Page 10 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO BACK OUT

Bea

Cold feet are supposed to be reserved for weddings, bungee jumping, and picking majors in college, yet here I am with cold feet about a simple Saturday night.

“I changed my mind,” I tell Daphne as I stare at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her white bathroom door.

Hudson and I are living here in her apartment with her this summer.

Possibly longer for me, depending on if the family renting the house I bought for us after the fire decides to renew their lease.

“About what?” she asks.

“Going tonight. You know what’s going to happen when the first picture gets out of me looking like this while on a date with Simon Luckwood?

And you know Izzy at the boutique will let it slip that he ordered me a dress.

And shoes. And this ridiculous—what even is that bag?

I don’t care what kind of NDA he’s using with her.

She’ll let it slip. And then everyone will say—I don’t know what they’ll say, actually.

But a man doesn’t buy an outfit for a woman without it meaning something . You know?”

Daph adjusts a strap on my slinky, glittery red dress. “You don’t have to go. You can cancel.”

I could.

She wouldn’t judge me for it.

Wouldn’t throw anything back in my face or call me a chicken later.

That’s the thing about Daph—she’s great with plans, good and bad, but she doesn’t always have to have her way or insist you’re making a mistake if you don’t do what she wants you to do.

“And then Jake wins,” I sigh.

“He doesn’t win . He lives his life. You live yours.”

I smooth my hands down the gown Simon sent. It hugs my hips and breasts and the evidence in my belly that I like chocolate chip cookies. “And if I don’t go, I spend the next eternity obsessing over how I had this chance to show him what he lost out on and I chickened out.”

“I’d pick binge-watching baking shows over going out to a fancy restaurant.”

“Is JC Fig the fanciest restaurant you’ve ever seen?”

She snorts. “God, no.”

“So it wouldn’t be a great sacrifice for you to skip it.”

She grins. “Let’s try another angle. You like running your burger bus?”

I meet her gaze in the mirror. “More than I expected to.”

It was honestly a revenge plan. Scrounge up enough money to buy and convert the bus so that I could run a more successful food truck than Jake could run a whole-ass building.

I’d quit the job I had working in the mayor’s office to be his admin assistant when we started dating, and then we were building a restaurant together. It was going to be our thing.

And then it was gone.

Everything was gone.

Job. Restaurant. Home. Future.

Now, despite my cold feet, I know I have to do this. For me.

I need to get even.

You could say my revenge era has started. But I’m having second thoughts because I don’t want to spend my life ruled by a need for vengeance.

Even if I still want Jake to suffer.

If it weren’t for Simon’s massive tip for the party that wasn’t, and then the attention he attracted when we were already giving away the food for free, this month would be firmly in the red. Even with his payment, I’m barely able to afford my own meager salary.

Running a burger bus is a little bit more of a financial stretch than I thought it would be. Plus, my socials haven’t taken off the way the socials for JC Fig took off.

It’s likely a combination of changing algorithms on the platforms and a lack of the extra attention that we got for doing interviews about Griff, but part of me wonders if Jake has the right contacts to get my accounts suppressed somehow.

So yeah, add paranoia to my list of problems after the break-up.

“Think you’ll still be running the bus in five years?” Daphne asks.

I make a face.

She knows the answer to that question.

And the answer is, I’ve spent my entire adult life taking care of my brothers and a few boyfriends, and I’ve never had to figure out what I actually want for myself.

Ironically, that’s the biggest reason she and I are friends.

Because when we met, neither of us actually knew what we wanted to be when we grew up. In her case, it got her disinherited from a massive fortune. In my case?—

Well, in my case, I just lived with the knowledge that I was a walking, breathing testament to failing my dead parents by not having my life together enough to know what I’d want to do with myself if I weren’t raising my brothers.

That I just went wherever the wind took me, professionally speaking.

Before Jake and our shared restaurant dream, it was Will who worked too hard at the bank, and I switched up my hours at my part-time job at the furniture store so that I could make him dinner and be home when he got off work.

