Page 32 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

“Lighten up,” I tell Hudson. “Or else I’ll tell the story about you and your buddies and the school trip where you all?—”

“Okay, okay,” he grumbles. “Fine. Thirteen-year-old boys are boundary-pushers. Especially when there are more than one, and especially when their parent dates.”

“I know you’re not blaming me for what you did at Joey’s house when I was not dating his dad.”

“You were on a dating app. And so was he. And you matched.”

“And I’m your sister, not your mom, and I most definitely did not accept his invitation to anything .”

“Oh, dear, that looks like it hurts.” Simon points to something on Hudson’s phone. “Is the arrow supposed to stick out like that?”

“Yeah, and if it’s a?—”

Simon sways back and away from Hudson, clearly horrified.

“Bomb arrow!” Hudson crows. “If I’d been holding a kitten of death at the same time, it’d be quadruple points.”

“I worry so much about the youth these days,” Simon murmurs.

“You’ve got two chances to do better than Bea did.”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I ask my brother.

“Yep. Right here on this couch. I worked hard today. Even harder than my boss. She took a couple hours off.”

“She also gave you money for new shoes that you haven’t gone out and bought yourself yet.”

Hudson scowls at me. “Are you telling me to leave?”

I shrug with my eyebrows. “Am I?”

Simon watches us both, the smile coming back on his face. “You have the most fascinating relationships.”

“It’s ninety percent love and ten percent resentment,” Hudson says.

“Can’t really blame her though. We act like we don’t know she barely saved any insurance money for herself so that she could make sure the three of us could have a solid place to finish growing up and do anything we want to be happy, but we know. ”

“ Hudson .”

He’s not supposed to know.

None of them are supposed to know.

And here he is, telling a near-stranger who might like me or who might be buttering me up to destroy me.

I honestly don’t know which.

Simon doesn’t seem like an I will destroy you kind of guy, but then, he did write In the Weeds .

So he definitely has dark in him.

Even if he meant it to be a comedy.

“Did you truly sacrifice your own financial comfort for your brothers?” Simon asks me.

“No. I had what I needed. And this is a private family matter.” I lock eyes with Hudson and point to the door. “Go buy yourself shoes.”

“You know we’re going to pay you back one day,” my brother says. “So you can do anything in the world that you want to do. And by we , you know I mean Griff. At least until I’m world famous too.”

“You have big dreams?” Simon asks me.

“She doesn’t know what she wants to do because she hasn’t had the chance to really think about it,” the backstabbing little asshole replies.

“Hudson—”

“When Mom and Dad died, she talked about opening their restaurant in their honor, but then she had to cook dinner for us every night, so she got tired of cooking and said one of us should learn so that she could just be the manager. Then she learned to drive a bus since the driver on our route retired and someone had to. Then she did whatever her latest boyfriend wanted her to do because it was easier than figuring out the hard things when she was already doing the hardest thing with handling the three of us.” Hudson rises and stretches.

“And it’s a good thing she never got inspired to be an assassin for hire, or I’d be dead right now. ”

He dances around the coffee table, giving me a wide berth in the easy chair as he grabs his keys from the bowl on Daphne’s small sideboard, which is carved to look like swan necks are holding it up.

She told me once that pieces like that could go from junk at a yard sale to a sought-after antique if the right furniture buyer scooped it up and convinced someone in her circles that it was worth something.

And the hilarious thing is, Margot eyes it funny every time she comes to visit.

Like she’s wondering how Daph could afford it.

When Daph picked it up at an estate sale for fifteen bucks.

“We’re talking later,” I tell Hudson.

“I’m feeling like shoveling goat shit before the sun’s up tomorrow. Good exercise.”

So he’s running away to stay at Ryker’s tonight. “You’re goat shit.”

He grins, then glances past me at Simon once more. “She never actually got together with any of our friends’ dads on those apps. She was too busy making sure Griff and I got to do every sport and club and take every kind of lesson we wanted to do. Later.”

The door clicks shut behind him, leaving me alone with Simon.

Or him alone with me.

I’m not sure which one is more ominous.

“Apologies for abandoning you,” he says before the silence can get awkward. “At the carnival. My security team didn’t like the crowd we were attracting. I did offer to pay restitution for the broken glass.”

I shift in the seat to pull my legs closer to my body, grateful that he’s not giving me an inquisition over my financial situation and life goals. “It was faulty equipment. Not your job to pay for that.”

