Two-Step Read online

  Iris stifles a grin, but she doesn’t take her eyes off me.

  “It’s early on-set. She’s only sixty-two.”

  This fact hits her like a blow, and she closes her eyes, lips drawn between her teeth. “Wow,” she whispers.

  “Yeah.” I slow as we cross the cattle guard. “But the place where she lives is good. The staff really cares and they have some good programs.”

  She’s quiet for a moment as we bounce down the gravel drive. We pass Mrs. Thibodeaux’s place. The back half her south pasture shows standing water where she’s closest to the river, but I can see her cattle grazing on the north end.

  “Do you have other family? Besides your uncle and your dad, I mean.”

  “Yeah, my sister Val lives in Atlanta,” I answer, scanning Mrs. Thibodeaux’s barn, outbuildings and house for damage. “She’s married and has—”

  “Oh my God!”

  Iris’s cry has me slamming the brakes. I follow her gaze to my house. At least, I’m supposed to be looking at my house, but the mangled crown of a pecan tree blocks my view.

  “Shit.”

  “Beau, is that your tiny house?”

  I throw my truck in park and kill the engine. In the gaps between the leaves and branches, I can see red and gray, the paint and trim colors of my house. Something is still standing at least. “Yep. Let’s see what’s left of it.”

  “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Iris unbuckles her seatbelt and slips from the truck. For a moment the surreal sight is all I can focus on, but my wits come back to me before she reaches into the back for Mica.

  “Be careful,” I tell her. “Keep him close. Keep an eye out for water moccasins. They could be seeking higher ground with the river so high.”

  Iris scans the ground at her feet, nodding. “Got it.”

  I do a quick sweep of my side of the truck. The land where my house sits is on a slight rise, a wedge between crawfish ponds and river. The natural levee between the two is still clear, but much of its bulk is under water. Flooding, yes, but not devastation, though it might mean an earlier end to the season for crawfish farmers around here.

  I’m grateful water hasn’t sealed off the gravel road and that Mrs. Thibodeaux’s house and mine are high and dry, but that pecan tree didn’t do me any favors.

  “It looks like it’s just the treetop,” Iris says, moving around the front of the truck, Mica on a lead close at her heels. “Maybe it’s not too bad.”

  I round the tree, coming aside the house. She’s right. The front porch has been shorn off and is nothing more than a flattened heap of lumber and tin, but most of the structure of the house itself appears to be intact. I’ll have to clear this out before I know for sure how bad the damage is, but it’s fixable. Maybe the tree did do me a favor because a few feet more to the right, and it would’ve smashed through my living space.

  Getting the tree debris cleared and securing a tarp over what is probably a damaged roof are my first order of business, but I need to get Iris home before I can do that. Maybe Lowe’s or Home Depot will be open today. One can only hope.

  With a dusk to dawn curfew in place, I need to get busy. I’ve got about four hours to work with.

  I face Iris. “Will you be okay at your house by yourself?” I ask, not wanting to leave her if she doesn’t feel safe. Maybe I could take her to Nonc’s if she’s uneasy being alone without power.

  Iris scrunches up her forehead. “What do you mean?”

  I take a step toward her, wanting—as always—to be closer to her. “I have a lot of work to do here, so I’m going to have to run you back home, but if you don’t feel—”

  “Why can’t I stay and help?”

  Her question—and her determined frown—have me coming up empty. “I—I didn’t think you’d want to.”

  Iris gapes at me like I’m crazy. “Of course, I want to help!”

  Okay, I’m pretty sure Mrs. Thibodeaux heard that all the way over at her place. I try to tame my grin. “Sorry, I—”

  Iris scowls. “What? You don’t think I can handle a little manual labor?” She waves a hand at the heap of branches, leaves, and debris. “Or maybe I’m too small or too girly to be of any use?”

  I know she’s tough. No one hikes the AT without a serious measure of grit, but, dammit, she’s a celebrity. I wasn’t expecting her to put on work gloves and start excavating my house.

