9. Iceberg
ICEBERG
“What’s your problem, man?” Pat grunted, wrapping a hand around Fisher’s shoulder and pulling him to his feet, away from the useless new hire working the tire station.
“He’s my fucking problem,” Fisher stabbed a finger at the wide-eyed kid, standing beside the tray of tools. “He’s got no idea what he’s doing here. How do you get to be nineteen, and you don’t even know what a wrench looks like?”
“Fuck you, man,” Alec snapped back, his eyes darting to Pat nervously as he yanked the dirty cloth from his shoulder and flung it down upon the hood of the car beside them. “I told y’all that I didn’t know what I was doing. But I need this job, and I’m trying.”
“Fisher,” Pat hissed, his tone a warning. It wasn’t necessary, however, for the guilt had already taken root.
“Sorry, Alec,” he grunted, the anger draining from his veins as swiftly as it had come. “It’s not you. You’re doing fine.”
He didn’t wait to see if the kid accepted his half-assed apology before he turned and strode off jerkily toward the break room. He wasn’t surprised, however, when Pat yanked him to a stop in the hall.
“So, uh, what the hell was that?” he asked, his naturally jovial expression traded for lofted brows and pinched lips.
Fisher shook his head. “It’s this mess with Drie, man. It’s just—it’s messing with my head. I can’t think straight. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.
“You’re right. It won’t,” Pat answered, his mouth pulled into a tight frown. “We’ve got a good thing going here with this shop. And you’re my friend, Fisher, but this is not where you work out your shit. Go home, take a day, and come back with your head on right.”
Fisher averted his eyes, nodding stiffly.
Pat was right; the situation had moved beyond the point of being pathetic.
And it was only getting worse with every day that passed, just waiting for her to reach out.
It had been three straight weeks of radio silence since the weekend he’d seen her in the library.
He stalked to his truck and pulled out his phone to check for messages, not surprised in the least at the utter lack of notifications. Without work to distract me, what the hell am I supposed to do?
On a whim, Fisher pulled out in the opposite direction from home and pressed the accelerator. He didn’t have any specific destination in mind, and when he parked in front of his cousin’s house an hour later, he still wasn’t even sure what he’d set out to achieve.
Connor eventually poked his head out of the screen door, a look of confusion on his pretty boy face, and a sleeping baby with a head of dark curls draped over his shoulder.
His eyes widened in recognition, and he disappeared for a beat before reappearing, sans baby, as he jogged barefoot to the truck.
He held out a fist for a bump as he slid into the passenger seat, his other hand wrapped securely around a monitor that broadcast a feed of the nursery.
“Good to see ya, cuz,” Connor drawled, scanning Fisher quickly with familiar blue eyes.
All the cousins carried on the famous Bree blue from their fathers, but the genetic similarities ended there.
Where Fisher was tall and lean, with dark hair and skin that burned in the sun, Connor was short and stocky.
Despite living five hours from the coast, he’d embraced the freckly, tanned surfer-boy look with gusto, even going as far as to grow out his curly blonde hair and wear it in a man-bun.
“You too,” Fisher answered gruffly, sparing his cousin a short glance before looking back out the window, his fingers tapping an anxious rhythm on the steering wheel. The silence grew palpable as it stretched between them.
“So…” Connor began, scratching the early-morning scruff on his cheek. “Something wrong?”
He nodded jerkily.
“With, uh, mystery girl?”
His second nod was just a bob of the head, the muscle in his cheek flexing.
“So do you, uh, want to…talk about it? I doubt it’s as bad as you’re acting. Or did you just want some company while you, uh, process whatever you got going on in…there?” Connor asked, fluttering a hand in the general direction of his head.
Fisher rolled his eyes as he forced the words into the air between them. “I ended things a few weeks ago.”
“Noo.” Connor groaned. “You dumbass. Why would you do that? She was perfect for you. Maybe there’s time for you to tell her it was a mistake, and she’ll take you back?”
“You don’t think I tried? She doesn’t want me back.
I just wanted to slow down, but now she won’t even talk to me.
She avoids me everywhere. Changed libraries and gyms. Deleted me from social media.
I’m pretty sure she’s even blocked my number.
” Fisher scrubbed a hand down his face before turning in his seat, his eyes wide.
“Wait. Why would you think she was perfect for me? You never even met her.”
“Dude.” Connor rolled his eyes. “Oh. You’re serious?” He cleared his throat. “Man, it was pretty obvious. You were happy as fuck. Way happier than when you were pretending to date Rena.”
“I was not pretending to date Rena.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Connor said. “So why did you end things, then? Big fight?”
“Nah. The opposite, actually. We never fought.”
“Oh-kay…So then why did you want to slow down? Was she talking marriage and shit?”
“God no. She’s in nursing school and told me before we even began dating that she wasn’t in the market”—he held up air-quotes—“for a MRS. until after she’d gotten her BSN.”
Connor chuckled. “Sounds like a boss. Alright. Then I still don’t get it. Did you want to date other people?”
“Not at all.” Fisher choked.
“Then you’re going to have to spell it out for me, man, because I’m at a loss here.”
He shrugged. “She loved me.”
The silence stretched once more, filled only with the muffled sounds of traffic on the nearby highway and the steady cadence of white noise from the baby monitor, until it became borderline oppressive.
“And?” Connor finally prompted.
He turned in his seat to take in his cousin’s incredulous expression. “And I couldn’t reciprocate. And it was destroying me.”
Connor pinched the bridge of his nose. “So what I can’t figure out is why you don’t think you loved her?”
