The Fable of Us (19 page)

While I withheld mine, Boone didn’t contain his sigh. “Come on. Let’s get you out of The Thing. Since you’re not thrilled with the idea of me ripping you out of it the old-fashioned way.”

I heard the eyebrow wag in his voice, so keeping my eyes forward, I delivered an elbow jab into his stomach before heading toward the door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Cavanagh. Why, I just made your acquaintance last night, and I’d never let a man do that sort of thing to me on a first date.” I opened the door and waited for him. We were a team, whatever else we were or whenever we’d “met.” I knew that if I knew nothing else. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

Boone covered his chest with his hand and gave me an appalled look as he crossed the room. “You say that like you’re implying I’m that kind of guy.”

“Not implying anything. Again, I only just met you. I don’t know enough about you to make that sort of assumption.” I waved him through the door before closing it behind us. Not that shutting it would do any good. My mom had never been one to adhere to the closed-door policy of privacy. “All I know is that you know how to tear it up on a dance floor and that you have troubling hygiene standards when it comes to your undergarments.”

Boone’s laugh rolled down the hall, seeming to spill down the stairs into the foyer. Like yesterday morning, the house was quiet, but today I knew the reason for the silence. Breakfast was being served outside, buffet-style, which was only about a million times more preferable than yesterday’s crowded, stuffy counterpart. I might actually be able to take more than two and a half bites of my breakfast this morning.

“So is the future on the list of acceptable topics to be discussed today?” Boone asked as we headed down the stairs at an inchworm’s pace.

In The Thing, stairs were next to impossible to maneuver with any speed. It probably would have been quicker and easier to roll me down.

“I got a good night’s sleep. No one’s yelled at me yet about my hair, my dress, or my weight, so sure, let’s go crazy.”

When I took the next step down, my toe caught on the step and threw me off balance a bit. Boone’s hands were bracing me, keeping me upright, before I knew I was off-kilter. I thanked him with an embarrassed smile and slowed to a senior citizen inchworm’s pace.

“You own a business. A successful one, from the sounds of it,” Boone started, keeping his hands up—I guess in the event I decided to take another spill down the stairs.

“Yes, and yes, maybe,” I answered.

He gave me a look that suggested he knew I was being modest.

“Okay, yes, it’s been successful beyond what I imagined it would be,” I admitted with an eye roll.

“Nice,” he said, sounding like he actually meant it. If I’d admitted the same thing to the majority of my family, I’d be met with similar comments that would sound as if they meant the total opposite. “Warning you upfront here that I’m going to sound like an ignorant hick, but what exactly
is
your business?”

I smiled at the floor as we took the last step that put us in the foyer. “That doesn’t sound ignorant at all. That sounds honest. Like the question most people would ask instead of pretending they know what the hell I’m talking about.”

“So yeah, I’m an ignorant hick. Every one of my teachers’ assessments of me from kindergarten through senior year study hall has been confirmed.” He threw his hands up in the air like he was celebrating. “At last, I’ve finally lived up to someone’s expectations.”

I nudged my shoulder into his. “I’ve created a consulting business that works with large corporations to make them more energy efficient, ultimately saving them thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars a year, and doing my part to help the environment too. I see it as a win-win.” I glanced at him and added, “And you’re not an ignorant hick. God knows I’ve spent my fair share of time around them, but never has one minute of that time been with you.”

He nodded as we moved through the kitchen toward the back door. “Your family is one of the oldest, wealthiest oil families in this country’s history. Who would have seen their oldest child going into the business of saving the environment instead of advancing its demise?” He smiled at me, almost like he was proud I’d done one of the most outrageous, disgraceful things I could in my family’s eyes by opening a business with the goal to lessen the country’s dependency on oil, instead of doing everything I could to increase it. “And thanks for saying I’m not a hick, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. You can paint it white and braid its mane, but at the end of the day, you can’t turn an ass into a unicorn, no matter how much glitter and flowers you sprinkle on it.”

“You lost me around the glitter part there, but now you can understand why my visits home have been so infrequent. My dad couldn’t talk to me without practically going cross-eyed after I told him about the company I’d started back in California.”