  “No and no,” I say firmly. “Fair enough. You’re on branch hauling duty.”

  Her scowl clears. “Good.”

  “Good,” I echo. “I’ll get the chainsaw.”

  We work until about six-thirty. It’s stifling, and the mosquitos are murderous. Mica took refuge in the shed hours ago after Iris used the hose beside it to fill a metal tub with clean water. The hose has also been our only source of hydration as we’ve worked.

  But at least the branches have been cleared from my porch and the bigger ones cut into firewood. We also cleared at least some of the demolished porch and my rocking chair that was reduced to matchsticks, but I still can’t open my front door yet. It happens to be the only door, so I can’t get into the house for clean clothes or assess the damage from the inside.

  I find a waterproof horse blanket in the barn, and Iris and I use it as a makeshift tarp until I can get to the hardware store for the real thing. It’s all we can do before we run the risk of being on the roads after curfew.

  Besides, we’re exhausted. Sweaty. Dirty. Scraped. Scratched. And mosquito-bitten.

  On the drive back to Iris’s, I take Pinhook all the way to University, and nearly cheer when I see working traffic lights.

  “Power,” I say, pointing to the beacons of hope.

  Iris gasps. “Oh my God. Is that Sonic open?”

  The lights are on. Cars fill the bays. A line snakes from the drive thru.

  “Want a burger?” I ask.

  “I want everything on the menu.”

  Chuckling, I pull in and get into the drive thru line.

  “I’m buying,” Iris says.

  “Um. I don’t think so.” I dig into my pocket for my wallet. Iris digs into her purse for hers.

  “Why not?” she challenges, and I know immediately what I’m in for.

  I don’t even bother with pretense. “Because your boyfriend is a southern gentleman.”

  Iris’s smile at this is epic. Her tri-colored eyes dance. And even though I know she likes what she hears, I also know I haven’t won this argument.

  She clears her throat. “Well, your girlfriend isn’t from the past—”

  I bark a laugh.

  “—so you’ll have to indulge her,” she finishes with a jaunty tilt of her chin and shoves her credit card in my face.

  God, I love this woman.

  I take it from her because I plan on indulging her as long as I can.

  We place our order of cheeseburgers, tater tots, cheese sticks, iced tea—mine sweet, hers unsweet—and a plain junior burger patty for Mica, and pull up to the window.

  “I know it’s wrong, but fast food smells so good,” she says, almost swooning. Mica sticks his head into the front seat, sniffing as if in agreement. “I haven’t had a cheese stick in at least five years.”

  The attendant repeats the total, and I hand over Iris’s card. “When was the last time you had fast food,” I ask her. Knowing what I know about the way she eats, I can’t imagine she lets herself cut loose very often.

  “At Bush International Airport in Houston when Sally and I were on our way back from the AT.” A guilty smile overtakes her face. “I knew Moira was going to impose a juice cleanse and a strict diet before we started filming, so I let myself go a little crazy.”

  I grin, loving that even when she was under Moira’s thumb all the time, she still rebelled in her own way. “Where’d you go?”

  “Cinnabon,” she says like it should be obvious. “Go big or go home.”

  I’m laughing when the Sonic attendant hands Iris’s card back to me. “Sorry. Your card was declined,” sh
e says.

  “Wait. What?” Iris leans over me to make eye contact with the girl. “Could you try again?”

  “I tried it twice—” The girl does a double-take. “Do I know you?” She narrows her eyes on Iris. This kid can’t be older than seventeen.

  “Um...Maybe. Are sure about that card?” Iris asks, clearly getting rattled.

  The Sonic girl looks down at the card again, and her eyes bug. “Iris Adams?” Her gaze shoots back at Iris. “What?! You’re Raven Blackwell! Whaaaat?”

  “Yeah, I am. Can you just—”

  “Hey!” Sonic Girl calls over her shoulder. “Y’all, it’s Raven Blackwell. Right here in the drive thru.”

  “Oh God,” Iris mutters.

