Heart and Soul - Chapter 22: Chapter 22

Carter put his phone down on the kitchen table.
He couldn't talk to Seth on Tuesday, like Coach had asked, because his friend didn't show up to school that day. But he did offer to go with Seth talk to Mrs Abrahams about the test he missed, on Wednesday. She agreed to let him repeat the test on Friday, so Carter made himself available to answer any question Seth may have, on Thursday evening. Thursday night, to be fairer.
Frankie had gone out with his friends after school and still hadn't come back. So they were all waiting for him and Carter's mom, who had a delayed meeting, to have dinner. It was fine though, because Tony was still cooking. Santoros rolled on Mediterranean schedules.
Carter sat at the kitchen table, after setting the table on Tony's request. Charlie sat across from him, trying to teach him a finger game Mike had taught him.
"Did you just win again?" Carter gasped around a grin.
Charlie smiled shyly, nodding.
"How do you keep doing that?"
"Guess you're just not very good at it, C-man," Luca chimed in as he walked into the kitchen, pulling up a stool next to Carter.
Charlie slipped off his seat, nearly crashing into Tony's legs as he carried a large tray straight off the oven, to jump onto Luca's lap. Luca groaned at impact, picking Charlie up beneath his arms to pull him onto his lap a little more gently.
"You're turning into a real big guy, aren't you?" Luca teased, tickling his sides. Charlie squirmed but Luca's arm around his torso kept him from toppling over. "You might grow up to be bigger than dad."
"If that happens, I'll really have to expand the door frames," Tony said, setting the tray of food on the kitchen table to cool.
Carter smiled. The tallest members of the Santoro family—like Tony, Jack, Mike and, from what Carter had gathered, Richie—had some trouble comfortably slipping through the kitchen door that led out to the back yard. They often had to position themselves a little sideways and lower their heads just an inch. If Charlie grew up to be bigger than Tony, he would definitely have to expand the door frame.
Carter didn't imagine that to be a likely scenario though. Looking at them so close together, Charlie looked a lot like Luca. Same dirty blonde hair and amber-colored eyes. Carter assumed they both took after their mother, as did Mike. However, Mike and Luca had Tony's darkly tanned skin, whereas Charlie's skin was notably fairer. Luca was not yet as tall as Mike, but he did have the bulk around the shoulders, even for a fourteen-year-old, and he seemed to be growing still.
Charlie, on the other hand, was small even for his age. He had never outright asked, but Carter suspected his developmental issues weren't only physical. Especially judging by the way the other Santoros acted with him. Either that or the special treatment for being considerably younger than the others made him behave as though he was younger, by comparison. After all, if Carter's math was right, Richie and Charlie—the oldest and youngest—had fourteen years between them. And Luca, the closest one in age, had six years on Charlie.
"Frankie just got home," Luca said.
"Are Reggie and Micah with him?" Tony asked, peeling his kitchen gloves off his hands.
"Nope."
Tony sighed, leaning back against the kitchen sink behind him and crossing his arms. "Then I definitely made too much food," he declared.
"Don't worry about it, old man," Luca told him, putting his phone in Charlie's hands so he could play a game. "Practice drilled a hole in my stomach today. I could eat a whole bull." He turned to Carter with a smile. "Coach Jean is letting me practice with the varsity team after Vasquez injured his ankle. It's an extra practice, but he told me he might play me with the boys before the season is over."
"That's great," Carter said with a smile, sensing Luca was obviously proud of it.
Luca's phone beeped and rang shrilly in Charlie's hands when he either won or lost something. Luca reached over to lower the volume to silence. Charlie made a whiny sound of complaint and Luca turned the sound back on, to just a murmur.
"Did Abby say anything?" Luca asked, casually.
"She's almost home. Left work around twenty minutes ago," Tony answered. He looked at his youngest son solemnly for a couple of seconds, before smiling knowingly. "What do you want, squirt?"
Luca scoffed with poorly feigned offense. "Why do you just assume—" he rolled his eyes at the look on his father's face. "I want to go out on Saturday," he finally let on.
Tony shrugged. "You know the rules. Tell me who, where, when, what and how. If I like all the answers, you can go."
