My Cone and Only

by Susannah Nix

  I hadn’t actually been inside the place in years. I hated ice cream, and I especially hated my family’s ice cream. Growing up, we’d had ice cream for dessert every single night. Which probably sounded great to most people and made me seem like an entitled little shit for complaining about it, but it had pretty much ruined ice cream for me. There had never been any other kind of sweets allowed in the house. No cookies, no candy, not a single goddamn Ding Dong. It was ice cream or nothing. On our birthdays we got an ice cream cake—which was also what we had at Thanksgiving and Christmas instead of eating pie like regular people.

  My headache, which had begun to recede, roared to life again as soon as I walked in the back door of the shop and heard the clamor of my family’s voices. My dad was at one end of the room looking ticked off, growling at everyone in earshot, and generally sucking all the oxygen out of the room like he always did.

  I hung back as Tanner slunk in and tried to put himself in Dad’s eyeline so his presence would be noted without actually attracting too much of the old man’s attention. Surveying the assemblage, I spotted my brother Ryan’s red hair in the crowd and headed in that direction.

  Before I’d made it halfway there, I was attacked by a three-foot-high tornado that nearly racked me as it attached itself to my leg. Peeling it off, I tossed it up into the air before peering into the giggling face of my niece, Isabella.

  “Again,” she commanded, and I obliged her because I was a sucker for the little munchkin.

  “Don’t get her too keyed up,” her father Manny said, looking tired as he trailed after her. “We’re trying to keep her from melting down until we get this picture taken.”

  Isabella bounced in my arms. “More! More!” She shared Manny’s jet-black hair and light brown complexion, but her curls and her huge round eyes were one hundred percent her mother’s.

  “Can’t right now.” I switched her to my left side and balanced her on my hip, trying not to wrinkle her pretty yellow dress. “My arms are too tired because you’re getting so big.”

  Manny’s mouth twisted into a sardonic grin as his gaze settled on my chest. “Nice shirt.”

  Manny’s father, Manuel Sr., had been my dad’s best friend and right-hand man at the creamery. When Manny was ten years old, both his parents had died in a boating accident and my parents had adopted him. Although Manny had kept the Reyes family name, he was as much a part of the King family as any of my other siblings.

  Isabella’s tiny fingers touched my sore cheekbone. “Why’s your face look like that?”

  “It’s bruised ’cause I ran into something.”

  “Boo-boo.” She smacked a wet kiss on my cheek. “Make it all better.”

  “Thanks, it feels better already.” I returned her kiss with a loud sucking sound that made her giggle and try to squirm away.

  “Whose fist was it?” Manny asked.

  “No one important.” While Isabella played with my hair, I glanced across the room at Manny’s wife, who was sitting with her bare feet propped up on a chair. “When’s Adriana’s due date again?”

  “Eight more weeks.” Manny rubbed his forehead. “I might need your help painting the nursery. I’m starting to get a little underwater.” Manny had followed in his father’s footsteps and gone to work for my dad, who’d recently put him in charge of all our plant operations.

  “No problem,” I told him. “Just let me know when.”

  “What the fuck are you wearing?” my asswipe older brother Nate demanded, stalking up to us.

  I covered one of Isabella’s ears with my hand and pressed her other ear against my chest. “Dang, Nate, even I know not to curse around a three-year-old.”

  “Fuck!” Isabella shouted, squirming free. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Nate winced and offered Manny a muttered, “Sorry.”

  Pressing his lips together to stifle a laugh, Manny relieved me of his daughter and left me to face Nate alone.

  The two of them worked together at the creamery, but Manny was a thousand percent less of a prick than Nate, who I tried to avoid as much as possible. Which mostly wasn’t too hard, because he felt the exact same way about me.

  I looked down at my Adios Bitchachos T-shirt proudly and tugged on the hem. “Like it? I got it in South Padre a few years back, but you can probably find yourself one on the internet.”

