My Cone and Only

by Susannah Nix

  He smiled, his eyes soft and slightly unfocused. “Remember that time you decided to drink all those B-52s a few years ago?”

  “Not very well, no.” That had been one of my more epic bad decisions. Some friends—including Wyatt—had taken me out to celebrate my twenty-third birthday, and I’d gotten a little carried away with the shots.

  “I drove you home and had to help you into the bathroom.” His thumb stroked over my wrist absently.

  “I’m still sorry about that.” And still plenty embarrassed. Part of the reason I’d downed so many shots that night was to work up enough liquid courage to finally make my move with Wyatt. But I’d misjudged my tolerance and shot myself in the foot by getting sloppy drunk, thereby killing any chance of a romantic end to the evening.

  “Your head kept falling forward, and I had to hold it up for you so it didn’t fall into the toilet.”

  I grimaced in embarrassment. “Lovely.”

  He leaned forward to set the ice cream on the laminate coffee table. When he leaned back, his head lolled toward me again. “You got vomit on your shirt, and I had to change you into a clean one before I put you to bed.”

  “I never knew you did that.” Jesus. No wonder he’d never found me sexy. I didn’t know what was worse, the fact that Wyatt had undressed me under such revolting circumstances, or that I couldn’t even remember it. I suspected he’d withheld that part of the story to save me further embarrassment. He probably wouldn’t have told me now if he hadn’t been so drunk himself.

  He looked down at our clasped hands, and his eyes narrowed as they focused on my wrist. Frowning, he pulled my arm into his lap and ran his callused fingers over the red mark that was turning into a bruise. “That fucking asshole. I wish to god I hadn’t been drunk so I could’ve made him eat all his teeth.”

  Wyatt was a tactile, affectionate person, and he’d touched me casually a million times before. But something about the way his fingers were stroking my arm felt too intimate. Dangerous. Too close to the way I wanted him to touch me, which wasn’t casual at all.

  I pulled my hand away, despite the voice in my head whispering more, and tried to make my voice sound stern. “I wish you hadn’t been so drunk and I wish you hadn’t gotten into a fight at all.”

  “Don’t be pissed at me, Andie.” His lower lip jutted out in a play for sympathy. “My head hurts.”

  Fond irritation prickled in my chest. Impulsively, I reached up and brushed his hair back from his face. His eyelids fell closed, and he purred like a contented cat.

  “I can take care of myself,” I told him. “I don’t need you barrel-rolling in and throwing fists.” I kept stroking his hair, because he seemed to like it. Maybe it was wrong, considering he was drunk and his defenses were down, but I was weak and it seemed harmless enough. I remembered Brianna running her hands through his hair earlier, and how the sight had made me seethe with jealousy. And now here I was, the one in Wyatt’s apartment with my fingers in his hair.

  Too bad he probably wouldn’t remember it tomorrow.

  “I know you can take care of yourself.” He opened one eye and peered at me.

  My hand stilled with my fingers threaded in his hair.

  “But you shouldn’t have to.” His eye shut again, and he pressed his head into my hand the way the goats on our farm did when they were begging for affection.

  I stroked his hair some more, brushing back the silky soft strands and running my fingernails lightly over his scalp.

  “Besides,” he mumbled with a satisfied smile, “Josh made me promise.”

  My hand stilled again as I frowned. “Promise what?”

  “That I’d always look out for you when he wasn’t around.”

  I retracted my hand from Wyatt’s hair. “When?” Leave it to my overprotective brother to enlist his best friend as a part-time bodyguard.

  Wyatt yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “Tenth grade.”

  That would have been right around the time I started dating, which tracked. I could totally see Josh bullying his horndog best friend into some stupid oath to protect my honor.

  “I think you can let it go now,” I said. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

  Wyatt’s eyes met mine, heavy-lidded and somber. “A promise is a promise.”

  The way he was looking at me unnerved me. Like he saw a lot more than I’d ever given him credit for—things I’d never found the courage to say. The possibility made me uncomfortable, so I leaned forward and grabbed the ice cream off the table, ripping the lid off and spooning a bite into my mouth. It was soft from sitting out and so sweet it made my teeth ache.