“Because!” Fisher exploded. “Love is passion. It’s crazy. I’ve spent every day of my life watching my parents fight. Your parents too. Rena and me. It’s always the same. Even you and Katie. Y’all have it out over something every single time I see you guys. And me and Drie…We just didn’t have that.”
“Dude…” Connor groaned. “Fighting doesn’t mean passion. And we don’t talk about it, but Katie and I are separated. We’re getting divorced.” He checked the monitor, watching as baby Jojo rolled over in the crib. “Sometimes, fighting is just fighting.”
“Shit. I’m sorry to hear that.” Fisher sighed. “And also sorry that I’ve shown up to lay all my drama on your literal doorstep while you’ve got your own shit going on.”
Connor shook his shoulder lightly. “Seriously, don’t mention it. It’s been a long time coming. She’s already dating other people. We’re co-parenting. There’s not much to discuss.”
Fisher nodded, rubbing his eyes roughly with the base of his palms.
“So why do you think you guys had no passion? Did the sex suck?” he asked, making Fisher straighten up quickly in shock.
“Not at all. She’s the best I’ve ever had.”
“Well, did you think she was boring? Like, as a person? Wanted to try the bachelor life for a bit?”
“Hell no,” he said, his voice vehement. “She’s the most interesting person I know. All I think about is Drie. If she’d let me, I’d be with her right now. No offense.”
“Offense taken, but whatever.” Connor shrugged. “So you’re telling me that the only reason you broke up with your self-proclaimed dream woman is the fact that the two of you…got along?”
Fisher dropped his head back against the headrest. “That’s an extreme oversimplification.
” He sighed, trying to figure out a way to articulate the feelings he didn’t understand himself.
“When I was with Rena, everything was a battle. Even down to picking what we wanted for lunch. We’d have these exhausting fights where she’d scream and cry, and I’d walk away, but then it always led to these huge talks, or gestures, or makeup sex, and it brought us closer together.
” He paused, staring at the side paneling of Connor’s home, lost in his thoughts.
“Drie and I never did that. I tried to instigate a fight once, and she made me tea to feel better. Tea. It was too easy. She became my best friend, and I never developed that sense of…desperation that comes with love. When we disagreed, we just talked it through. Like a business deal or some shit. I mean, who does that? We were just…”
“Happy?” Connor filled in sardonically, shaking his head slowly in disbelief.
“My man, you are absolutely, wholeheartedly in love with that woman. Some people don’t need to fight.
You and I come from a long line of hotheads, but that was never you.
You’ve always been the chill one, brother.
That’s why you and Rena were never going to work.
She’s a firecracker, and you’re just not. ”
“Thanks for that.”
“Well, it’s not a bad thing. Sometimes, opposites work, but you two were opposites in the wrong way, you know?
You’re like…Hm. You’re like…an iceberg. Yeah.
” He nodded, one corner of his mouth tipping up, clearly pleased with his choices.
“A firecracker and an iceberg. Just doesn’t work, man. Make sense?”
“No, not at all. You sound fucking insane. How am I a fucking iceberg?”
“Well…” He grinned. “You’re generally pretty chill, and you don’t really adapt very well to change, and you clearly feel a lot deeper than would be expected by looking at you.
” Connor shrugged, and Fisher squinted at him, almost certain his cousin was fucking with him.
“Regardless, opposites attracting is just about finding balance in your life. We look for people whose personalities make up for gaps in our own. Like how grumpy people match with happy people. The happy person keeps the couple moving forward, while the grumpy person keeps them grounded. Or”—he snapped his fingers—“think about Uncle Mark and Aunt Kris. Outspoken people like Aunt Kris need mellow partners like Uncle Mark to handle the more delicate situations, while Uncle Mark needs a partner like Crazy Kris to take on the less delicate situations, like telling the waiter when his order is wrong. Get it?”
He didn’t wait for Fisher to respond before charging forward in his monologue.
“So yes, you and Rena were opposites in many ways, but not in the ways that balanced. Rena was a firecracker, and firecrackers are fun and exciting and a bit dangerous, but they’re not going to do shit when mixed with an iceberg.
Maybe carve out a small crater at best. You don’t need a firecracker, you need something more gradual, like… I don’t know—”
“Global warming?” Fisher offered dryly.
Connor cackled. “Uh, no, I was thinking something a bit more peaceful. Maybe lava? Nah. I don’t know. Someone free and playful—someone who will keep you from getting stuck in life, without changing who you are.”
Fisher wasn’t sure if the past few weeks of emotional turmoil had irreparably damaged his frontal lobe, or if Connor was actually making some sense with his hippie rambles, but a cold dread slowly began to spread through his veins, making him feel even more like the iceberg his cousin kept calling him.
“Like a bird,” he whispered.
He could feel Connor staring at him. “Uh, sure, Fisher. Not really the direction I was heading, but alright. A bird analogy works.”
“Do uh, ravens live near icebergs?” he asked quickly.
“Oh, for sure. There are loads of ravens in the Arctic. They’re one of the most adaptable birds that exist.” Connor frowned down at the monitor.
“So this is getting weirdly specific, and little dude is waking back up. Carmen is sitting with him, but I need to get back inside before she tries to pull him out of the crib or some shit. Did you want to stay a while?”
“Nah.” He was already shaking his head and reaching for his seat belt. “I gotta go.”
Connor smiled, clapping his shoulder hard before stepping from the truck. “Good luck. And maybe bring her around here sometimes, alright? I miss you, man.”
Fisher nodded. He knew he had a lot of relationships to repair. But for now, he had only one objective in mind: find Drie.