My Cone and Only

by Susannah Nix

  It might be time to actually do something with them.

  I keep waiting for you to show me a sign that you give a single god damn about anything at all.

  I ran a restless hand through my hair, thinking about what my dad had said. Annoyed that he had gotten under my skin, which was exactly what he’d wanted.

  Josh leaned back in his chair, hands clasped loosely over his stomach, and silently waited for me to say what was on my mind.

  “I, uh…” I paused to clear my throat, dropping my eyes to the table. “I’ve been trying to write some songs, I guess.”

  “You have?” The excitement in his voice was unmistakable, but it only made me more embarrassed. He’d tried to talk me into writing songs when we first started the band, convinced for some reason I’d have a talent for it, but I’d stubbornly refused to even try.

  “Yeah, a little,” I mumbled, needing to minimize what I’d done to lower his expectations. High expectations were a trap I found it best to avoid whenever possible. “It’s no big deal or anything.”

  “Sounds like a big deal to me. I’ve never written a song.”

  I forced out a laugh that sounded hollow. “I’m not sure I have either.”

  As soon as I said it, I remembered Josh’s admonition about negative self-talk. I could tell he was thinking about it too, in the long look he gave me before he spoke, but he didn’t repeat it.

  “What does the rest of the band say?” he asked instead.

  My chest felt tight when I tried to take a breath, and my confession came out sounding thready. “I haven’t told them about it.”

  “But you’re going to.” Not a question. A statement. Telling me with just those four words that even though he knew I wanted to weasel out, he expected me not to. He wanted me to be better than that.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, because I’d always hated disappointing him. “I will.”

  “Soon?” This time it was a question, his eyebrows raised and his expression hopeful. “I wouldn’t mind hearing what you’ve written sometime.”

  A lump formed in my throat, half gratitude and half fear. I could tell he was proud of me, but that just meant more high expectations—and a higher chance of failure.

  To my relief, we were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and Mia cheerfully calling out “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Josh called back, breaking into the kind of smile that used to be rare for him before she came into his life. “We’re in the kitchen.”

  “Is Wyatt here?” Mia appeared in the kitchen doorway, a big smile on her face that I only got a glancing share of before her eyes locked onto Josh and lit up like he’d cured cancer.

  He’d already gotten to his feet to greet her, his expression soft and shining in a way I still wasn’t used to because it was so different than his usual guardedness. An unsettling ache bloomed in my chest as they kissed, and I averted my eyes while I carried my empty glass to the sink.

  Mia detached herself from Josh and came over to kiss my cheek. “I thought that was your truck out front with the ‘Eat the Rich’ bumper sticker.”

  “Guilty as charged.” Had I put it there just to piss off my dad and thumb my nose at the family fortune? Damn right I had.

  “Your poor face,” she said, frowning at my bruises. “Andie told me what happened.”

  “You talked to Andie?” I said.

  “How’d Andie know about it?” Josh asked.

  Mia looked from me to Josh and then back to me. “We had lunch today.” Her eyes stayed on mine as she answered Josh’s question. “She was at King’s Palace Saturday night when Wyatt got into his fight.”

  When I’d showed up at the house today and Josh had seen my shiner, I’d told him about my little altercation, but I’d left out the part about Andie being the woman I’d stepped in to defend. I knew she wouldn’t want me to tell Josh, because he’d only overreact, get all big brothery about it, and probably try to give her a lecture about her personal safety. He meant well, but he could be a little heavy-handed when he got worried about her.

  Based on the way Mia was looking at me, I guessed Andie had told her a lot more than I’d told Josh. How much, exactly, I’d sure like to know. Had she told her about driving me home? Or what we’d talked about? My own memories were pretty hazy, so Mia might know even more than I did about what kind of shit I’d said in my inebriated state. I wanted to find out exactly what Andie had said, but I couldn’t very well interrogate Mia in front of Josh.

  “Are you staying for dinner?” she asked. “We’re making meatloaf.”

  “Wish I could,” I said honestly—especially if they were making Josh’s mom’s recipe. “But I’ve got band practice tonight.”

  Josh’s gaze found mine and we shared a long, meaningful look. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” I was going to need it.

  I frowned at my notebook as I flipped through the pages looking for a song good enough to play for the other guys in my band. Josh was right. If I was serious about doing this, I needed to bring the rest of Shiny Heathens in on it and see what they thought. Get some honest feedback and maybe, if they were into it, some help with the arrangements.

  Assuming they didn’t think everything I’d written was crap.

  There was a good chance it was all crap.

  I had no objectivity. That was why I needed to show this stuff to someone else. But which song should I pick to start with? Trying to decide which one sucked the least was proving more difficult than I’d anticipated.

  There’d been fleeting moments when I’d almost convinced myself some of these songs might be pretty good. Maybe even great. But in between those brief flashes of confidence lay vast gulfs of self-doubt when it felt like everything I’d written was as much of a failure as everything else I’d ever tried to do. Boy Scouts, FFA, baseball, football, college, the four jobs I’d been fired from, every relationship I’d tried to stay in. I’d flunked out—or been kicked out—so many times in my life, I couldn’t even remember them all.

