My Cone and Only Page 6

  “Laundry day.” I offered a casual shrug to show I wasn’t intimidated by his disapproval. “You know how it is.”

  As usual, Dad wasn’t amused by my quip. His expression hardened as he advanced a step toward me. “I know you don’t give a shit about anyone but yourself, but a lot of people worked their asses off to make today happen. Especially your sister Josie. Showing up today looking like a frat boy on the wrong side of a spring break bender is the equivalent of dropping a big, steaming turd in the middle of her desk. I think you owe her an apology, don’t you?”

  Well, fuck. Now he’d succeeded in making me feel guilty.

  Without waiting for me to answer, he barreled on with the lecture. “I’m sure it seems like pointless posturing to you, but this family is the face of this company. The image we present to the world is part of what people see when they’re looking at all the ice cream in their grocery store freezer case and trying to decide which one to buy. This isn’t just for my own glorification. People’s livelihoods depend on this company’s success—on our hard work and good decision-making skills. Not just the people out there—” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the door. “—your family. But the people who work for this company and the people who live in this town and rely on the tourism and money we bring into it.”

  He was really working up a head of steam now. This part of the speech was a familiar refrain. The duty I owed to the family and to the company. The number of people who needed us to continue being filthy fucking rich so we’d keep injecting our money into this town. I could practically recite it in my sleep.

  “But since you don’t seem to feel any sense of pride or responsibility, maybe I need to remind you of the financial stake you have in this company like the rest of us. This is your inheritance the rest of us are breaking our backs to preserve. The guarantee of your future security.”

  “You think I care about your money?” I shot back. “I support myself. I haven’t asked you for a damn thing since the day I moved out.” I’d been nineteen, and he’d given me an ultimatum. Either I stayed in college, or I’d have to move out of his house and support myself. I’d chosen the latter, and I’d been earning my own keep ever since.

  “Sure, you’re doing just fine right now taking odd jobs to pay your rent. But what happens the first time you get yourself into trouble? When you have an accident or get sick and can’t work? Or when you get a little older and realize life’s passing you by and you’ve got nothing to show for it? When you finally wake up and realize how pathetic it is to live your life like a disaffected stoner who’s too cool to give a crap?”

  “I’ll do what I’ve always done. I’ll take care of myself.”

  “You? You’ve never known a moment of real hardship in your entire pampered life. At the first sign of difficulty, I promise you’ll come crawling to me for help.”

  I snorted at the thought that I’d ever been pampered. When I was little, maybe, and my mom was still alive, but definitely not since. Sure, I’d grown up in the lap of luxury, but I would have traded this big fancy house and everything in it for a living mother or a father who’d actually wanted to spend time with me.

  There was no use arguing the point with him, however. His opinion of me wasn’t ever liable to change, and I’d long since given up trying.

  When I didn’t say anything else he shook his head like I was the one who’d let him down. “You know, Wyatt, I keep waiting for you to show me a sign that you give a single god damn about anything at all. But you continue to disappoint me.”

  “Is that all you wanted to say? Are we done?”

  “I guess we are.”

  I hightailed it out of there as fast as my feet would take me and spotted Tanner lurking in the foyer.

  “You ready to get out of here?” he asked, pushing off from the wall.

  I stalked past him on my way to the door. “Fuck, yes.”

  5

  Andie

  “I have never seen a vagina do that before!”

  My friend Mia was giving me a play-by-play of the goat birth she’d witnessed last night—and I wished she would stop because it was interfering with my ability to enjoy my burrito.

  I couldn’t blame her for being excited. Growing up on our family’s goat farm, I’d seen plenty of kiddings myself. Gross as the freshening process was, there was something about the sight of a newborn kid that could melt even the hardest of hearts.

  Mia was new to farm life, having recently moved in with my brother on the farm he’d taken over from our parents, so this spring was her very first kidding season. “And then Josh just reached his arm in, all the way to his elbow and—”

  I held up my hand. “I’m trying to eat here so I’m going to stop you right there.” Next she’d be talking about the placenta, and I’d dealt with enough goat placentas to know it wasn’t a good topic for mealtime conversation.

