take a job with his direct competitor, that’s all.”
Colby scooped the tennis ball up off the ground and threw it, watching as Tris took off in pursuit across the muddy grass. “They’re not direct competitors,” he said.
“Close enough.”
“Not really.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “Yes, Colby, you think Rick’s a hack, we know. You’ve been very clear.” He stepped out of the way as Tris came careening back toward them, overshooting before turning around and trotting over with the ball in her mouth. “If family means nothing to you, then—”
Colby whipped around to look at him. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
Matt startled, then held his ground. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“You don’t, which is why I’m asking.” Colby wrenched the ball from Tris’s mouth a little more roughly than he meant to, throwing it out toward the woods one more time. “Because that’s hilarious coming from you.”
“Seriously?” Matt looked momentarily wounded, which was surprising. “Everything I do is for this family. Who do you think helps Mom pay the mortgage? Who do you think kept the lights on all year long? What do you think, because you buy dog food every once in a while you’re moving the needle? Do you have any idea how much help Mom needs that she doesn’t want to put on you because you’re the baby? Ever since Dad’s been gone—”
“And whose fault is it that he’s gone in the first place, Matt?”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
Colby set his shoulders. “You know what it means.”
“I really don’t.”
“It means you threw him out with the trash, and look what happened.” It felt good and gross and painful and satisfying to say it, like ripping a scab that wasn’t quite ready. Matt got very, very still.
“Is that what you think?” he asked, half his face lit by the glow of the deck light and the other half in shadow. “What, because I went to work with Rick?”
“See?” Colby asked, vindicated. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You abandoned him, and two weeks later he—”
“I abandoned him?” Matt laughed out loud, though it sounded more like he was choking. “By going out and actually making some money? He wasn’t fucking working, Colby! Literally, the guy had no jobs lined up and was too depressed to get up and find any. I begged him to get his act together, and so did Mom, and he didn’t. Or couldn’t, I don’t know.”
Colby shook his head. “You’re lying,” he said. He remembered that time, or he thought he did, though all of a sudden he wasn’t entirely sure. Work had been slow, that was all. His dad had been working on figuring it out. “He didn’t get really bad until after you left him to—”
“He was messed up on and off since before you were born, Colby!” Matt shook his head. “The first time he tried to kill himself I was in middle school. Mom fell all over herself trying to keep you from finding out.”
“Wait.” It felt like the ground moved suddenly. Colby took a physical step back. “What? Shut the fuck up. You’re full of shit.”
“Why would I lie about that?” Matt asked, sounding terrifyingly sincere. “You were a little kid still. We stayed with Rick and Alicia, remember?”
Colby shook his head, mulish. “We stayed with them because Dad was doing repairs on the house.”
“Repairs.” Matt gestured back at the house like a carnival barker—Step right up. “What repairs, exactly?” His eyes narrowed. “God, everybody coddled you because you were the baby. And now you’re a grown-ass man and you still want everybody to coddle you—”
“And you’re just jealous because Dad left Paradise to me instead of you, so you’re—”
“You think I give a shit about Paradise?” Matt demanded. “Paradise is worthless, Colby. Congratulations; Dad liked you better. But Dad’s dead, in case you haven’t noticed, so if at any point you want to stop using what happened as an excuse for acting like a lazy sack of shit all the time—”
That was when Colby hit him.
It was a sloppy punch, catching Matt at the temple instead of the jaw, where Colby had been aiming; just like that they were a tangle of legs and fists and fingers. There was a ripping sound as Matt grabbed hold of Colby’s flannel, Tris barking frantically as she circled around. They used to wrestle all the time when they were kids, even when they were a little too old for it, suplexing one another into piles of dead leaves