21. Never Mine to Carry
NEVER MINE TO CARRY
CHARLIE
I was prepping for a mission at work today, and every aspect of it was getting thwarted by random things.
My ways around it got thwarted. The ways around those took fifty steps…
and then got thwarted. I attacked the problems all day long.
I had come to work early and even stayed much longer than I had planned.
Yet, now that I’m leaving, I feel like I didn’t actually get a single thing done.
I don’t know how today fits into my whole “I’m on fire at work” metaphor. All I’m picturing from my day is a giant boulder. But I’m not the boulder—I’m just left with a headache from ramming into it repeatedly. I never get headaches.
When I get home, Miles’s car is parked out front.
I know he has “best friend” status with Reese, but whenever he’s not away on missions, I swear he spends more time with her than I do as her actual roommate.
When I walk inside, he’s standing near the kitchen, towel in hand, as he catches a bowl that had arced through the air to him. “Hi, sis,” he says as he dries it.
Reese races out to the hallway from where she was in the kitchen to see me. Then, with two wet, soap-bubble-covered hands, she motions toward the kitchen. “Tada!”
My eyes go wide, and I run to my kitchen.
The walls are painted, my cabinets are back where they belong, and the countertop is back in place, which means…
“We have a sink!” I run to it, put my hands on the sides of where Reese has obviously been doing dishes, and lay my cheek on it like I’m giving our sink the world’s most awkward hug. “I’ve missed you,” I tell it.
My “island” counter is no longer an island—it’s the bottom part of my L-shaped kitchen.
“Oh! And we have a table again!” I go over and hug it, too.
“And chairs,” Miles says.
Nineteen days. We’ve gone nineteen days without. I can’t believe how good it feels to have a kitchen again.
“Leandro and Josh got here as I was leaving this morning and were finishing up when I got home from work. I decided to celebrate by making chicken stir-fry. Miles and I already ate, but there’s a ton left—it’s staying warm for you in the oven.”
I hug Reese for longer than I normally would, and say, “Thank you times a thousand.”
When I finally let go, I give my brother a long hug and say, “And thank you for helping.”
He murmurs in my ear, “Unrelated, but wanted to let you know I already swept for bugs and checked for intruders so you wouldn’t have to.”
“Thank you for that, too,” I say, and then finally let go of him.
Reese laughs and says, “Wow, I did not think we would get this much gratitude for feeding you.”
“After everything went wrong today, having a restored kitchen and a roommate and a brother who made me food and has it waiting, still warm, especially when I am this hungry, is downright heavenly. You’re both angels.”
“I don’t think you’ve called me that before,” Miles says, “but I’ll take it.”
Reese nods. “Me, too. Because we are. Okay, we’re off to take care of my bees.” She glances at the oven and then at the wall that’s now an actual wall. “There’s enough for two if you’d like to invite a certain someone to come and eat with you.”
Yes, I spent the morning investigating the sole donor for Owen’s restoration project.
Yes, that makes me feel like I should pull back from Owen out of fear that getting any closer to him will make things even worse.
I shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions when I’m tired and hungry, though, because I have my phone out and texting Owen before Reese and Miles even make it to the front door.
Charlie: Have you eaten? Because Reese and Miles made a chicken stir fry that smells delicious, and before they left, they said there’s enough for two warming in the oven. Want to come and join me?
I’m still looking at my phone, waiting for a response from Owen, when I hear a knock at the door. I keep my phone unlocked, looking down at it, as I walk to the door. I pull it open, and Owen is standing there, a box from my favorite bakery in one hand, and says, “I’d love to.”
I laugh and pull him inside.
“How was your day?” he asks as we head toward the kitchen.
“Headache inducing. Yours?”
“Good. You’ve got a headache? Where?”
We stop just in front of the oven, and I pick up an oven mitt. “My temples, mostly.”
Owen gently cradles my head in his hands and then places a long, soft kiss on one temple and then repeats it on my other temple. I close my eyes and sink into the sweet touch, like I’m letting it enter right into me. And I swear my headache is gone.
My eyes go wide. “How did you do that? How did you make it go away?”