Before Will, it was Andreas, who was massively into the outdoors and talked me into not working at all so that we could go hiking or fishing or snowshoeing while my brothers were at school, since you have that insurance money, babe, so enjoy this life for the moments that it is.

You’ll figure out more money later if you have to .

And before that, I didn’t date much because I was driving the school bus route for my brothers’ schools and trying to take classes and stressing over what I’d do whenever I finally had the time to figure out what I wanted to do.

So it’s great that I can take free classes at Austen & Lovelace College since my mom worked there for so many years, and I still get occasional calls about filling in for the bus driver who took over after I quit to be a free spirit with Andreas, but I don’t know what I want to do, and so long as I’m running the burger bus, I don’t have to think about what comes next.

Who I am.

What I want when I’m not taking care of everyone around me and executing revenge plans.

Daph fixes a lock of my hair. “So enjoy tonight for what it is.”

“Which is?”

“An opportunity for a professional boost because of a bad thing that happened. Simon Luckwood knows exactly what will happen when photos leak of the two of you. He straight-up told you so. And he hasn’t been seen with a woman other than the mother of his children in like a year and a half, and he has to know that means this will be extra big.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and I can coach you through all the right things to say when you suddenly have customers around the block wanting to know if Simon’s on the bus on any given day. ”

“And when people realize we’re not actually dating? That this was a one-time thing?”

“They’ll have tried your burgers and your secret menu items and you’ll continue to flourish all on your own.

Seriously, whatever you put in those burgers—chef’s kiss, Bea.

And I say that as someone who’s eaten burgers all over the world.

You’re gonna rule this town with your burger bus. With your fleet of burger buses.”

“I don’t want a fleet of burger buses.”

“But what if this turns out to be the best thing you ever did? What if this is what you’re supposed to do with your life?

Just because you stumble into something sideways doesn’t mean it can’t fit in the end.

Look at me and my job. I had serious reservations when I started because of where the funding comes from, but it’s what I’m supposed to do.

It’s what makes me happy. Just keep your mind open to the possibilities, okay? ”

“Can I please survive tonight first? Why did I think this was a good idea? Not that your ideas are ever bad. They’re just sometimes more—actually, just more than what I’d ever do on my own.”

“The fucker used your family’s story to steal your dad’s legacy.

And he let you give him money to help pay for it, then didn’t give it back when you broke up.

Your rent payments for living with him, my ass.

But again—if you don’t want to go, don’t go .

You don’t have to keep torturing yourself with him. ”

I don’t.

But I’ll have regrets if I don’t take a public stand about something , and this opportunity to do it with Simon won’t come up again.

I meet her gaze again while she adjusts my hair. “What if Jake gets extra attention because of this?”

“Jake can’t cook, and there’s zero chance he’s keeping his chef happy. He’s too much of a micromanager, and he can’t keep up his I’m such a great guy facade forever. Why do you think he’s gone through so many assistants at the real estate agency? Eventually, people see through him.”

“Do they?”

She doesn’t answer that. “All Jake’s getting out of this is a temporary boost that’ll fall flat within months, whereas you are getting the opportunity to prove to people that you’re more than a burger flipper whose ex-boyfriend’s family likes to spread rumors about you. Here. Let me see your eyes again.”

I obediently turn and tilt my head down. “If he’d just opened his own restaurant somewhere else, with someone else’s inspirations…”

“Exactly that. Tonight, you’re gonna look like a fucking queen.” She attacks my eyelashes with more mascara. “You’re doing your ex-boyfriend the favor of showing up on the arm of a celebrity for his grand opening.”

“You’re calling in a bomb threat to the restaurant, aren’t you?”

She cracks up. “That was five-years-ago Daphne, and that Daphne only would’ve done it to save the polar bears. This Daphne prefers psychological mind games, and Jake will lose sleep for weeks over this.”

“Do you think he’s smart enough to realize I’m playing psychological warfare? If your opponent doesn’t understand the game, is he worth playing with?”