Luca huffed impatiently. "You're not going to like it. You never like it, when I ask," he mumbled.
"Try me."
Carter pondered on getting up to give them privacy, but neither Tony nor Luca seemed bothered to have him in the room. Even if Carter did feel a little weird to witness clear moments of personal family matters between the Santoros, on occasion.
"Brad and I want to take the girls on a double date. There's this drive-in theater near Fort Lauderdale and Jessica really wants to go..."
"No."
Luca chuffed, annoyed. "See? If Bella or Frankie—or even Mike if he had any frigging friends—asked you, you would say yes," he accused.
Tony shrugged. "Probably," he confessed. "But your siblings would tell me where exactly near Fort Lauderdale it is. Who exactly would be there. What time they were planning to go and get back. What they would do precisely. And how they were planning to get there and come back."
"I told you who and what already—"
"I don't know who Jessica is, Luca. That means nothing to me," Tony countered.
"Is it Lydia's friend?" Carter asked quietly, despite his better judgement.
Luca's face lit up. "Yeah. And Lydia will be there too." He turned back to his dad, hopefully. "Carter knows Lydia's brother and Brad's brother. They're friends! You even know Lydia's dad, because he's Carter's coach."
Tony looked pensive for a moment. "We might be getting somewhere now," he mused aloud. "Do you guys have a ride? Supervision?"
"It's a date, dad," Luca spat dryly.
Carter bit back on a smile. He was starting to suspect Luca's problem was getting too impatient with his dad's concerns too quickly. It might be a side-effect of being a sixth child. He had probably grown up watching his older siblings go out and assumed they never went through the same phase where they had to build a trust base with their dad. Carter wouldn't know about it first hand, but Mel used to complain her younger siblings always acted like their parents privileged her, when she had actually had it worse for being older and thus having to navigate the topics of teenage freedom first.
"And you're fourteen," Tony shot back. "You're all freshmen. You can't just drive to a theater alone and unsupervised. Is any of you even sixteen? Can you drive there without a ride?"
"Carter could drive us," Luca blurted.
"I don't have a license."
"But you drive. I've seen you drive," Luca said.
"I can't ask Carter to do that," Tony reasoned. "You need to learn to make plans I can agree with, without dragging other people along to babysit."
"He's not babysitting and you're not asking, old man," Luca said, irritably. He looked to Carter again. "Come on, you don't have to be a babysitter. You could make plans with Brad or Lydia's brother or something, and hang out."
Carter pursed his lips. He decidedly did not want to watch a movie with Chaz Wheeler. Johnny though...
"Luca, don't be a brat," Bella blurted as she walked into the kitchen, cutting Carter's line of thinking before he could say anything.
Luca scoffed. "You don't even know what I was talking about."
"No, but I assume you were being a brat," Bella mused. "It's called an educated guess, little dude."
"Fuck off," Luca mumbled under his breath. It didn't matter though.
"I heard that," Tony warned, pointing a finger at the Jar.
"Heard what?" Carter's mom asked as she came into the kitchen, barefoot but still in her work clothes. She dropped a kiss on Carter's head before turning to kiss Tony, who had moved around the kitchen table to put an arm around her as soon as he had laid eyes on her.
"I didn't know you were home already," Tony said.
Carter's mom smiled. "Just got here."
"That's what I came here to say, but Luca's braty-ness distracted me," Bella said.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Take the lasagna, you tiny bully. Luca, take Charlie to the table. Carter, could you please bring the salad?"
They all got up to follow Tony's requests, while he stripped off his apron and hung it on the hook by the stove. Sitting around the dinner table was the same hectic affair it always was. Carter waited his turn to be served and then waited for everyone to have food to start eating.
"How's the college sorting process going?" Tony asked Mike as everyone's mouths became busy enough to quiet down a little. "Are you sure you don't need any parental support?"
"I can go through my choices with you this weekend if you want, but I've already made my mind," Mike answered with true in-character clarity. "I'm applying to Stanford in Restrictive Early Action, before the end of the month. And I'm also applying for financial aid."
"What happens if you don't get in?" Frankie asked.