“So pretty much the same look he gave you yesterday at breakfast when you told everyone you were expanding nationally?” Boone asked as we stepped through the screen door onto the back porch.

“Close, just a few notches less severe in the shock-and-awe department. Yesterday’s look was three years ago’s tamer version.”

When we made it to the steps leading down into the yard, Boone and I stopped and surveyed the scene before us. Neither of us seemed in a hurry to throw ourselves to the sharks. We’d played the chum role long enough yesterday, and the whole apex of predators trailing us with bloodlust in their eyes had gotten old.

Boone sighed before looking at me in a way that suggested he was saying,
You first
.

I grabbed his hand and pulled him along, taking that first step down together.

“So you’re hoping to rid the world of its need for oil?” Boone’s voice was a bit louder than necessary, no doubt because he wanted every one of the oil-rich breakfasters to hear.

“I just want to save the polar bears. That’s all.” I waved at Avalee, who was camped out in a chair with a pair of dark glasses propped on her nose and an expression that indicated she was regretting certain aspects of last night.

She managed a wave back, but it was a short one before she grabbed her glass of ice water and lifted it to her temple. When I took a look at the rest of the half dozen tables dotted around my parents’ backyard, it looked like a good portion of the breakfasters were in the same shape as Avalee. I was glad I’d stuck with Sprite and grenadine.

“Enough about mine, I want to know about your business,” I said as we headed for the tables laid out with most of my favorite breakfast foods, starting with sticky buns and ending with a chocolate fountain. “I’m clearly the underachiever between the two of us when you consider I set out to save the polar bears while your goal was to save the children of the world.”

Boone handed me a plate when we made it to the start of the buffet. From a couple of tables back, I spotted my parents from the corners of my eyes. They looked like they were in the middle of one of those spoken-under-their-breaths, frozen-expression type of arguments. Probably having something to do with Boone and me.

“Yeah, but unlike mine, your business is still
in
business and doing so well you’re expanding. Mine barely managed to stay in business for two years, and during those years, there was never a month where it did well bottom-line wise.” Boone waved me in front of him to go first.

“Why a kids’ center?” I asked as I went straight for the trays of pastries. I’d eaten more than my fair share of cage-free poached eggs with arugula for breakfast back in California. “I mean, I know you’re a good guy and all and want to do your part to save the world without anyone knowing you give a damn about it”—I shot him a knowing look as I slid a sticky bun onto his plate, then one onto mine—“but I could have seen you opening at least fifty different kinds of businesses before I would have guessed a kids’ center.”

Boone paused in the middle of the buffet line, staring at the fruit salad with a look that redefined pensive. “When you grow up seeing what happens to kids like my sister, and what
could
have happened to me, all because we drew the short straw in life and wound up with a negligent mom and a TBD dad, you see things a bit differently. I guess I wanted a place where the Wren Cavanaughs of the world could find refuge. Even if it was only for a few hours at a time.” He stopped staring at the fruit salad and turned to me, an entire ocean of emotion churning on his face. “You know?”

I moved closer to him and pressed a hand into his chest. I hadn’t meant to touch him and I hadn’t meant to touch him right where his heart resided, but I had. It had been an instinctive reaction.

“I know,” I replied with a small smile, curling my fingers into his chest. I should have dropped my hand and walked away. I couldn’t do either.

Boone was doing a better job of playing things off than I was, but I could tell he was rattled by the way he couldn’t seem to look me in the eyes. “Just look at us. A couple of entrepreneurs. Who would believe it?” He scooped a heap of fruit salad onto his plate, which made it even more apparent just how ruffled he was. Boone had never been a fruit fan—something about it being too sweet for his tastes. “At least who would have believed it from me? I was unofficially voted least likely to succeed back in high school.”

I laughed as we wound down the tables, eyeing the tray of petit fours at the end, when someone came up behind us.

“It wasn’t unofficial. We actually held a vote.” Ford’s Kennedy smile was painted in place this morning. The rest of him from the neck down looked just as polished.