  “Did you not read the part of the email that said ‘church dress’?” Nate was wearing a suit, but that wasn’t a surprise because he always wore suits nowadays—ever since he’d been promoted to executive vice president of sales.

  “You don’t think I should wear this to church?” I asked him, flashing a shit-eating grin.

  Nate finally noticed my shiner and his face got even redder. “Jesus Christ, Wyatt!” The muscles in his jaw tightened as he ground his teeth together. At this point the man’s molars had to be smooth as glass from all the angry tooth grinding he did. “You just had to go and mess up your face right before we’re supposed to do this photo.”

  “Yes, Nate, that’s what I did. I intentionally threw my face in front of someone’s fist with no other thought than to ruin your precious little picture. Because you and your priorities are always at the forefront of my mind.”

  While Nate continued to bitch at me, my gaze flicked over his shoulder and I saw Dad eyeing us, his attention caught by the sound of Nate’s raised voice. As soon as Dad noticed me looking at him, he turned his back.

  Typical.

  “What happened to your face?” My sister Josie appeared beside Nate and grabbed my chin. I winced as she jerked my head to the side, examining my injuries. “My god, Wyatt.”

  “And just look at what he’s wearing,” Nate growled. “Can we do the picture without him?”

  That would have been fine and dandy by me, but Josie shook her head. “Of course not.”

  Nate and Josie were the progeny of my dad’s marriage to Trish Buchanan, his first wife. They both looked just like their mother: same hazel eyes, same shade of straight brown hair, same long noses and angular jaws. They were like two peas in a pod, except Nate was the arrogant, hostile pea, and Josie was the calm, decisive pea who got shit done while the other pea was having a rage stroke.

  “I’ll take care of this,” she said as she appraised me coolly. Nate started to open his mouth—to bitch some more probably—but Josie quelled him with a look. Despite being two years his junior, she was the only person besides Dad and Manny who Nate ever seemed to defer to.

  Taking me by the arm, she signaled to some well-dressed, uptight-looking dude as she dragged me off to an empty café table in a quiet corner of the shop. When the guy reached us, she ordered him to trade shirts with me.

  “Seriously?” I said while the other dude, who I assumed worked for her, started undoing his buttons.

  Josie nodded. “Seriously.” Apparently being executive vice president of marketing meant she was hot shit enough to make her employees surrender the shirts off their backs on command.

  I pulled my T-shirt over my head and regretfully handed it over to the poor guy. After I’d shrugged into my new dress shirt, Josie helped me with the buttons and straightened my collar before stepping back to appraise the effect.

  “Tuck it in,” she told me before addressing the dude now stuck wearing my Adios Bitchachos shirt. “Can you go start getting everyone into position? Tell the photographer we’ll be there in a minute.” When he’d scuttled off to do her bidding, she turned back to me and pointed to a chair. “Sit.”

  I did as I was told, keeping my mouth shut as she took a makeup bag out of her purse and began applying a creamy, beige concoction around my bruised eye.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked, frowning in concentration.

  “Not too bad.”

  “You always have to be a pain in the ass, don’t you?” She didn’t actually sound all that angry. Josie never lost her temper, but when she was pissed at you she could get real cold and scary.

  I tried to charm a smile out of her. �
��Yeah, but you love me anyway.”

  All I got was a twitch at the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t try to deny it.

  Josie was okay, although we’d never been especially close. All my dad’s kids with Trish had lived with their mother when I was growing up, and as a teenager Josie hadn’t had much interest in me. She’d gone off to college when I was twelve and mostly stayed away after that, working in Dallas for a while and then New York, before moving back to Crowder a few years ago to take over marketing and advertising for the creamery.

  “That’ll have to do.” She tilted my head to examine her handiwork. “The rest can be fixed with retouching.” Her gaze shifted to my hair with a frown, and she reached into her purse for some styling wax. I let her comb my shaggy hair back with her fingers, knowing it’d just fall right back into my face again. “Forget it,” she said, finally giving up on me. “Let’s just get this done.”