  “Is this a problem?” I ask in a hushed voice. “We can leave if you don’t want them to see y—”

  “It’s not that,” Iris says low, shaking her head. “It’s the card. It’s Moira. I think she’s done something to my card.”

  I look back at the drive-thru window to find it crowded with teenagers, all slack-jawed. Some of them have their phones out.

  Iris brings her gaze back to them and puts on a smile. “Hi guys. How’s everybody?”

  A chorus of replies floods out of the window:

  “We cool.”

  “That’s not really her. Looks like her though.”

  “Can I get your autograph?”

  “Tell you what,” Iris digs in her wallet and pulls out another card and hands it over. ‘I’ll sign autographs while you run this card, okay?”

  Then she cuts her eyes to me and drops her voice. “You got any paper, professor?”

  “We have paper trays,” the girl with Iris’s card announces.

  “Perfect—” Iris ducks again and reads the girl’s name tag. “Perfect, Kami.”

  Kami squeals. “King! Raven Blackwell knows my name!”

  I pass a stack of paper trays to Iris who has already produced a pen. She gets through two of them before Kami says, “Uh oh.”

  Iris looks up. “What uh oh?”

  “This one’s declined too.” Kami’s suspicious gaze cuts to Iris. “You sure you’re really Raven Blackwell?”

  Iris’s brows lower. “I’m sure I’m Iris Adams.”

  Kami smirks. “That’s what I mean. Why your card don’t work?”

  Iris sighs.

  I dig out my wallet again.

  “I told y’all that wasn’t her,” a voice from the back of the crowd crows.

  “Here.” I slap a twenty on the counter. I’ve seen that look on Iris’s face before. She’s hungry. She’s tired. And she’s about to freak out. I need to get her out of here. “Can we have our food?”

  “Can we have our autographs?”

  I see Kami’s eyes go wide with horror before she turns. “Brian, shut it.” She turns back and hands me the bags. I give them to Iris in exchange for the stack of autographed paper trays, but not before Mica makes a strategic move to stick his nose in one of the brown bags.

  “Hey—”

  “Down, Mica,” Iris scolds, more stressed than I’ve ever seen her.

  I jerk the bags away before the dog can steal anything and hand over the paper trays. “Keep the change.”

  I don’t think I leave skid marks on the drive thru pavement, but it’s close.

  “Shit,” Iris hisses.

  I brake at the edge of the parking lot. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad was that?” I ask, referring to the exchange with her fans.

  “That?” She points back at the Sonic. “That’s not the problem.”

  I’m picturing one of those kids posting a video of her card being declined, but if she’s not worrying about that, I don’t want to add it to the list.

  “The money?” I don’t want her worrying about that either.

  “Yes, I mean—” Her face falls like she’s just been handed the weight of the world. “What has she done? How am I going to pay for things? How am I going to pay Ramon and this new manager, and, shit, an attorney?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  She blinks out of her panic, and her eyes focus on me. “We?”

  “Hell, yeah.” I smile at her. “You’re my girlfriend, remember?”

  It’s small, but a smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “We,” she says again, but this time the word sounds like relief. Then mischief overtakes the look in her eyes. “You know what she would absolutely hate?”

  I fight to keep from laughing just at her expression. “What’s that?”

  Iris rifles through the to-go bags, takes out the mozzarella sticks, and unlocks her phone. “Photographic evidence of me eating junk food.”

  In the next instant, I’m holding a cheese stick too, and Iris is taking a selfie of us.

  “Oh, perfect. We look just as dirty and sweaty as we are.” She shows me the picture, and yeah, we’re a mess. Iris leans her back into my chest, a wide smile on her face as she bites into a stretchy piece of fried cheese. I’m grinning like a fool behind her, cheese stick in one hand, looking down like I’m amazed to find this stunning girl in my arms, and Mica’s nose is in the shot, just inches from one of the bags again.

  Like Iris said, it’s perfect. It may be my favorite photo of all time.

  “She’ll hate it.” Iris quickly types up a caption and then shows it to me. “This okay?”

