Page 31 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

WE ARE NEVER EVER PRETENDING TO GET BACK TOGETHER

Bea

He left.

Simon just left.

No goodbye. No warning.

One minute, he was there, being charming and smiley and a little awkward, and the next, I was finishing helping pick goldfish off the ground and he’d disappeared.

The boys were gone.

His security team was gone.

Even Lana was gone.

It was like they were never there.

So after everything’s picked up, with only a few weird looks aimed my way from the people around us—probably because people know I was walking around with Simon and want to know the gossip, including why he’s no longer with me—I head back to the burger bus to help finish cleaning that up too.

Daph and Hudson report that we’ve sold more than any other event this week, even if we didn’t sell out like the rest of the food trucks.

And the way my brother and best friend are looking at each other, I know there’s more.

“What?” I say.

“Don’t—” Daphne starts, but Hudson interrupts her.

“Lucinda Camille was supposedly making the rounds, telling people that she heard from a friend that someone got sick after eating at your bus.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath. “Implying I’ve made people sick when she’d say to my face that she never said I made them sick?”

Hudson nods grimly.

“You’re going to have to fight back eventually, Bea,” Daphne says. “People who are like her—they fight until they win.”

“Jake already got the whole fucking restaurant,” Hudson says.

“You two should go,” I say. “I’ll clean up. Thanks for your help.”

They both look at me like they each want to say something more about the Camilles, but I shoo them away.

I baited Jake last night.

He got terrible press for Simon leaving without eating.

And I spent some of today hanging out with Simon in public again.

I am fighting back. Even if I don’t like how .

So it’s good that Simon disappeared.

I need some perspective. Some time to figure out what I want.

How I want to continue this battle.

“You want to go cheese shopping?” Daphne asks Hudson. “It’s all on Margot.”

He shakes his head. “I’m staying to help Bea.”

“You don’t—” I start, but he cuts me off.

“I won’t say a word about the devil. But you’re working too hard. I’m helping. Okay?”

I blink back the burn in my eyes, then smile at him. “Thank you.”

He grunts. “Least I can do.”

With two of us on the job, it doesn’t take long, and soon, I’m driving the burger bus back toward the apartment.

Hudson lounges in the lone front seat that we left in the bus for cases just like this, when someone’s riding with me.

“You gonna talk about the other elephant in the room?” he asks me.

“What elephant?”

“The one where Simon Luckwood liiiiiikes you?”

My heart hiccups even as my brain tells me he’s wrong. “He doesn’t like me.”

“Bea. I know when a guy’s making googly-eye faces at my sister.”

“He was wearing sunglasses.”

“And you could tell even with the sunglasses. So why the long face?”

“One, he doesn’t like me. He told me so. Two, I’m not interested in dating right now, so it doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t. And three, even if he did, he basically abandoned me after he destroyed the fishbowl toss game. Who does that?”

“Guys whose security team recognized that the crowd was gonna get hella big once everyone realized he put the game out of commission. Everyone hates that game. He’s a hero now. A hero who liiiiiikes you.”

And this is why I don’t want to talk to Hudson about it.

Because he’ll say things like that and make me think he’s right.

And what’s more complicated than my ex-boyfriend’s favorite actor giving me all the signals to suggest he likes me when I’ve already weaponized the appearance of our relationship and turned the town’s worst family against me with it?

“What do you care?” I ask. “You were all overprotective caveman when he came to pick me up last night, and you’re making excuses for him today?”

I catch sight of him lifting a shoulder in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know. He just—he seems like he needs a friend.

And you’re a good friend. And you could use some new friends too.

People who weren’t here when Mom and Dad died.

People who can honestly not give a fuck what the Camilles say about you and your burger bus.

So you don’t have to ask if they only became your friend out of pity or spite or if they actually like you.

That’s why Daphne’s so great. No history.

Not that far back. So you know she likes us for who we are now and she doesn’t give two shits about what Jake and his family do either. ”

That’s remarkably insightful.

And it doesn’t help me battling the I like him, I shouldn’t like him, he doesn’t like me, so why is he acting like he likes me? conundrum still pinging around my brain.

“Explain this he needs a friend thing.”

“Bea. No one smiles that much. He’s trying too hard to make people like him.”

“Maybe that’s Hollywood.”

“Not according to Daphne. Or logic. He wrote and starred in the world’s current biggest show. Everyone wants a piece of that, whether he’s smiling or not.”