  I followed her over to the others, who were standing in front of the soda fountain counter with the original antique King’s Creamery sign behind them. Dad was in the middle, of course, with his bushy gray beard and his balding hair pulled back in the hippie ponytail he’d stubbornly worn all his life. Other than me, he was the least formally dressed, in a sport jacket and T-shirt bearing the company logo over jeans and his signature cowboy boots.

  Josie pointed me to an empty spot in the back row next to Tanner before taking her place beside Dad. We all tried to smile and pretend we were happy to be there while the photographer snapped a million photos.

  Until finally Isabella lost her shit and started wailing in protest at being forced to stay still for so long. We were all right there with her by that point, and there was a collective sigh of relief when we were finally released.

  “Thanks, everyone!” Josie shouted above the din of voices as everyone started milling around. “I know it was a pain, but it’ll look great in our new public relations campaign.”

  “Time for brunch!” trilled my stepmother, Heather. “We’ll see y’all at the house in fifteen. Don’t be late.”

  After I got my shirt back from Josie’s flunky, I rode over to the family homestead with Tanner, who seemed like he was in an even worse mood than when he’d picked me up earlier.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, eyeballing him. “You’re gripping that steering wheel like you want to rip it out of the dash.”

  He loosened his fingers, shaking his hands out one at a time. “I got an earful from Nate is all.”

  “Work stuff?”

  Tanner worked for Nate, managing one of the regional sales divisions. Dad liked to start his kids at the bottom and make them work their way up from merchandiser—stocking product in grocery store freezers—before letting them advance through the company ranks. It was how both Nate and Manny had started, and Tanner was supposed to be following the same career path. Only he hadn’t taken to it the way they had. Ever since he’d moved into sales management he’d been seriously fucking miserable.

  He nodded as he rolled his shoulders. “I’ve gotta go to Oklahoma next week.”

  “How long?”

  His frown got deeper. “I don’t know. Hopefully only a few days. As long as it takes to figure out why our numbers are down.”

  “You should just quit,” I told him even though I knew he’d never do it. Quitting was more my style than Tanner’s. I’d quit that merchandiser job after three days. I’d quit college after a semester. I’d quit on every woman I’d ever tried to be in a relationship with, and then I’d quit trying to be in relationships altogether.

  Tanner was Mr. Dependable. The guy who was in for the long haul. The one who kept showing up, no matter how hard it got.

  “And do what?” he shot back with a snort.

  “I don’t know. How about literally anything else? Maybe try writing that book you’ve been talking about forever.”

  When we were kids, Tanner’s nose had always been stuck in a book. He’d go off on his own and do nothing but read for hours. He’d even majored in English in college, which seemed like a waste now that he was stuck working in sales.

  He snorted. “Sure, like it’s that easy.”

  “I didn’t say it was easy, I said you should do it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.” He shot me a sidelong look. “No offense, but you’re the last person I’m interested in taking career advice from.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Keep martyring yourself, then.”

  “Once I fix this mess, things will get better.” His knuckles were turning white on the steering wheel again. “At least it’s only Nate’s wrath I’ve got to deal with for now. Dad’s been too distracted by this new real estate thing to breathe down my neck like usual.”

  “What real estate thing?” I was pretty far out of the loop these days when it came to Dad’s business dealings.

  Tanner shrugged. “One of his buddies from the Chamber of Commerce talked him into partnering on some real estate startup. They’re buying up properties around town on the cheap so they can squeeze a bunch of condos onto each lot and flip them all for a tidy profit.”

  “Great.” I shook my head as I stared out the window at the bluebonnets that sprang up all over the place every spring and would be gone again in just a few weeks. “Just what this town needs. A bunch of overpriced, shoddily built eyesores.”