Bella kicked him under the table. "Of course he'll get in. Don't be dumb, dumbass."
Tony pinched the bridge of his nose. "Bella, I'm sure you can show support for your brother without insulting the other."
Bella tilted her head like a confused puppy. "How?"
"If they refuse me," Mike said, stirring the conversation back towards safer waters smoothly, "I have a few other schools picked out to apply. But they could also just defer me to Regular Decision."
"They'd be idiots to refuse you," Luca blurted through a mouth full of lasagna.
"What other schools are you thinking?" Tony asked.
"UPenn, Berkeley, Duke..."
"You'll never survive at UPenn. Too far north. You'll freeze to death in the winter, man," Frankie said, shaking his head.
"It's Pennsylvania, Frank. Not Winterfell," Bella retorted.
"You're aiming high with your school options," Carter's mom chimed in, appreciatively.
"He sacrificed the chance of ever having an appealing personality for his academic profile, he better aim high," Frankie commented.
"He's got more of a personality than you do," Bella shot back.
"I have a personality!"
"Weed and bailing school isn't a personality, Tweedledee—Ow! Why'd you kick me for?!"
Frankie shot Bella a look that said she knew damn well why he had kicked her under the table. Tony chose to ignore his kids' altercation and all that was implied in it.
"Mike was always very eager to leave this house to the other coast. Can't imagine why," he muttered.
Frankie and Bella both scoffed.
"Just to put it out there – these are the people you like to imply are more responsible and trustworthy than me," Luca said, pointing between Frankie and Bella.
Tony smiled knowingly. "And that should really tell you something about yourself," he mused.
Luca huffed. "This is ridiculous. You're treating me like a kid."
"You're acting like one," Tony said in tone of warning. "If Mike could take you—"
"I'm working on my college applications this weekend," Mike said.
"Then I'm sorry, but—"
"What if I took him?"
Tony and Luca both turned to Carter. As did the rest of the table. Carter shrugged, trying to brush it off so he wouldn't feel so scrutinized.
"If Mike didn't mind, I could take his car and drive them."
Mike shrugged. "I wasn't planning on leaving the house."
"Shocker," Frankie mumbled.
Bella kicked him under the table. "What if I needed the car?" She asked.
"You could walk," Frankie suggested. "I know you and Lauren have been hitting the taco truck next to school hard, you could definitely use some exercise."
"You little shit," Bella spat.
"Swear Jar," Frankie called.
"Overruled," Tony declared, making his son gasp. "It was self-defense, you had it coming."
Bella blew a raspberry, as the mature girl she was, grinning widely. Charlie mimicked her, splurging tomato sauce on his plate. Mike reached over the table with his napkin to clean his little brother's mouth, while everyone else laughed.
Dinner dragged on for a while still, as was usual. Carter kept his phone out of his hands meanwhile. But after he helped Mike clear the table, he went up to his room and texted one of his most recent contacts for the first time.
He stared at the screen until the answer popped up, barely a minute later.
Carter bit back a smile. He knew Johnny probably wasn't sitting by his phone waiting for a text from him, but it was nice to think he had still answered quickly. He typed back as fast as his fingers allowed.
And while he didn't imagine Johnny sitting with his phone in hands, anxiously expecting Carter's text, Carter did lay on his bed, eyes on the screen. Waiting. He didn't have to wait long, though.
He waited again, a few seconds. Then he typed again.
And then he waited once more. Roughly twenty seconds. He wasn't actually counting. Sort of.
Carter smiled again letting go of his phone. He stared up at his ceiling with an inexplicable grin on his face, until a soft knock sounded. He sat up on his bed.
"Come in?"
His mom's head poked inside the room. She was already off her work clothes and into a pajamas, her neatly tied brown hair loose down her shoulders. She smiled at him, warmly.
"Just came to wish you goodnight," she said stepping inside.
Carter shrugged. "Already did that. Downstairs."
His mom always wished him goodnight before he went up to his room and she went down to hers. Always, since they had moved in. She sat down on his bed by his side.
"I also wanted to thank you. For offering to take your stepbrother on Saturday," she said. "You're a good brother."
"Stepbrother," he corrected.
She smiled. "I'm still proud of you."