Enemies

by Tijan

I hated meeting people. Like, truly hated it. I was what you’d call an introvert extrovert. I was chatty once I got to know someone, but let’s be honest here, because of a certain incident, I was very peopled-out.

Here I was. At a school I’ve never toured. In a house I’ve never seen. Living with people I’ve never met. In a state that I never thought I’d even visit. Fuuuuuck. My phone beeped at that moment. Gail: You should look up Stone since you’re there. I saw his mother in the supermarket, told her you were in the same city now. She didn’t seem too keen, but I bet Stone would love to hear from you. And, oh yeah. Did I mention that I knew Stone Reeves? Personally. No? Well, it didn’t matter. I hated him even more than I hated Char at this moment.

One, Stone was a big deal everywhere in this state. Two, he wouldn’t be happy to show me the ropes. He loathed me more than I hated him, and that said a lot. And three, I had a fealing my dad was sitting right next to her. He loathed going to get coffee with the men in town as much as Stone and I despised each other. But, there was an upside to my relationship with Gail. I barely had to speak. It was mostly a one-sided dynamic, and to prove this, Gail kept right on chatting. She would exhaust herself, do both parts of our conversation so it went how she wanted it to go, and once she was happy she’d end the call. Which is what she was doing right now. “Stone is such a sweet boy.” He was an arrogant prick. “And you know, that family. They fell on hard times, too.” His family was rich, and because he could, his dad fired mine shortly after turning their grocery store into a franchise. “And Barb, she just looks so amazing. Her skin was glowing. She looks like she has trimmed down, too.” Barb was haggard looking. Stone’s mom was skinny because she smoked and drank champagne every day. Once every couple days, she’d throw in a piece of chicken, maybe a salad with that. And I knew this because we’d been their neighbors until we were forced to sell the house, and once upon a time, Stone and I had been great friends. I’d been at their house a lot growing up. All that changed once we hit puberty, of course, but Barb just kept getting skinnier and more gaunt-looking. And people talked.

All about me calling Stone.

Stepping outside, on the third ring I answered as I shut the door behind me. “Hello?” “Your stepmom has been harassing my mom.” A low, gravelly voice greeted me. I cursed under my breath. That’s what I get for not saving his number in my contacts. “Yeah,” he bit out. “Fucking A, Dust.” Dust. That pissed me off. He didn’t get to call me out of the fucking blue, then use that nickname he used when we actually were friends. Oh-to-the-hell-fuck-no. “Fuck you.” He was silent, hearing me, then a low and savage growl came from the other end. “Are you kidding me? Your stepmom has some delusion that you and I are fucking destined to be or something. Where’s she getting that piece of shit story?”

I bit out, my blood boiling, “Trust me, asshole. It’s not because of me.” “Put her in her place. You and I, we ain’t anything. Got that?” “Abundantly.” And because I knew where he was going, and I was petty and I wanted to get there first, I hung up on him. Bastard. Then, a moment. I couldn’t breathe. Dust. Fuuuuuck him.

We built a fort together. We played in the woods together and in the river that ran through both our properties. We had a whole maze put in place. I never did the dolls thing growing up. I was outside. Dirty. Rough. We played tag and we pretended to hunt shit.

His dog was the friendliest German shepherd alive and he’d been horrible at protecting us. We pretended he was our guard dog anyway. My mom baked for us. His mom cooked for us. We were best friends until sixth grade, until ...

Then a text came through, and I rolled over, grabbing it. Unknown: This shit has to stop. Unknown: image attached I sat up, dread sinking low in my gut, and I clicked the image. It was a screen shot. Gail: We know what your family did to mine. If your son doesn’t reach out and make things right with my daughter, I’m going to the press. We have nothing to lose now, but you do, and your son does. How do you feel about that, Barb?

I hadn’t put Stone’s number in my phone, but I knew it was him, and I hit the call button. He answered with, “Call off your crazy stepmom. We will sue. And I don’t know what the fuck your stepmom is talking about, but my family did nothing to yours.”