“The world has given me more than I deserve. I enjoy helping those who are in the same kind of predicaments that I once was.”

“You used to run a ping-pong toss booth that some jerk destroyed with a mallet head?”

He smiles brighter. “Goodness me, no. But I am familiar with being overworked and underpaid. So much so that I still use a dusty old computer when I’m working so that I remember normal people often have to wait a full minute for a sentence to appear on their screen and that their printers randomly spit out stacks of papers that they don’t recall ordering it to print.

It keeps me humble. Tell me—did all of the goldfish survive? ”

See? He’s either hilarious and awesome, or he’s plotting my death. “They did.”

“That’s a relief.”

“But you shouldn’t replace the bowls. Everyone in town hates that game. You’re a hero to everyone but those traumatized goldfish right now.”

“That’s definitely a conundrum then.”

We stare at each other while I fiddle with one of the buttons on my blouse.

Oh god.

This probably looks like I’m offering to take it off for him.

And that has me shooting to my feet. “Would you like something to drink?”

He grimaces.

“Nonalcoholic,” I amend. “Daph keeps a pitcher of raspberry tea in the fridge at all times during summer. If you like that kind of thing.”

And the smile is back. “Sounds delicious. Thank you.”

He trails me into the kitchen, and my heart starts doing that annoying thing again.

It’s bouncing in anticipation.

Eager to hang out with Simon.

In private.

No one listening in.

Just the two of us.

I haven’t had a drop of alcohol today, but I still feel a fizzing in my veins like I’ve been guzzling champagne.

“Did the boys have fun today?” I ask him.

“Alas, despite winning four cakes, they failed in their endeavor to also be banned from musical chairs. They’re currently in a sugar-induced stupor for having eaten their feelings with two of the cakes they did win.”

That makes me smile too. “They’re a handful.”

He leans against the sink, watching me as I pour two glasses of tea. “They’ve had their worlds turned inside out.”

“I hear moving is hard on kids.” I’ve also heard his kids are here in Athena’s Rest basically permanently since Lana’s moving closer to care for her mom. Starting school here in the fall, with plans to stay through high school no matter what happens with her mom, since stability is important.

“Also rather difficult to suddenly be in the spotlight at school because of your father’s job. And then difficult to make new friends when you’re unsure who likes you for you… I suspect you can relate.”

“A little. My family’s some kind of famous—or infamous, maybe?—because of the fire, and truly, Griff’s our current most famous resident. He’s the first baseball player from here to hit the big leagues.”

“And your roommate?”

“She can relate a lot.”

“I recall you saying something about her coming from a family that runs—some kind of large business. Appliances? Why am I picturing her leaping out of a fridge?”

I’m smiling as I hand him a glass of tea. “Probably for a good reason. But her family runs hotels. One of the largest chains.”

“And she was disinherited?”

“Yep.” Our fingers brush, and I tell my entire central nervous system to knock it the fuck off .

He’s a guy.

Just a guy.

And not one who’ll be around for long.

He keeps leaning against the sink as he sips his tea.

And smiles.

Of freaking course he does.

“This is delightful.”

He’s like a giant puppy. This makes me happy! That makes me happy! Oh, look, a new toy! A new friend! The sun came up! Everything is wonderful!

No, delightful .

I like that he uses words like delightful .

“Are you honestly always this happy?” I’ve asked him before, but I still don’t believe it.

And unlike every other time I’ve asked, this time, he cringes a little behind the smile.

It’s so odd.

He’s happily cringing.

“Usually it’s easy, but—you were correct when you said that I have gaps in my memory of our evening together last night, and I’m afraid I may have been less than happy then.”

And here we go.

I nod. “You want to know what you said.”

“I suspect I said a few things that I rarely confess aloud, and I—well, possibly some things that aren’t true as well.”

“Like that your parents used you somehow while they cheated on each other?”

Yep.

We’re going for that elephant in the room too.

And he is not smiling anymore. “I said that? Exactly that?”

“You did. And that you didn’t like me because I pretty much did the same thing to you with Jake last night. Putting you between us.”

He looks down at his tea, then rubs his free hand over his face. “I do not dislike you.”

“I’m not going to tell anyone your issues with your parents, if that’s what you’re worried about. Not my business, and I should’ve told you why I wanted to go to Jake’s grand opening last night. You have every right to be mad at me.”

“But I dislike being mad at anyone.”

“Except your parents?”