  We’d come to Groovy’s Tacos, one of our favorite lunch places, during Mia’s break between classes today. Despite the name, no one came to Groovy’s for the tacos. If you wanted those you went to Rita’s Taqueria down the street. The giant burritos were the star attraction at Groovy’s, made to order with your choice of ingredients, and wrapped in a fluffy flour tortilla still warm from the griddle.

  “Oh, right.” Mia looked down at her own burrito, which she’d barely touched because she’d been so caught up in her goat birthing story. “Sorry.”

  We both taught at Bowman, the local university—Mia as a full-time soon-to-be assistant professor in the math department, and me as a part-time lecturer in the college of forestry and agriculture. I only taught one class—on forest insects and diseases—as a side gig to go with my full-time job as a resources specialist with the state parks and wildlife department. As part of the deal, my students got to do their field work at Gettinger State Park, the thousand-acre forest just north of town, and I got to use the university’s lab space to do my research for parks and wildlife.

  “But I’m glad you’re excited about it,” I added, so she wouldn’t think I was annoyed. “It is pretty cool seeing a new kid come into the world.”

  After a bit of a bumpy start, Mia and my brother seemed really happy, which was a huge load off my mind. I’d been rooting for them to get together almost since the moment I’d first met her, after she’d moved to Crowder last fall.

  My brother had been through some stuff back in college that had left him sort of closed off afterward. After our parents had retired to Maine and Josh had taken over the farm, he’d withdrawn from the world a little too much for my liking. For the last several years, he’d mostly kept to himself except for a small, trusted circle of people that included me, our aunt Birdie, and his best friend Wyatt.

  Shit, now I was thinking about Wyatt, which I’d been trying not to do.

  I hadn’t heard a peep from him since I’d slipped out of his apartment Sunday in the early morning hours after staying up half the night watching him sleep. He hadn’t really needed me to stay, but I’d enjoyed being close to him too much to leave. Wyatt didn’t often let his guard down that much, and it was hard to walk away when he was like that.

  I could never fully walk away from Wyatt, even when he was being an ass. The two of us were tethered by years of friendship, not to mention our loyalty to my brother. Watching Josh retreat his way into a case of agoraphobia had drawn me and Wyatt even closer together the last few years as we’d confided our worries to each other and teamed up to help my brother as best we could.

  But now Josh was doing a lot better—seeing a therapist and willingly venturing out into public again—thanks in large part to Mia. He didn’t need us as much, which meant Wyatt and I didn’t need to see each other as much to commiserate and strategize ways to save Josh from himself. Maybe it would be better if we just kept on that way. Maybe with a little more distance between us, I could finally move on and let go. Stop hoping for something that was never going to happen.

  Yeah, right.

  I realized M
ia had started talking again and snapped myself back to the present, trying to look like I’d been listening.

  “Josh let me name her. She’s the first generation of kids who’ll be named after female scientists. So I chose a mathematician, of course.”

  “Well?” I asked, when she didn’t elaborate. “What’s the name?” My brother had a long-standing tradition of naming all his does after novelists, but he’d run through so many names by now that he’d needed to pick a new theme.

  “Emmy, after Emmy Noether, the most creative abstract algebraist of modern times. I’ve got a whole list ready to go for this year’s kidding season. Ada Lovelace, Sofya Kovalevskaya, Katherine Johnson, Hypatia—”

  “Cool,” I said before she could finish reciting the entire list for me. I had something else on my mind that I wanted Mia’s take on before we had to get back to campus. “Speaking of my brother, Wyatt told me something the other night that kind of pissed me off.”

  Mia’s attention perked up. “You saw Wyatt the other night?”