A surge of fury was rolling in my belly, but I waited. I counted to ten, and then I said through gritted teeth, “One. That’s not true. Two. I will call her, but not because you’re telling me to. Three. I also don’t know where she’s getting this idea from because trust me, dealing with you is the last thing I want.” After a beat. I clipped out, “Do me a favor? Lose my number.” I hung up on him. Again. And it felt damn good.

The history with Stone wasn’t completely between him and me. It was more between his father and mine, or to be more accurate, between my dad’s employer and my father. The timing was all suspect, but my dad was the manager for their grocery store. Then my mom was diagnosed with cancer and we tried to keep it under wraps, but rumor got out, and within a week my dad was served his walking papers.

While my dad was trying to find another job, my mom was about to start chemo when we lost our health insurance due to my father getting the boot. A month went by. Nothing. He wasn’t getting hired. Another month. Nothing. Three. Four. We were going on six months when finally, someone three towns over confided to a friend of a friend that word of mouth was saying not to hire Mitch Phillips. He’d been blacklisted by Stone’s dad. Why? We had no idea.

Because we were so in debt from the cancer treatments, we lost the house.

Stone scored the winning touchdown for his football championship game, and that night my mom died.

My mom. She’d been there. Then she was gone. The chemo hadn’t worked. The cancer progressed too fast. I watched my mother die.

“I hate Stone Reeves.”

“I hate him with a passion I didn’t even know I possessed, and I was already hating him long before what his father did to us. I moved down here because my mom told me to reach for my dreams. I moved down here because I went through something; well, something that taught me life is actually short and I need to be making decisions for me. And saying that, it was something that I hadn’t already learned through losing my mother. But having said that, life is not short enough where I would ever want Stone Reeves back in it.”

Then I hung up and texted Stone. Me: It’s done. I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I blocked his number. As far as I was concerned, Stone Reeves was out of my life for good.

Deadness inside.

We pay attention.

I said it almost tenderly, “Having sex with someone you have feelings for, no matter how many hours you’ve spent together, isn’t a bad thing.” She swallowed, shoving upright in her seat. Her hands tightened on the wheel. “It is if he thinks you’re a slut after.”

“Regret will eat you alive if you don’t.”

Then the doorbell rang. Followed by a fist pounding against it. “What the—” Someone gasped again. And then I heard my worst nightmare happening in real life, in real time, and I was frozen to stop it. “Is Dusty here?”

Low. Angry. Irritated. Frustrated. A hint of savage impatience, too, and then as I swooned, but not in a good way, the fainting way because this was not happening. No way because I couldn’t deal if it was—and then Wyatt went, “DUDE! You’re Stone Reeves!” There was a moment here.

It was the beginning of the storm. The air is thick, heavy. Hair sticking to the back of your neck. Your hands are oddly clammy. Your pulse is racing. You know a train is coming your way. You know you’re on the tracks. You know you should jump off, but you can’t. You’re frozen because it’s not just a flight or fight response. There’s the whole freezing response, and as your heart picks up in force, ...

I wanted to vomit.

Out the door. “Fuck no, you don’t!” A cement arm grabbed me around the waist, and just like we were kids, Stone had me up in the air. “No!” Everything was turned upside down. Me included.

Red in the face, hair literally everywhere, I shoved him back from me. “Get off me!” “I’m off! Fuck’s sake. Chill the fuck out.”

I was refusing to look at him. I knew how Stone looked.

I did not need to know how he looked like a walking, well-cut ad for the Marines. He was a professional athlete. He and his teammates could walk and nuns would swoon. No joke. I heard one once, and that’d been when he was in college and I’d been visiting my mom in Hospice before she was sent home to die. The memory was like a bucket of cold water.

He was gorgeous, with his ripped, lean body, and his crew cut, and those hazel eyes that were darkening, taking me in. Even his face had morphed into an athletic machine. I didn’t know that was possible, but his cheekbones were wide and slanting upwards. His jawline was so pronounced, ending in a strong square and fuuuuuuck, he was hawt. Holy crapshitastic, he was hot.

“Fuck, Dust.” He grunted, shifting back. At that, another bucket of water was tossed in my face.

