easily deceived by a guy like Lucas. He thought Lucas had real feelings for him, and didn’t understand—no matter how many times Ash explained it to him—that he was just a pawn to Lucas, a piece in the game Lucas had been playing against Ash all this time.

Ash had to confront Lucas. He knew that. It was the only way to end this rivalry once and for all. Man to man. They went down to the abandoned quarry, turned into a lake by decades of rain, a place all the kids went to swim as soon as the weather turned warm.

It wasn’t warm that day. Storm clouds had begun gathering as the warmth of the new spring fought with the cold grip winter still had on the county. It felt like something momentous was happening, that the world was going to change in a fundamental way.

But before he could confront Lucas, before he could make it clear that he knew exactly what Lucas was doing with, and to, Ricky, Lucas’ friends arrived. They went on the attack, grabbing rocks from the quarry and pelting Ash and Callum.

There was no way to withstand it. The defeat shifted everything. Bruised and humiliated, Ash had returned home, vowing to leave the rivalry behind. It wasn’t a battle he could win. He would focus on academics, get into business school, return to take his place in Cray Reliable, forgetting all the drama of youth.

“Wait,” said Lucas. He uncapped his second beer. “That’s what you tell people?”

Ash scowled at him. “Why, what twisted version do you tell?”