  Wyatt laid a hand on his stomach, looking a little nauseous as he watched me. “How can you stand to eat that garbage?”

  “Because it’s delicious,” I said around a mouthful of ice cream.

  “It’s horrible. That’s the worst flavor we make.”

  “I like the sour bits.” I shrugged and shoveled another spoonful into my mouth before leaning forward and setting it on the table.

  He shook his head, smiling faintly. “I remember when you were little, you used to lick the powder off Sour Patch Kids and leave the gummies.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “I remember you used to eat the gummies after I’d licked them.”

  “The gummies are the good part.”

  “Did you know if you took all the gummy bears manufactured just in one year and lined them up head to toe, they’d encircle the earth four times?”

  “How do you remember so much random shit?” He yawned and laid down, resting his head in my lap.

  A tingling ache erupted in the pit of my stomach, and I forgot how to move for a second.

  “Is this okay?” Wyatt asked sleepily.

  I managed a nod. “Sure.”

  His eyes fell closed. “Remember that night we watched the meteor shower?”

  “Yes.” I think I’d been about fifteen. Wyatt had slept over at our house, and he and Josh had set an alarm for three in the morning, when it was supposed to be the best time for viewing the meteors. They came and got me out of bed, and we all piled into the back of my dad’s pickup with a bunch of blankets to keep warm while we watched the night sky.

  He stretched out his legs, letting his socked feet hang over the armrest. When he spoke again, his words came out softly slurred. “Did any of your wishes come true?”

  We’d taken turns making wishes on the shooting stars. Jokey ones mostly, trying to make each other laugh. But I’d also made a few silent wishes that night. Ones I hadn’t wanted to say out loud in front of my brother. Or Wyatt.

  “Well, I never got to meet Taylor Lautner,” I said. “But technically I guess there’s still time for that.”

  Wyatt’s face had grown slack, his lips parting, and I could hear a faint rush of air in his throat with every rise and fall of his chest. The night we’d watched the meteor shower, we’d all fallen asleep in the bed of my dad’s pickup. Me in the middle with Josh and Wyatt on either side of me. It’d been cold, and my brother had been hogging the blankets, so I’d burrowed against Wyatt in my sleep for warmth. I remembered waking up with my face in his chest and lying there counting his heartbeats until my parents came out to get us. It was one of my most treasured memories from those years.

  “Wyatt?” I said quietly, wondering if he’d dropped off to sleep.

  “Hmmm?” he murmured.

  “Did any of your wishes come true?”

  A single furrow appeared between his brows. “Not the one that mattered.”

  I was tempted to ask him what it was. I desperately wanted to know what actually mattered to Wyatt King. What heart’s desire still eluded him after all these years. But it felt like an invasion of privacy, and I’d done enough of that already by looking at that notebook. Alcohol had loosened his lips, and if I pressed he might tell me something he’d rather keep secret. I was here to take care of him, not take advantage of him. Just like he’d do for me if the roles were reversed—like he had
done for me.

  The top few buttons of his midnight blue shirt were undone, exposing the top of his chest and the small gold St. Christopher medallion he never took off. His mother had given it to him a few months before she died. I’d never seen him without it in all the years since.

  I laid my hand over it, the tiny gold disk warm from his body heat. The furrow in his brow smoothed away, and he shifted to lay his hand over mine, trapping it above his heart.

  I stayed with him, counting his heartbeats, until I was sure he’d fallen asleep.

  4

  Wyatt

  When my phone started vibrating under my ass, I tried to roll over and fell off the couch.

  Fuck.

  I lay on the floor, cursing my poor decision-making skills as my ass continued to vibrate. My head felt like it had been run over by a tractor, my throat burned like I’d gargled acid, and my mouth was as parched as the Rio Grande Valley on the tail end of a hundred-year drought.