  She always got real interested whenever the subject of Wyatt came up. Specifically, the subject of me and Wyatt. She’d asked a lot of pointed questions about the two of us early on in our friendship, and although I’d vehemently denied any romantic inclinations in that direction, I had a feeling she might have seen through my lies.

  “Just at King’s Palace,” I said casually. “I went there on Saturday with some friends.”

  “So what pissed you off?” She frowned. “Something he told you about Josh?”

  I nodded as I reached for my drink. “I guess Wyatt was pretty drunk, and when some dude got handsy with me, he took it upon himself to defend my honor.”

  Mia’s frown deepened. “Are you okay?”

  I waved my hand. “Yeah, it was nothing.” The mark on my arm had already disappeared, leaving only a lingering sense of embarrassment for having such bad taste in men.

  “Wyatt’s going to get himself hurt one of these days.”

  “He kind of got his ass handed to him this time.” I winced at the memory of him lying on the floor, curled up in pain. For a second there on Saturday I’d been scared he was going to land himself in the emergency room.

  “What happened?” she asked, sitting up straighter. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine, just a little bruised—both his face and his ego. But when I told him I didn’t need him starting fights on my behalf, he said that Josh had made him swear some stupid oath that he’d always look out for me. Like some kind of dumbass knight protector. This was way back when they were in tenth grade, mind you, and apparently Wyatt took it so seriously that he still thinks he has to play bodyguard around me. Can you believe that shit?”

  “Well…actually…” Mia’s brow furrowed as she chewed on her straw.

  “What?”

  “I asked Josh once if he thought Wyatt might have a crush on you—”

  “He definitely does not. Believe me.” I tried not to sound bitter, because I wasn’t supposed to care that Wyatt didn’t see me like that.

  “Says you. I’m not so convinced.” Mia gave me a defiant look before she went on. “Anyway, Josh said there was no way, because—get this—Wyatt knows Josh would kill him if he ever caught him ‘sniffing around’ you.” She made air quotes with her fingers so I’d know that choice phrasing had come straight from my brother’s mouth.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, getting even more pissed.

  “The thing is, he wasn’t kidding around. It sort of freaked me out how serious he sounded about it—not that I think he’d literally murder Wyatt, obviously. But I have a feeling it might end their friendship.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” I couldn’t believe my brother was acting like such a Neanderthal. No, actually, on second thought, I could. At least where I was concerned, he’d always been a bit of a caveman. “Since when does he get a say in who I date?”

  Mia pointed at me, nodding vigorously. “That’s exactly what I asked him!”

  “He can fuck off into the sun with that patriarchal bullshit.” I crumpled the aluminum foil my burrito had been wrapped in, wishing it was my brother’s face. I’d been planning to make a dragon out of it, but now I was way too mad.

  It was a tradition at Groovy’s—every time you finished one of their gargantuan burritos, you made a sculpture out of the leftover foil. Every available surface around the restaurant showed off the foil shapes people had created—animals, flowers, monsters, vehicles, and anything else you could imagine. Everywhere you looked, they decorated the windowsills, counters, tops of the cabinets, and even dangled from the ceiling.

  “I agree,” Mia said. “But he told me it wasn’t about that. He said…” She paused, like she was trying to remember Josh’s exact words. “He said he trusted Wyatt with his life, which meant he also trusted him never to hurt anyone he loved. So if Wyatt ever treated you the way he treats the other women he messes around with…all bets were off.”

  “What if I want to be treated like that?”

  Mia’s eyes widened. “Do you?”

  “Of course not. But that’s my decision, not anyone else’s. Definitely not my stupid brother’s.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with Josh,” Mia said with a shrug.

  I damn well would.

  But there was a more important question on my mind now.

  Should I take it up with Wyatt?

  After lunch, I dropped Mia back on campus and drove up to the state park. Spring ended early in Central Texas, giving way to the crushing heat and humidity of summer by May. But we had a few weeks of temperate weather left yet, and the fields along the highway were covered with swaths of bluebonnets and scarlet paintbrush.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon deep in the park’s northeastern woodland area collecting red oak samples to test for Bretziella fagacearum—the fungus responsible for oak wilt—but as I trudged through the forest undergrowth, I kept thinking about what Mia had told me.