  My dad had cultivated a public image as this benevolent, earth-loving peacenik to align with the company’s socially conscious branding. But behind closed doors he’d always been all about the money. It was his barracuda-like business instincts and not his affinity for progressive causes that had grown the family business from a dinky regional ice cream company to one of the top brands in the country.

  The only thing Dad loved more than making money was using his money to make everyone else do whatever he wanted.

  “Anyway,” Tanner said as he turned onto the tree-lined drive leading to the house we’d grown up in, “I’m just going to spend the next two hours trying to avoid Nate and Dad.”

  The King family villa was a mammoth ranch-style house Dad had custom built in the late eighties after the business had started to take off. It squatted on forty acres of land on the outskirts of town that featured a pond, fishing pier, horse barn, greenhouse, gazebo, and swimming pool.

  Tanner parked behind our brother Ryan’s big silver truck on the circular drive out front, and we both trudged inside. Neither of us were overflowing with good memories from those days, so it wasn’t our favorite place to spend time.

  Our stepmother Heather had a mimosa bar set up in the kitchen, but I bypassed it and headed straight to the fridge for a beer. Winking at my little sister, Riley, who was helping her mom set up the buffet, I wandered out to the patio and collapsed into a lounge chair next to Ryan. We were having a rare bout of perfect spring weather, but I wasn’t in any mood to appreciate it.

  “You look like shit,” he told me, arching a ginger eyebrow. Ryan was nine years older than me, the same age as Manny, and my half-brother by my mother—the stepson my dad had inherited when he married my mom.

  I held up my middle finger as I chugged half my beer, and Ryan laughed.

  “I sure as hell hope the other guy looks worse than you.”

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “I was kind of drunk.”

  “I know I taught you better than that.”

  Ryan was a burly, mountain of a dude with forearms as big as my biceps and our mom’s red hair. He’d been the one who first taught me how to make a fist, how to throw a punch, and—most importantly—how to evade one. I hadn’t exactly done him proud last night.

  “Too bad you weren’t at the Palace last night,” I said. “It would have been nice to watch you wipe the floor with him.”

  “I’m too old to go around getting into fights. Besides, I was working last night. A drunk flipped his car on 71 and caused a three-car pileup.” Ryan was a fireman, but he spent more time using the jaws of life to cut people out of crumpled cars on the highway than
he did putting out fires.

  “Did everybody make it?”

  “Everybody but the drunk.” His eyebrow arched again as he directed a pointed look at the beer in my hand.

  I might be an irresponsible, hard-partying slacker, but I didn’t fuck around with drunk driving. “I didn’t drive here,” I told him. “And I didn’t drive last night either.”

  “Good.” Ryan lifted a meaty paw to give my head a rough swipe. “I really don’t ever want to have to scrape you off the asphalt.”

  “Chow’s on!” Heather called out, ringing the loud-ass fucking dinner bell Dad had mounted next to the patio doors. It went with the nouveau-riche dude ranch aesthetic of the house, and it made my head throb.

  I pushed myself to my feet and followed Ryan to the buffet, where I piled my plate high with migas, bacon, sausage, and tortillas. Heather’s housekeeper was a damn good cook, and I managed to snag a seat at the opposite end of the table from Nate and Dad, which made the meal itself pretty enjoyable. I stuffed my face while Cody, my youngest brother, told me about the college courses he was taking this semester at Bowman, the local university where he was a freshman. Riley was directly across from me, doing that bored, sullen teenager thing, and I amused myself by making dumb faces until I got a laugh out of her.

  Sometimes hanging out with my family wasn’t half bad. I should have known it couldn’t last though. After the meal, when we were all milling around again, Dad came and found me.

  “Let’s you and me talk,” he said, jerking his head toward his office.

  A sense of impending doom obliterated all the pleasant feelings I’d managed to build over the last hour. I followed Dad into his office, and he nodded at me to shut the door.

  “Nice shiner,” he said, not bothering to sit down. Apparently this wasn’t going to be a long conversation. “The shirt’s a cute touch too.”