I counted to three in my head, reminding myself Ford and I had made some progress last night in the moving-on department. He was going to be my brother-in-law in a few days, and it would be nice to start out on the right foot. “Well, I guess you and your band of merry men were wrong about Boone, because look at him now.” I waved the silver petit four tongs at Boone, peaking an eyebrow. “A business owner.”

Ford meandered closer, clutching an empty plate. Clearly he hadn’t jumped in line for the food. “His business went
out
of business. Therefore I’d say his ‘unofficial’ title is pretty damn poetic.”

“Ford,” I snapped, my grip tightening around the tongs like it was his neck.

“It’s okay, Clara. He isn’t dishing out anything I haven’t been dished before,” Boone said before turning toward Ford. “In fact, I kind of missed all that attention you gave me back in high school. I was starting to wonder if you’d moved past your fascination with me, but clearly”—he circled his finger at Ford’s face, which was pinched together into folds of contempt—“you haven’t.”

Boone turned his back on Ford and let me pile a few petit fours on his plate. If fruit was too sweet for him, he would probably hate those, but he didn’t say no. When Ford ambled up behind us again, with an expression that told me he was only getting started, I couldn’t steer Boone away to one of the empty tables on the perimeter fast enough.

“People ever find it strange a single grown man was running a non-profit kids’ center?” Ford said, matching our pace as Boone and I moved away from the food tables.

I held the back of Boone’s arm, steering him toward an empty table. I felt it stiffen, and just when I thought he was going to break to a stop and take a swing in Ford’s direction, he kept moving.

“What are you implying?” Boone said stiffly, dropping his plate on the table when we paused behind a couple of empty chairs.

Ford came around the other side of the table, just smart enough to realize that at this point in his goading-Boone-Cavanaugh agenda, he wanted something big and solid between him and Boone. “Nothing,” he said with a lazy shrug. “Just that with the way your sister’s let every cock in town take a dip and you prefer to spend your days playing with minors . . . something had to have gone down in that trailer of your mama’s.”

A gasp rushed out of me while beside me, Boone became a statue. One that could just as easily have been at peace on the inside as he could have been about to explode.

Going with the theme of this visit home so far—unthinking—I snatched an extra ripe strawberry from Boone’s plate and hurled it across the table.

It landed square in the center of Ford’s forehead. I’d been aiming for his mouth, but his forehead worked. Especially when the juice from it dripped down the sides of his nose, and when the strawberry fell, it managed to leave a few blobs of red behind on his sky-blue polo.

“What the hell was that for, Clara Belle?” Ford grabbed a white linen napkin from the table and rubbed at his crotch, where the strawberry had last touched before falling to the grass.

“Solid throw.” Boone nudged me, his voice as even as his expression, despite what Ford had just said. “Nice aim.”

“Why thank you,” I replied, trying not to laugh as Ford’s scrubbing efforts only smeared the strawberry juice, making even more of a stain.

“Just because you’re running around with an animal doesn’t mean you have to start behaving like one, Clara Belle.” Ford wiped his forehead with the napkin, streaking strawberry juice across his eyebrows more than actually removing it.

“And if you don’t have anything nice to say, then brace yourself for flying fruit.” I crossed my arms. I felt the seam across my back pulling, so close to ripping open I could practically feel cool air trickling in.

Ford threw the napkin on the table and shook his head at me.

“You better stop shaking your head like that at her, or I will remove it from the rest of your body.” Boone didn’t blink as he stared down Ford.

“Oh, give it a rest, Cavanaugh.” Ford snorted, but his head stopped shaking. “You got the girl in the end. Clearly.” He made it a point to look between us a few times, not trying to disguise his disgust. “But it wasn’t because you beat me. It was because I bowed out. I decided to stop wasting my time chasing one sister and moved on to a different one. One who’s a little more discerning. One who didn’t spread her legs for any piece of trash that came her way.”

Before Boone could make it a step in Ford’s direction, another strawberry splattered across Ford’s face, exploding on his cheek and splashing juice all the way up his temple and down his neck. Boone froze in the middle of his journey around the table, giving me a chance to grab his hand and pull him back toward me.