  Had Josh threatened Wyatt to keep him away from me? Was that part of the promise my brother had extracted from him? I kept coming back to that somber, knowing look in Wyatt’s eyes when he’d told me about the promise he’d made Josh.

  A promise is a promise.

  He’d looked almost…regretful when he’d said it. Like he knew I wanted more—like maybe he’d always known.

  But more than that, he’d looked like he might have wanted it too.

  It could be that was just my imagination doing some wishful thinking. But what if it wasn’t?

  I was so distracted thinking about Wyatt that I let a low-hanging tree branch catch me across the face and gave myself a nice, angry scratch. Muttering a curse at my carelessness, I forced my mind off my nonexistent love life and back onto my work.

  That kind of inattention could be hazardous in the field. Traversing uneven terrain came with a high potential for accidents, even on seemingly flat ground. The layers of decomposing litterfall that made up the forest floor could conceal all manner of dangers. It was too easy to miss a hidden obstacle until you’d stepped in a hole and broken your ankle or tripped on a hidden rock or vine.

  There was wildlife you needed to be wary of out here as well, like bobcats and javelina and the odd cougar. Even deer could be dangerous when cornered or provoked, especially during rutting season or when they were protecting fawns. It was always best to give Bambi a wide berth.

  Additionally, the park was home to its share of venomous species, such as copperheads, coral snakes, cottonmouths, rattlers, black widows, brown recluses, asp caterpillars, velvet ants, and my favorite—Scolopendra heros, the giant Texas redheaded centipedes that could get up to eight inches long. The biggest one I’d ever spotted was five inches, but I’d love to find a full-size one of those babies.

  I wasn’t afraid of the park’s wildlife—but I did have a healthy respect for it and the dangers it could pose to a person. It was my job to help protect the native species and their habitats. Blundering around carelessly out h
ere could put both myself and the wildlife at risk.

  All of which meant I needed to keep my mind on the task at hand and off Wyatt King. The task at hand being oak wilt—one of the most destructive tree diseases in the United States. It had been killing off our Central Texas oaks in epidemic numbers, and the only way to control it was early identification and removal of diseased trees to prevent fungal spread. It was easy to spot in the more common live oaks by the obvious veinal necrosis on the leaves. But other types of oaks often didn’t exhibit distinct symptoms, and required laboratory culture to confirm the presence of B. fagacearum fungus.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon collecting my samples without further incident. It was only after I’d dropped them off at my office and headed home for the day that I allowed thoughts of Wyatt to preoccupy me once more.

  Was Josh the reason why Wyatt never flirted with me? Never touched me in a way that could be mistaken for anything other than platonic, brotherly affection? Never directed any of his innuendos at me, or made the sort of suggestive, leading remarks he enjoyed making with everyone else—even my brother’s girlfriend?

  When Mia had first moved here, before Wyatt knew Josh liked her, he’d unleashed his full charm attack on her. But as soon as he realized my brother was interested in her, Wyatt had backed way the fuck off, fast. After that, Wyatt had treated her a lot like he treated me. Friendly, but from a reserved distance, and without any suggestion behind it.

  Until Josh and Mia got together. Once they were safely coupled up and disgustingly, madly in love with each other, Wyatt went back to flirting with her in that harmless, playful way he flirted with women he wanted to flatter without actually trying to lure them into his bed. The way he flirted with older or happily married women or with his lesbian friends Alexis and Xuan. Women he considered “safe” because they posed no temptation and were likewise in no danger of taking him seriously.

  The kind of flirting he never did with me. Maybe because he knew I wasn’t “safe.” There was a chance I might take him seriously. But did I pose a temptation to him? That was what I didn’t know. Did he have impulses where I was concerned that he was afraid of acting on?