Cookie Cutter (25 page)

“Planning is overrated, Iris.”

I feel her stare for a few more seconds then she turns and starts on some trim I missed.

“Overrated, huh?”

“Highly.”

The sludge of paint smacks into the side of my face and I’m stunned for a moment. I guess part of me didn’t think Iris had it in her to waste something. Especially when she’s in the middle of a project. I put my roller down and scoop the glop of flat Behr topcoat from my cheek. Then I turn to the brown haired bombshell standing next to me, who is now covering a giggle with the back of her hand.

“That’s funny?”

She nods. I smear it over her face and she gasps. I let out a chuckle. “Didn’t see that coming, I bet.”

Iris takes a step and I back up out of her way when my foot lands right in the paint pan. I slip and grab for whatever is closest to keep me from falling, which is Iris. She topples down on top of me, the paint flies up, then lands, upside down.

I watch it all happen, like a slow-mo moment from an action movie, then let my head fall back and laugh. Thankfully I put a tarp down today, or the wood floors I installed would be finito. Iris’s giggles become more uncontrolled.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry, Carter!” She hides her face into my neck, effectively getting all the paint I slathered there onto me.

My body shakes from the laughter and before I know it, she’s looking down at me, with those twinkles in her eyes and she’s wriggling against me, making any and all attempts to be gentlemanly, null.

Suddenly, Iris is serious. Instead of me taking the lead, this time, she does. She brushes the hair away from my forehead, looking for a clear spot to kiss, then she looks into my eyes and a serenity washes over her. She says, “I’m not in the mood for painting anymore, are you?”

I shake my head. “Not at all.”

She takes a deep breath in and moves her lips to mine. The paint is forgotten, then our clothes. And when I make to help her up, she pulls me back down.

“This isn’t a show-Iris-how-beautiful-she-is moment, Carter.”

“No?”

She shakes her head. As I join her on the floor again.

“What kind of moment is it, then?”

She lays back down and pulls me along with her, until I’m in between her legs and she’s wrapping hers around me.

“It’s a covered in paint, I-want-you-so-bad-I-can-taste-it-moment,” she whispers, and then she guides me to where she needs me.

“Okay,” I rasp and as we both become lost in the moment she’s created, my lips find hers, and I think,
yeah, I could definitely stay
.

* * *

“Dinner at my place?” she says, after we clean up and re-dress.

“Considering all I have is Ramen Noodles and some already opened diet cokes, absolutely.”

Iris laughs and reminds me she’s got Bridge with the girls later, then invites me to play along but this time, I decline. She needs some time with her friends. As we walk in to her house, the phone rings in Iris’s kitchen at exactly the same time my cell phone buzzes inside my jacket pocket. I pull it out as Iris heads over to answer her phone. It’s my brother, which is weird as I just spoke to him not twenty-four hours ago. Iris watches me as she answers her own call. Do I answer it? It’s only going to be another argument I don’t want to have. I close my eyes and count. Then I answer the damn call.

“Carter?” Tony speaks before I can even say hi. He sounds on edge.

“Hey. Everything okay?”

“You need to come home.”

Of course.
Here we go again. I wink over at Iris as she handles whatever is going on with her call. She smiles but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Tone, we’ve had this conversation one too many times and I---”

“Dad’s in the hospital,” he blurts it out, and then waits.

I sit up. He’s got my attention now. “What?”

“That’s right,” he says. “Heart attack. He had it this morning, right in the middle of a debriefing, they took him….” He tries to catch his breath. “He’s in ICU right now.”

I hear the words but the message isn’t quite registering with me yet.

“I don’t understand.”

“He. Had. A. Heart Attack!” There’s annoyance behind his words. “What is there to not
understand about that, Carter?”

Heart attacks aren’t the end of the world, actually. I read an article once that said they’re fairly common these days. More women die from them than men, and only a small percent die from the first one. Why was I reading that article anyway?

“He’s strong, Tone. Dad will be okay. Keep me posted.” I try to end the call but he adds one more piece of information for me to absorb.

“It’s not his first one, Carter.”

That catches my attention.

“What? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

He laughs it off but I can hear the stress behind it. “I’m the only one that knew, and I didn’t think you’d want
to know, Carter; you made it pretty clear when you left.”

That doesn’t mean I don’t give a shit. “Then why bother telling me now?”

He takes a deep breath. I can hear him let it out. He doesn’t say anything at first.

“Tone.”

“Because they don’t know if he’ll survive this one.”

I’m speechless for a second or two. Even when I find my voice again, all I can manage to sputter out, is, “Okay.”

“Okay?” he says. “Okay!?” Tony becomes hysterical. “That’s all you’ve got for me is
okay
?”

“Tony, I---”

“You know what? Forget I called.” He hangs up and I’m left sitting there with a monkey on my back the size of King Kong. My eyes shift to Iris once more.

She’s still in deep conversation with whoever is on the other end of her phone. I can’t think straight, much less interrupt her to tell her I can’t think straight.

“I’ve gotta go,” I mouth when she notices me grabbing my jacket. She gives me a tilt of her head while she tries to continue to pay attention to what’s being said to her on the other end of the line. I give her the universal sign for, “I’ll call you,” then head out before she can ask me anything else. I’m not sure what I would say, anyway.

“My dad, whom I never speak to, just had a heart attack and even though we aren’t on any type of speaking terms whatsoever, my brother wants me to come home to a world where I’m pretty much a leper for what I did to him the last time I was there.”

