Page 14

Carter

Operation – Get Carter and Harlee Together Text Thread

Talia – Okay, team. We have an objective. Let’s get it done.

Me – Thanks, but I’ll take it from here.

Dad – Always loved that girl.

Mom – I’ll do everything I can to help.

Garrick – No need. Took care of the problem.

Garrick – Carter, just tell her how you feel when you come home.

Talia – What do you mean? Because last time I checked, and that wasn’t too long ago, she didn’t seem amenable.

Garrick – Showed her something.

Ethan – Oh dear lord.

Mom – What?

Dad – What?

Alec – Finally. I’m not the last one to know things.

Me – You showed her that video. Didn’t you?

Garrick – How’d you know?

Me – Cause I don’t have a text or a voicemail chewing my ass out.

Me – And I know about that video because one night, when you were drunk, you sent it to me by mistake.

Me – Along with a picture of some woman without a top on.

Silence.

Mom – Now I get it.

Dad – Saw that the first time she tripped and skimmed her knee. Boy, you looked panicked.

Ethan – Well, shit. Now I feel like a bag of dicks for getting onto you about never calling her darlin’ like every southerner I know.

Talia – What are y’all talking about?

Me – Thanks, Garrick.

Garrick – Got your back. Always.

Ethan – Have Garrick show you the video, Tal.

Me – Speaking of that, remember the shit Billy pulled a few months back?

Garrick – Yeah.

Ehtan – Oh yeah.

Dad – Now, I want in on this.

Me – I get back, after I straighten things out with Harlee, make her mine, we’ve got some shit to talk to Billy about.

Talia – This about what he said about Harlee in the ninth grade?

Mom – What did that little piss ant say about Harlee?

Me – Told the whole school he went all the way with her.

Talia – Told the whole school he went all the way to third base with her and that he won the five-hundred-dollar bet.

Me – What?

Mom – Oh no. No, he didn’t. I’m in on this one.

Dad – I’ll flay him alive.

Garrick added Dominik to the text thread.

Dominik – I’m in. He told my receptionist last week that she needed to stop eating so many calories because no one wanted to fuck a woman who would snort like a pig every time he entered her.

***

She says I’m good enough, even though I don’t think I am... going to bust my ass to make sure she never changes her mind.

Because she has always been in my heart.

Lodged so deep inside of it, that I could dig for the rest of eternity, and she would remain right where she was.

Safe.

Protected.

At that, I tapped the tattoo that rested over my heart.

Everyone knew about the tattoo, and the rest that I had.

But no one had looked inside the mechanical gears and read, ‘ My Incandescent.’