  Why did I think I’d be any better at this? What did I know about writing songs anyway? Who was I kidding with this shit?

  A glance at my phone told me I had twenty minutes left to decide if I was going to go through with this. Rubbing my temples, I flipped through a few more pages.

  Jesus, reading these lyrics made me sick to my stomach. Some of this stuff was seriously personal. Almost half the songs were about Andie. A couple others were about my mom. One was about my dad. Another one about my brothers.

  I couldn’t just write about ordinary shit like my truck or the dog I’d had when I was a kid. No, I had to go and write about my feelings. Stuff I wasn’t even comfortable saying out loud. And I was supposed to get up and sing about it to a crowd of people?

  The thought of playing any of these songs for Tyler, Matt, and Corey scared the shit out of me. I’d never had problems with performance anxiety before, but then again, I’d never performed anything that was mine. Other people’s songs were easy, because they didn’t have anything to do with me. These songs were all about me. They unmasked my desires and heartaches, exposing all the feelings I’d tried to keep hidden underneath the surface. I’d laid myself bare on these pages. If people thought these songs were worthless garbage, it’d be the same as saying I was worthless garbage.

  My phone rang beside me, and I blinked in surprise when I saw it was Andie calling. She almost never called me—if she wanted something, she usually texted. A spike of unease shot through me, and I nearly dropped the damn phone in my fumbling haste to answer it. “Hey you. What’s up?”

  “Are you busy?”

  It was the first time I’d heard her voice since Saturday night, and my heart gave a squeeze of longing. But the fact that she hadn’t replied with our usual greeting had me even more on alert.

  “No.” I leaned forward on the couch. “Why?”

  “I need to talk to you about something.”

  That couldn’t be good. Never once in the entire histor
y of the universe had the phrase I need to talk to you preceded a pleasant conversation.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed my fingers to my eyelids. “What?”

  “It’s kind of complicated. I don’t suppose you could come over?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah, if you’re free.” Something about Andie’s voice sounded off. It was too quiet. Too rough. Almost shaky.

  I sat up even straighter. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” She paused. “Mostly. Sort of. Like I said, it’s complicated. I’m not dying or anything though.”

  “Well, that’s good. Jesus.”

  Her laugh lacked its usual warmth. “It’s not an emergency, is what I meant. If you’re busy—”

  “I’m not.” Band practice could wait. Whatever was going on with Andie was more important. “I can be there in ten minutes.”

  She blew out a breath, and it definitely sounded shaky. “Cool.”

  I made it to Andie’s house in six minutes, which had to be a record. And that included texting the guys and telling them I wasn’t going to make it to practice tonight.

  My truck jerked to a stop in front of her house and I jumped out, my heart pounding as I ate up the distance to her front door. She answered my impatient knocking and stepped back to admit me.

  “What happened to your face?” Worry stoked a flare of protective anger as I moved in close and tipped her chin up for a better look at the scratch across her cheek.

  She batted me away, rolling her eyes. “I had a run-in with a tree at work. You want to pick a fight with it too?”

  I blew out a breath and made myself calm down. Flying off the handle wasn’t going to help her—and was exactly what Josh would do. Things couldn’t be all that bad if she was still giving me shit.

  “You want a beer?” she asked, heading for the kitchen.

  “No.” I closed the front door behind me. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  She opened the fridge and got out a beer for herself. There were two empties sitting by the sink, and I wondered if they were all from tonight.

  I waited, watching her as she took a long swig. Something was definitely up. Her face looked pale and was sporting that crease she always got between her eyebrows when she was worried.

  She wiped her mouth and picked up an open letter on the kitchen table, holding it out to me. “I got this in the mail today.”

  I took it, my apprehension ramping up as soon as I saw it was from a law firm. My eyes widened as I skimmed the letter—then nearly bugged out of my head when I got to the dollar amount they wanted her to pay. “Holy fuck, Andie.”

  “This is the first communication I’ve ever had from anyone about owing any fees. I never received any notices or warnings about it before this.”

  I stared at her. “They hit you with this out of the blue? They can’t do that.”

  Her mouth tightened. “And yet they did.”

  “This is crazy.” I understood now why she’d sounded shaky on the phone. What I didn’t understand was how she could be so calm. I felt like I was having a heart attack, and I wasn’t the one on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars. “How are you not completely losing your shit right now?”

  She huffed out a dark-sounding laugh. “I lost my shit plenty before I called you, believe me.”

  My heart lurched, and I moved toward her automatically, gathering her into my arms. I hated to think of her going through that alone. It was just like her not to call anyone until she’d pulled herself together again.

  Her body sagged against me, and she let me hold her for a few precious seconds before she twisted out of my arms. Turning away, she took another long drink of beer like she was trying to steady herself. Because god forbid she let any hint of weakness show.