Yeah, no. Back inside my own place, I call Tony back from the landline I had installed. Even as I dial the number though, I know what happens next. I fly home.

* * *

“Shit.”

In rushing to get the last flight out to California, I completely forgot to touch base with Iris like I said I would. I pull my phone out and shoot her off a quick text.

Had to take off. I’ll explain everything later.

It’s all I have time for, I’m late as it is. I slip the phone back into my pocket and tip the cabbie, then I grab my bags and hurry in to catch my flight. One layover, several Bloody Mary cocktails and a crappy rental car drive later, and I’m standing outside my family’s home in Sacramento California. My insides are churning. I’m not gonna lie, when Frank said I’d go home when I was supposed to, I was thinking it would take me more like a year or so to get here, not a week.

I stand on our front porch for a while. I check my phone for messages, hopefully from Iris, but there are none. Then the door opens and my brother’s longtime girlfriend stands glaring at me with impatience.

“You planning on knocking sometime today, Carter?”

“Don’t you mean, tonight, Lila?” I wink at her and although she shakes her head in a show of disapproval, she manages to open the door a little wider for me.

“Your brother’s in the kitchen. Be nice.”

“I’m always nice.”

“That’s debatable,” she mumbles behind me.

“Depends on who you ask.”

“How about everyone.”

“You haven’t asked me.” I smile big, showing her all my teeth.

“For the love of God, Carter, just go see your brother.”

I win.

I step into the house and suddenly, it’s five years earlier. I haven’t quit my job at the firm, so to speak, and my relationship with the majority of my family isn’t on the rocks. Yet.

I have the inexplicable need to shove my make-shift sister in law playfully but she steps out of the way easily and bats at my hand. Lila and I have this thing.  It’s kind of a love to rag on each other thing. We don’t hate each other or overly love each other either. She’s had issues with me since my father made it clear that he wanted me to take over the business, but she tries to look past that; seeing how it’s not my fault the old man is narrow minded. And I have a problem with the way she tries to run my brother’s life, but he loves her and she’s basically good so I let the two of them make their own decisions.

It works for us.

I’m about halfway to where my brother is probably having some sort of melt down when I notice, she’s not following me.

“You’re not coming?”

She laughs and crosses her arms, hanging back by the entry way.  “Oh no, you’re on your own this time.”

I nod, then turn and continue my walk of shame into the kitchen.

“Thank God you learned how to make coffee while I was away.” The smell is what I need to wake me up a little after the six plus hour flight from the East Coast. I pour myself a cup while Tone finishes his.

“I didn’t know if you’d make it.” He sets his cup down and walks over to me. Then throws his arms around me and bear hugs the living shit out of me, nearly spilling the caffeinated goodness I just got through pouring.

“Woah, woah, woah there, sprocket.” I set my cup down and give him a proper hug hello.

Curse me for missing the little shit.

“How are ya hanging in there, bro?”

His body shakes before he even answers me. The poor guy has been under so much stress since I left. This is most likely the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m such a dick.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come home, sooner,” I hug him tighter.

After a few silent minutes of reconnecting on at least one level, he withdrawals and takes a step back from me.

“I won’t tell you it’s okay – you’re not getting off the hook that easy.”

He’s smiling. So I’ve got that going for me. I don’t want this to get too serious. There’s enough time for that later. So I huff out a short laugh out and push him in the chest.

“You look good, considering.”

“You look like shit.”

“Yeah well . . .”

“Baby.”

“No that would be you.”

He swishes my hand away from his shoulder. His tone changes.

“You have no idea what I’ve been dealing with since you left.”

And I congratulate myself of accomplishing exactly what I wanted to avoid.

“Yeah,” I say. “I get that. Why don’t you fill me in?”

He does, and by the time he’s finished, the guilt is setting in nice and solid. The familiar heavy burden settles on my shoulders like it never left. Fuck, how did my weekend go from a sexy romp on the kitchen floor of my house over in Spangler with Iris, to this?

“So the books . . .”

“Not so good.”

“And dad . . .”

“Oblivious.”

What the fuck. There’s got to be an answer to this problem.

“You should probably get rid of Alec in accounting. He’s probably skimming off the top. Who knows for how long?”

“I’m not good with the confrontations, Carter.” Then his eyes light up. “Hey, maybe you could---”

I hold a hand up. “No no no no no no no.”

Tony’s face falls.

“Tone, listen, I get it – and if I didn’t have a life already starting to---”

“A life? How can you possibly have a whole new life that won’t allow you to help your family out?

When I don’t answer right away, he lets out a huff of air and shakes his head at me. “I’m going to bed.”  Then he pushes away from the table and stands. He stares at me for a second and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else but ultimately, he leaves me sitting there at our parent’s kitchen table, alone. Almost.

“He’s right,” Lila says from the doorway. I pinch at the bridge of my nose and try to think when she adds, “And you know it.”

Then she leaves me, too.

I find a bedroom and lay down, exhausted. But before I let myself fall into unconsciousness, I check the time. Even though it’s eleven a.m here, it’s only two a.m

back in South Carolina. She’s probably asleep by now, but I call Iris anyway because this isn’t exactly something I can explain via text. There’s no answer and I go to voicemail. After debating silently, what I should say, I start to leave a message but the beeeeeeeeep sounds before I can even say anything. I try again but the same thing happens. So I resolve that I’ll call again tomorrow.