  After an afternoon of hurricane cleanup, we’re so glad #sonic was open! Mozzarella sticks for the win! Yes, Mica, the burger is for you.

  #dogsofinstagram

  #boyfriendmaterial

  #safeafteraddie

  Yeah, I’m grinning big when I read #boyfriendmaterial. She’s telling the whole world what I am to her. I might have to set up an IG account just so she can tag me in shit like this.

  “Go for it.”

  She beams and posts the picture. I pull onto Pinhook Road.

  “And now you need to call Ramon, tell him about the cards, and get your lawyer on it. STAT.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  IRIS

  I have a feeling I’m going to look back on my life and think of it in terms of Before Hurricane Addie and After Hurricane Addie. Not because of historic destruction, but because of the life-altering shift this storm made in my life.

  We don’t film on Monday or Tuesday because power is still out over half the city, but not at my house, thank God. Beau says it’s because I’m so close to City Hall. He has been staying with me. We worked on his house together, putting a temporary patch of plywood and blue tarp over his busted roof. He was able to get inside this time and pack more clothes and a few other things.

  I have to admit, I’m glad power hasn’t been restored to his place yet. Since he’s out in the country, he thinks it could be a few more days. I know it’s wrong, but I’d be okay if it takes longer. With just over four weeks of filming to go, I want to spend as much time with Beau as possible.

  This week has been busy with other things too—especially after we resumed production. Including working with the attorney Ramon retained for me, who specializes in entertainment law. Ela Flores is based in L.A., but even with the time difference, she’s gone out of her way to conference with me when I’m not on set.

  And there’s been a lot to conference about.

  She issued Moira a cease and desist letter warning her against any further interference with my finances, social media accounts, public persona, and private property. It turns out Moira had cancelled my credit and debit cards, reporting to the bank that since the passwords on the accounts had been changed, she suspected foul play.

  Yeah, right.

  So, I’m waiting on new cards, but she must have known better than to actually touch any of my money because it’s all there. I can pay bills online and use ApplePay and cash until those come in.

  I guess cancelling my cards was a way of letting me know she could still mess with me. That she still had the power.

  I don’t want to admit it to anyone, but she still does have the power. A lot of i
t, anyway.

  I’m afraid of seeing her. I haven’t actually laid eyes on her since before the storm, and I don’t want to. But she’s come close. Moira showed up at the studio on Thursday while we were filming. She flashed her badge, got past security, and probably would’ve stormed the set right in the middle of Raven and Anmyr’s kissing scene if Ramon hadn’t spotted her first.

  Security confiscated her badge and escorted her off the premises. Ray said she went ballistic. I’m glad I wasn’t there, that I didn’t even know it was happening. When I imagine that—of her yelling and carrying on—my muscles lock up and I feel like I’m six years old again.

  If I had been there, she would have screamed at me to call them off, and I can’t be sure I wouldn’t have done it.

  Everyone—and by that I mean Ela, Ray, Sally, and Beau—wants me to get a restraining order. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t even know if I can explain why. And maybe I’m holding out hope that things will change for us if she’s not my manager. Just my mother.

  In the moments when I’m alone with my thoughts—like in the make-up chair or in my trailer waiting for my call time—memories from out of nowhere pop up and rattle me. Bad ones. But good ones too, like the look on her face the day I landed my first part.

  It’s happenin’, baby. Everything we’ve ever dreamed of.

  I’d never seen her so happy, so hopeful. So proud.

  Deep in the seat of my soul, I know acting is what I am meant to do, and without Moira, I never would have made it this far. So how can I ask a judge to issue an order to keep her two-hundred yards away from me?

  Besides, other than coming to the set, she hasn’t tried to approach me. She hasn’t come by the house. She hasn’t followed me from the studio. She hasn’t tried calling me from an unblocked number.

  But Ramon won’t let me out of his sight unless I’m with Beau.

  He won’t leave the set even when I’m in front of the camera. I think he feels guilty for not being here when everything went down, but I keep telling him that I needed him right where he was.