  A montage of scenes from the night before played behind my puffy, closed eyelids. Dancing with Andie. Drinking. That Austin dickhead laying hands on Andie. Getting my ass whupped by the Austin dickhead and then chewed out by my uncle. Andie driving me home and taking care of me.

  I paused at that point in the replay, trying to piece together exactly what we’d talked about. I remembered telling her how I’d changed her shirt and put her to bed the night she had too many birthday B-52s, which—fuck—I’d never meant to tell her about that. I also remembered something about sour gummies, and something about the night we’d fallen asleep watching the meteor shower.

  Jesus, what else had I confessed to her? I had a tendency to run my mouth when I was drunk—which was a pretty good reason not to get drunk, but that whole poor decision-making thing always managed to bite me in the ass.

  I hoped to hell I hadn’t told her how on the night we watched the meteor shower, when she’d fallen asleep next to me, I’d realized that of all the girls I knew, she was the only one I really liked. And how I’d stupidly wished that we’d get married one day, so she’d fall asleep next to me like that every night. Or how I’d woken up a few hours later with her face burrowed against my chest and a raging case of morning wood I wasn’t sure I’d managed to hide.

  I’d better not have fucking told her any of that, or I’d need to start making arrangements to leave town under the cloak of darkness and change my name so I never had to face her again.

  At least my ass had finally stopped vibrating. Experimentally, I tried opening my eyes. Both seemed to work, although the light shining in the windows ramped my headache up a few notches.

  My ass started vibrating again. Goddammit.

  What if it’s Andie?

  I didn’t know if I was ready to talk to her yet, but curiosity drove me to dig my phone out of the back pocket of the jeans I’d fallen asleep in last night.

  Fortunately, it was only my older brother, Tanner, one of the members of my family I least minded talking to. My dad had offspring by three different wives, so our family tree was a messy hodgepodge of half and step relations. All told, I had five half-brothers, two half-sisters, one adopted brother, and Tanner—the only littermate I shared both a mother and father with.

  “Tell me you’re out of bed,” Tanner said when I answered the phone.

  “I’m out of bed.” Technically, that was true. Lying on the floor in front of my couch counted as being out of bed.

  “Good. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Ha ha yeah. But seriously…”

  “The thing with the photographer? The family photo at the shop followed by brunch at Dad’s? Don’t tell me you forgot.”

  I pushed myself upright, wincing as my head throbbed in response to the change of altitude. “Forgetting would require knowing about it in the first place.”

  “We talked about it last week.”

  “Did we?” I rubbed my forehead, unable to dredge up any recollection of such a conversation. But then I had a habit of tuning out when Tanner started talking about family business. Especially if it involved me being expected to do something.

  “You said I’d better come pick you up or you’d forget. There was also an email.”

  Groaning like an eighty-year-old man, I pushed myself to my feet. The room tilted a little—or maybe I did—but I managed to stay upright. “I don’t check my email.”

  “And a group text.”

  “I have the family group text muted.”

  “Jesus Christ, Wyatt.”

  Moving carefully, I shuffled toward the bathroom. “I get enough texts without being bombarded by Nate’s boring company updates and Heather’s attempts to guilt us into volunteering for one of her whackadoo charities.”

  “Well, we’re having a family photo taken this morning for some big PR thing Josie’s putting together, and I’ll be at your place in exactly three minutes to pick you up, so you better make yourself presentable.”

  “Cool.” I stared at my black-and-blue face in the bathroom mirror. “Awesome.”

  “Oh, great,” Tanner said when I let him into my apartment and he got a look at my face. “This is fucking perfect.”

  True to his word, he’d showed up exactly three minutes later. I’d had just enough time to piss and brush my teeth before he’d knocked on my door.

  “I’m fine, thanks for asking.” I left him standing in the doorway and went into the kitchen, hoping I still had a Monster Energy in the back of my fridge.

  Shutting the front door behind him, he trailed after me. “What happened?”

  Tragically, the only thing in my fridge was some leftover coleslaw of indeterminate age and a mostly empty bottle of orange juice. I grabbed the juice and elbowed the fridge shut. “Some tourist at the Palace made a grab for Andie Lockhart.”