  “There’s a specific reason I called you,” she said when she finally looked at me again. “A few months ago, I got a letter from someone who wanted to buy the house. I get scam junk mail like that all the time, so I just ignored it. But then this guy turned up at my door to make his offer in person. I wasn’t interested in selling, so I turned him down. But he kept sending me letters every few weeks, promising a quick cash sale.”

  “Sounds shady.” I’d crossed paths with a few house flippers who used a similar tactic to entice people into accepting a lowball offer. Fast cash, no agent fees, and usually half what the property was worth. But too tempting to refuse if you were someone in a financial pinch.

  Andie nodded. “That’s what I thought. I threw all the letters away, but I still had the card he gave me lying around.” She picked a business card up off the table and handed it to me.

  My jaw clenched as I read the company name on the card.

  King Holdings, LLC

  I stared at her, trying to keep my temper in check as my blood throbbed in my temples. “My dad tried to buy your house?”

  “Not personally. But I presume it’s one of his companies.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think much of it at the time.” She leveled me with a pointed look. “And I didn’t want you to get all worked up about it—like you’re getting right now. I know how you are about your dad.”

  “With good reason.”

  “When I got that letter today, I went and looked up who all the HOA officers are. Half of them work for King’s Creamery, including the president, a guy named Rodney Phelps who’s been with the company nearly twenty years.”

  A lot of people in this town worked for my family, so that wasn’t necessarily unusual, but it did make me suspicious. I knew Rodney a little. He worked in accounting and coached the company softball team.

  I looked at the letter again and realized I recognized the name of the law firm that had sent the threat. It was the same one my dad used for his non-creamery business dealings.

  “I guess what I’m asking,” Andie said, “is if you think your dad might have gotten the HOA to do this in order to pressure me into selling?”

  Nodding, I swallowed down the ball of anger in the back of my throat. “It’s exactly the kind of shit he would pull.”

  Andie seemed to deflate before my eyes. “Well, fuck. In that case I really don’t know what I’m gonna do.” She sank onto one of the kitchen chairs and rested her elbows on the table as she rubbed her head.

  “I’m going to fix this.” My teeth gritted with resolve, even though I had no idea how to do it. But no way was I letting my old man hurt her like this. Andie loved this run-down old house, and my father wasn’t going to bully her into giving it up.

  She shot me a tremulous smile. “It’s not your problem, Wyatt. It’s mine. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Hey.” I sat down next to her and took her hand. “Have you forgotten this is what I do? Fixing houses is literally my specialty.”

  She let me twine my fingers with hers. “I appreciate that, but—”

  “Listen to me. I’ve dealt with HOAs before. They like to swing their dicks around, but they’ll back off if you agree to give them what they want. They’re just trying to scare you with this shit.”

  “Well, it’s working, because I’m scared. I don’t have the money to pay for all these repairs they want, much less all the fines and late fees on top of that.”

  Hearing Andie admit to being scared made my stomach twist in knots. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her say that before. It killed me to see her like this—especially knowing my own father was the one responsible for it.

  “I can do all the repairs,” I promised. “You won’t have to pay for anything but materials, and I can get you a good deal on most of what you’ll need. I know a lot of people who owe me favors. I can get this done without it costing you too much.”

  “Did you look at that list of everything they’re asking for? There’s no way you can do all of it yourself.”

  Lifting my chin, I sniffed in indignation. “I’m going to pretend I’m not hurt by your lack of faith in my abilities.”

  Sh
e shook her head, digging her fingernails into my hand to show me what she thought of my ploy for pity. My dick twitched in a spectacular display of poor timing, and I silently implored it to stand the fuck down.

  “Wyatt, it’s really sweet that you want to help me—”

  “I can get it done.” I steeled my expression, keeping my voice solemn. “I swear to you.”

  “Even if you can, I still won’t have the money for the fines.”

  “Let me talk to them. Like I said, I’ve dealt with stuff like this plenty of times before. Nine times out of ten, if you agree to do all the requested maintenance, they’ll waive most of the fees. I’ll pay your HOA president a call and let him know you’ve engaged a contractor to take care of all the violations. With any luck, that will make him happy enough to back off.”

  I wasn’t above exerting a little influence of my own. If my dad had used our family name to pressure the HOA into hassling Andie, maybe I could use it to pressure them into backing off. Let them know they’d made a mistake and picked the wrong person to go after by targeting a close personal family friend.

  And if that failed, then I’d swallow my pride and go straight to the old man himself. Although I suspected I’d have a better chance of winning over Rodney Phelps than my dear old dad.

  Andie’s expression betrayed a glimmer of hope that shot straight through my heart. “You really think so?”

  “I really do.” I squeezed her hand. “We can fix this. I promise.”

  She blinked at me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was trying not to cry. “Thank you. Seriously.” As her teeth sank into her lower lip, my dick once again tried to make its inappropriate feelings known.

  I pushed my chair back, grabbing the letter off the table as I stood up, and pulled Andie to her feet. “Let’s walk through everything that needs to be done so I can start working up an estimate of what the materials are going to run you.”

  When I tried to slip my hand out of hers, her fingers tightened, and she hauled me back toward her. Her arms wound around my neck as she hugged me. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”