I felt Stone kneeling beside me. He began grabbing my things, too. I lost it. I snapped. “NO!” I shoved him backwards, pushing him off his feet. His eyes widened, shock infiltrating his own anger. “I was trying to help!” “I don’t need your help!” I was on my feet.

He had no idea what I went through because I knew him, because the wrong person found out I knew him. I was here because of that sick and twisted someone.

“Get gone, Stone! I don’t want you here.” He stopped, taking me in, and a soft, “Shit,” left him. He let out a sigh. “Dust.” “Don’t! Don’t ‘Dust’ me. I swear to God, don’t.” He wasn’t leaving. I waited, but he wasn’t going. “LEAVE!”

“Dusty, I—” “What do you want?” I flung my arms out wide. “I talked to Gail. I told her to stop whatever she was doing and thinking. She got the message. It’s done. Your family. My family. We’ll cease to exist to each other. I blocked your number because I never want to hear from you or see you ever again. Yet, here you are. Leave me alone. Please!”

And then, with words so soft that I’d never forget them, his face shuddered as he said, “Your parents were in an accident.”

“They’re fine, right?” They just couldn’t call. I hadn’t given my new number to anyone else but them. Stone had it, ironically. That’s why he was here.

“Dust.” Stone stepped toward me. I backed away. “No, no. I’ll just…” She wasn’t picking up. “Dusty.” Okay. “Her phone was damaged. Is that what happened?” Okay. I’d try my dad’s cell, but he rarely used it. He hated the thing. He used Gail’s. I pulled him up, hitting the call button. It rang. And rang.

“Dusty, stop.” Stone’s hand covered mine. He took the phone away from me, and then ended the call. He had the update. That’s why he was here. I couldn’t avoid this anymore. So I stopped and I stared at him, but I did not cry. I would not cry. Not in front of him, or in front of my housemates. In front of no one.

“Just tell me,...

I gutted out, “Say it.” “Your dad was pinned under the truck. The steering wheel cut into him, and he died just as the ambulance got there. Gail died on impact.” I… …couldn’t… … “No.” I slid down to my knees, right in the middle of all my things.

A part of my brain, the rational part, was watching from outside of me. It was telling me to get it together, go somewhere private, stop being entertainment for these people. But that part wasn’t controlling me right now. It wasn’t the irrational part either. Or the feelings part. It was a part I wasn’t entirely familiar with, a part that I’d only come to know one other time, so the tinge of familiarity wasn’t as strong.

There’s a pocket in your mind where you go when you feel unsafe, where you can’t handle whatever is happening in real life, and you lock yourself in there because you feel protected. Self-prese...

He was kneeling by me, talking so gently to me. This was so not Stone.

“I need to know what you want me to do to help. I want to help.” “Why?” A flash of anger burst in me. White. Hot. Seething. “Why are you still here? You delivered the message. Now go.” His face closed off, but he didn’t stand up. He didn’t back away. He didn’t leave. “GO!” He stood now. A hand went to his jaw. “Dust—” “I’m not Dust to you. That died a long time ago. My mom died, Stone! Your father fired mine so he didn’t have to pay the medical insurance and my mother died so your dad could keep more money in his pockets.” He was backing away now. Flinching as I kept going.

“Then he blacklisted him, hoping we’d move out of town. He tried to run us out of town! In my senior year. But we stayed. They stayed. Because of me. I wasn’t ‘Dust’ then. I haven’t been ‘Dust’ since you were in sixth grade. Remember the last time I was ‘Dust’ to you? We watched a movie at the drive-in, shared a blanket, popcorn, and a soda, and then the next day you walked past me on the bike trail with Gibbons, Mark, Tony, and right then I was nothing to you. Remember? I do. You were laughing about Megan Parturges. You looked. Saw me. And then said, ‘Yeah, I’d fuck Parturges,’ and you kept wal...

“Dust…y.” His entire face shuddered. “Let me help you. I can fly you back.” “Get AWAY FROM ME!” I hated him. I loathed...

No one was leaving, I would.