I don’t have a good answer for that, so I drive us the rest of the way home, caught up in my own thoughts.

Once we’re in the apartment, I head straight for the shower while Hudson collapses face-first on the couch.

And that’s how I expect to find him when I get out of the shower, but it’s not.

No, when I wander into the living room in my rubber ducky robe with my wet hair pulled up in a towel on top of my head, Hudson’s in the kitchen pulling mozzarella sticks out of the air fryer.

And on the other side of the front of the apartment, Simon is sitting on the couch.

We lock eyes—his wary, mine likely wild with surprise—and his gaze drifts down to where my robe is gaping open and showing off my cleavage.

I muffle a shriek and retreat to the bedroom as Hudson calls, “Hey, Bea, Simon’s here to see you.”

“I daresay she’s figured that out.” Simon’s voice holds all of the normal cheer that doesn’t match the hint of caution I noticed in his eyes.

Maybe I was imagining it.

Maybe he was startled too and I misread his expression.

Maybe Hudson threatened to disembowel him and invite Ryker over to help.

Or maybe Hudson’s right and Simon needs a friend and he doesn’t know how to say so.

Or maybe Simon’s here because he wants to know more of what I remember of last night that he doesn’t.

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Simon wouldn’t have told me he didn’t like me if he hadn’t been drunk.

So this has to put him in an awkward position.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Simon Luckwood in the past week—he doesn’t send his team to do his work. Dirty or otherwise.

He apologized himself—once alone, once with his boys—for putting me in jail. He went on an apology date with me. He broke down the bathroom door himself to rescue me last night.

And Hudson’s probably right that his security team is the reason he didn’t stick around to save the goldfish.

So of course he’s not sending an assistant or a security guard to ask what he said.

He wants to know himself.

I dig through the clean laundry pile in the corner of my room between my queen-size bed and the lone window, telling myself I’m looking for a bra and underwear while I toss aside shirts and shorts and skirts and pants that I’m suddenly not feeling like wearing, because what does a woman wear to meet a guy in her living room when the guy gave her the most awkward date of her life—no, wait, dates , because I think today counted as a date too, and both of them were awkward.

And also kind of awesome.

Not because I was on a date with a guy I’ve watched for countless hours on TV—Jake loved that show—but because he’s nothing like what I would’ve expected.

He’s too real for that.

Too normal.

Male voices drift down the hall and through the hollow wood bedroom door.

Video games.

They’re discussing video games.

I finally locate my favorite bra and my skimpiest panties—I’m feeling like a strong, sexy woman today, okay? It has nothing to do with Simon being here after he abandoned me at the carnival—and I decide on olive green linen shorts and a loose white sleeveless blouse.

After finger-combing my curls and shaking them out, I decide wet hair will do and stroll back out of my bedroom, where the scent of fried cheese hits me in the face.

“And what does that one do?” Simon’s saying to Hudson as they huddle over his phone, one empty plate of leftover mozzarella stick breading on the table in front of them.

I eye Simon.

He didn’t eat cheese, did he?

Wait.

No.

Not my business.

But what’s he doing here?

Hudson shifts on the couch, making it squeak. “That’s either the slingshot of death or the slingshot that’ll help you hunt for birds to eat.”

“Croaking Creatures?” I ask as I settle into the easy chair beside the couch.

Simon glances at me, does a double take, and then smiles. “Hello, Bea. You look lovely.”

My entire body flushes. “Funny. You look like a guy who ran away from a good time.”

Hudson’s back to being the protective brother. He scowls at Simon. “Quit looking at my sister like—oh, shit! Look at this. They just added Doc Rover’s evil twin and a flying squid of death.”

“Death by flying squid,” Simon muses. “How fascinating.”

“It inks your eyes out.”

“And that’s…good?”

“You want your creatures to not die, but also you get more points when you do die in more horrific ways.”

“I’m a tad confused.”

“Sometimes I think parental confusion is the entire point of half of what they do,” I say.

Simon beams at me. “I said that exact thing to Butch not thirty minutes ago when my boys were arguing with each other over a pinball machine until I intervened, at which point they teamed up on me.”

“You teach them to ask about a woman’s sex life?” Hudson asks.

Simon sits straighter. “Of course not. I’m teaching them to be respectful, and didn’t realize that was an area that needed attention.”