A smile slowly spreads across his face. “You know, I thought our kisses were magical. I’m pretty sure this is confirmation.”
I grin at him, and then pull dinner from the oven as Owen gets dishes—actual, non-disposable dishes—from my cupboard, and then we dish up and go to the table—an actual table—to eat.
Now that I’m seeing the food, I’m even more ravenous than I was.
My stomach is growling, and the food is tasty, but I force myself to eat at a normal human pace as we talk about our days.
With me being vague, of course, and telling about it as if mine were all related to computer network issues I was trying to fix, instead of telling the truth.
That the issues I was running into were all related to predictive risk modeling of future high-risk antiquities targets.
After we finish eating, Owen takes our dishes to the sink to start washing them. How sweet is that? I grab a towel and dry as he finishes washing and rinsing each one.
He glances over at me. “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure.”
“At the wedding, when you were introducing me to Abraham, you mentioned your dad’s passing. I didn’t know that he’d died. Is that something you don’t want to talk about?”
“Although it is hard, I don’t mind talking about him at all. He was a great guy and a wonderful dad. It’s just something that’s awkward to bring up if it doesn’t come up naturally in a conversation.”
“Oh, I understand, especially since I just brought it up in a way that wasn’t natural to the conversation.”
I chuckle. “So you understand.” I take a breath. “He passed away almost five years ago. I had just turned twenty.”
“What happened?”
The truth is, he died during a mission that he wasn’t supposed to be on.
He’d been trying to recover a drive from a rogue agent that contained information on operatives and assets that would threaten them and their families.
When it first happened, I got fairly used to telling the cover story about it. I’m a little rusty now.
“My dad worked with a lot of our clients who needed computer security consulting, including clients overseas. While he was on site out of the country, there was an incident with a couple of warring crime families that spilled over to where he was working. He was trying to protect someone else and was caught in the crossfire.”
Owen gasps. “That’s awful.”
I nod. “It really was.”
As he’s letting the water out of the sink and I’m putting away the last dish, he asks,
“What was he like?”
“Super brave. Loyal. Deeply protective of us and his team. He was someone who couldn’t walk away from danger if it left others at risk.
” I smile. “And he was really good at flag football, cooking pancakes shaped like our initials, making up the best bedtime stories, acting like my pet goldfish had a personality, and convincing us that folding laundry was a competition we all wanted to win.”
“He sounds like a great dad.”
“He really was.”
Owen wraps his arms around me, kisses my head, and says, “I’m really sorry you lost him.” I let him hold me for a long moment.
Then I take his hand and pull him over to my couch. He sits, and I sit turned sideways with one leg bent on the couch so I can look at him. “Okay, now your turn.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You seem like a really happy guy.”
He nods. “I am.”
“But there’s also something behind your smile. Something you try to hide from the world. If you’re willing to talk about it, I’d love to hear.”
Owen just looks at me for a long moment. “You noticed that? ”
I nod.
“You go right to the heavy-hitting topics, don’t you?”
“In my defense,” I say, holding up my hands, “you started it by asking about my dad.”
Owen gives me an amused smile, and then he nods. “Fair enough.” He pauses a bit first, absently reaching a hand forward to rub his left knee.
“I told you I played football in high school.”
“Quarterback, right?”
“Yep. And I was pretty good at it, too. It got me a scholarship that would cover tuition, my dorm, and even a meal plan. I’d be able to focus all my time and energy on college and football. Everything seemed perfect.
“I had a great final season my senior year. Our team even made it to the state finals. I was on cloud nine throughout our entire end-of-season banquet. They gave out awards as we were finishing our meal, then moved on to the speeches, and then showed our highlight reel.
“I found out later that a few of the guys had snuck out right after the presentation of awards because one of them brought alcohol. They drank all through the speeches and came back just in time for the video. One of them was my running back, Cordell.
“I stayed late to help clean up, and Cordell left to drive some of the guys home. By the time I left, Cordell had dropped everyone off and was driving back to his house, and I was headed to mine. I had a green light and was going through an intersection when he came from my left, running a red light, and he T-boned me.”
I gasp. “Were you okay?”