  Tanner whistled. “Did you kick his ass?”

  I chugged the last of the OJ and wiped my mouth, grimacing at the way it interacted with the taste of toothpaste. “Not as much as he deserved, unfortunately.”

  “You got your ass kicked, didn’t you?”

  “Little bit, yeah.” Looking around the kitchen, I realized Andie had cleaned up my place. The counters were clear, the dishwasher had been run, and the recycling bin was full of empties. Shit. I’d let the place get into a real state recently, and I hadn’t intended for her to see it like that. She’d probably give me an earful about it later—on top of the earful I had coming about the drinking and the fighting.

  “I guess I don’t need to ask if you were drunk.” Tanner’s lip curled. “You smell like a distillery.”

  People said the two of us looked a lot alike, only he was the respectable, clean-cut version of me. We were like a before-and-after makeover. Which one of us was the “before” and which was the “after” depended on whether you liked good boys or bad boys.

  “I need to take a shower.” I shouldered past him and headed for the bathroom. “Gimme five minutes.”

  “That’s all you get,” Tanner shouted as I slammed the bathroom door on him. “I’m walking out that door in exactly five minutes, with or without you. I can’t afford to be late. Dad’s already pissed at me.”

  “Why’s Dad pissed at you?” I called through the door while I waited for the water in the shower to get hot.

  “Work stuff. You don’t want to hear about it.”

  He was right about that. Tanner had foolishly let himself get suckered into working for the family business. Unlike me, he’d always followed the straight and narrow path, trying to please everyone and do what was expected of him.

  You know what it had gotten him? A shitty mid-management sales job at the creamery and both Dad and our asswipe older brother Nate hounding him constantly about work. Tanner was living proof that my personal strategy of giving all that company bullshit the finger was the superior one.

  I jumped in the shower and stood there for a minute letting the hot water soak away some of
the aches in my bones. By the time I’d washed and shampooed, I felt a lot more human. I dried myself off, applied a liberal coating of deodorant, and ran my hands through my hair before yanking open the bathroom door.

  Tanner threw his arm across his eyes as I strode through the apartment on my way to the bedroom. “Aww, dammit, Wyatt! Cover yourself up. I didn’t need to see that before breakfast.”

  I ignored him as I dug around for a pair of clean underpants. “After we get all this shit over with, can you drop me off at the Palace? I left my truck there.”

  “How’d you get home?”

  “Andie drove me.”

  My last decent clean shirt was the one I’d slept in last night, so I rummaged around until I found an old T-shirt that had been shoved into the back of one of my dresser drawers.

  “Did she now?” Even from the next room, I could hear the implication in Tanner’s tone.

  “Don’t start,” I warned as I dragged on a pair of jeans.

  Tanner was the only other person who knew about my long-standing crush on Andie, and he’d been pushing me to declare myself to her for years. He’d always been one of those romantic saps who wore his heart on his sleeve, and he had this idea that if I confessed my undying love to Andie, everything would somehow magically work itself out and we’d live happily ever after. Like I said, Tanner was a sap.

  “I’m ready,” I said, coming out of the bedroom and shoving my feet into a pair of tennis shoes.

  Tanner stared at me. “That’s not what you’re wearing.”

  He was wearing a dress shirt and blazer. I reckoned I might be underdressed.

  “It’s all I’ve got that’s clean.” I grabbed my keys on my way out the door, twirling them around my index finger as I waited for Tanner to catch up. “Let’s roll.”

  “The shop” was the site of the original creamery and retail ice cream shop our great-grandfather had opened on Main Street in 1921. Even though we had the big plant now, with a cafeteria and ice cream tasting room that was open to the public, we kept the shop in town open—with a nice subsidy from the taxpayers of Crowder—to help attract tourists into the downtown commercial district. The original ice cream making facilities had been restored and converted into an ice cream museum attached to the shop, which had an old-timey soda fountain vibe.