Page 4 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

ALL BAD IDEAS START SOMEWHERE

Bea

My feet ache. My hair has melted to the back of my neck.

My armpits smell like rotten oysters. We’re nearly cleaned out—probably because we gave away our entire inventory today, but still, it’s nice that people are finally trying my food truck—and freaking Simon Luckwood is still signing autographs from my chef’s table at the back of my bus.

This time for freaking Mrs. Camille.

Jake and Logan’s mother.

Fourth-grade teacher and president of the local theater association, which is a role my mom had until she died, which is extra irritating today.

The good news? Mrs. Camille isn’t trying to talk Daphne into playing a role in this year’s late summer production.

The bad news?

“Oh, you simply must join us in the Athena’s Rest Players,” she’s saying to Simon. “You would be the best Willy Loman for us. I’m playing Linda, of course. You and I would have amazing chemistry on stage.”

“That’s a most kind offer,” Simon says.

“Oh, and you’ll love the murder mystery dinner we plan too. Here. I have a postcard about it. Save the date.”

I look at Daphne, and we simultaneously make gagging faces.

Naturally, Mrs. Camille and Simon are getting along fabulously.

While sitting at the chef’s table in my burger bus.

When one of her kids arrested me and the other has been a complete dick since breaking up with me.

It’s aggravating as hell on top of the fact that all afternoon, I’ve heard Simon’s British accent, and all afternoon, I haven’t been able to stop myself from looking at him.

His dark hair is hidden beneath his blue baseball cap, and the logo for the nearby minor league baseball team on the cap is obscured by the sunglasses that he put on top of the cap brim.

His blue eyes are sparkly and seemingly happy, with laugh lines creasing the edges almost more than you’d expect for a guy in his mid- to late-thirties.

His cheeks are covered with a light dusting of dark whiskers, and his nose is the kind that annoys me.

It’s just so perfect .

I don’t trust people with perfect noses.

But it’s the perpetual smile that has me truly irked.

The man hasn’t stopped being happy for a single minute.

Smiling that much is unnatural in any circumstance. If that’s not reason enough to not trust him, I don’t know what is.

I wipe a towel over my forehead and glance at Daphne. She and Hudson, who showed up to help too, are pulling the last of the fish and chips out of the fryers and bickering good-naturedly, like they always do.

The first time Daphne and I lived together, Hudson was fifteen and still at home, so they’re practically siblings too.

She play-attacks him with a fried fish fillet on a stick.

He leaps back. “Stop waving it around like that. It’s gonna fall off.”

“That’s what your girlfriend said.”

He grabs a handful of fries and throws them at her.

She shrieks and dodges, bangs her hip into the customer window, and makes an erp noise as the bus sways.

“Good gracious, they’re all hooligans, aren’t they?” Mrs. Camille says.

She’s using a British accent that I’ve never heard her use in real life.

“If you two make this thing roll over, you’re building me a new one,” I tell Hudson and Daphne as I flip a burger at the grill. While we’ve mostly been handing out free fish all afternoon—it was technically already paid for—a few people have asked for burgers.

Expected it might happen since this is technically a burger bus, so I swung by the market to get extra supplies after the chief let me out of jail and I reclaimed my bus.

And honestly?

It’s a relief.

The burger bus hasn’t exactly had a strong start to its existence.

Likely due to the woman sitting at my chef’s table with the guy who had me sent to jail this morning.

“I’m simply amazed that it doesn’t fall off,” the Brit in the back of my bus says as he lifts his own fish on a stick in the air.

Mrs. Camille sniffs. “Undoubtedly unnatural ingredients that someone who clearly cares about his body as much as you do shouldn’t consume.”

“Time’s up,” Simon’s security guy says to her. “Next person.”

Simon? I’d toss him off the top of my bus, and yes, fine, I admit it’s partially because Jake made me watch In the Weeds so much that I’d dislike Simon under even the best of circumstances. I have In the Weeds trauma.

But his security guy? The guy he calls Pinky ?

He might be old enough to be my dad and looks kinda scary with that scar through his eyebrow, but I’ll kiss him in gratitude if he can get Mrs. Camille off my bus.

“Surely you can make an exception for a fellow thespian,” she says to Pinky.

“No,” Pinky says.

“Afraid he’s the boss,” Simon tells her. “But it’s been lovely chatting, Lucinda.”

She smiles at him. “We must do it again sometime. Maybe over a spot of tea?”

“Lovely,” Simon says again.

Pinky hustles Mrs. Camille off the bus over her objections that there isn’t actually anyone else in line, which makes me love him a little bit more.

“Make sure he gets whatever he wants,” I murmur to Daph.

“Already slipped him a twenty to get him to make her leave,” she whispers back.

I fucking love this woman.

When I told her I wanted to buy an old bus and convert it to a food truck so that I could launch a more successful restaurant than the restaurant Jake essentially stole from me, she took my idea and went wild.

No smaller buses for us. She insisted on a full-size, seventy-capacity school bus that we could put a chef’s table into for a premier food truck experience.

Fine by me.

I would’ve been way too claustrophobic in a regular-size food truck, and she knew it.

We pulled out the bus seats to make room for the kitchen and painted the whole interior a sunny yellow, leaving the back windows clear but obscuring the front windows with custom- printed static clings featuring family photos from over the years, before and after the fire, so our parents are in some too.

We’re grilling burgers and having food fights and doing dishes together.

My oldest little brother brought in someone he knew with a plasma torch to cut the service window.

My middle little brother hooked us up with a friend of his who’d worked in his family’s food truck his entire life and had opinions about the best setup for a kitchen.

My youngest little brother sent memes about food trucks to the group chat.

We covered the rear windows with pictures of family meals.

The table itself is big enough to fit six. It’s an avocado-green Formica table that Daphne found at a thrift store and convinced a friend to paint and cover with resin to protect it, so now the tabletop is a field of flowers where burgers with wings flit about, pollinating everything.

We added it in so we could charge a premium for people who wanted an exclusive, if quirky, experience.

And that table of honor is still occupied by a man I’d like to forget.

He once again holds up the fish on a stick that Hudson gave him right before Mrs. Camille showed up. “And in addition to not falling off, it’s still flaky and delicious. Absolutely marvelous.”

“My dude, you need to get out more,” Daphne tells him.

“Quite right,” he agrees. “What other marvels does this town hold?”

“Cheese curds,” the three of us answer together.

He grimaces, then the bastard does the worst thing he could possibly do.

He cracks up. “You’re rather funny, the lot of you.”

What a weirdo.

Not that I don’t have a sense of humor—I do. Kinda have to, considering all that life’s thrown my way in the past decade.

But the last thing you’d ever expect is for the guy who played—no, wait, wrote and starred in —the most awful show about the most awful people to be so freaking happy .

And I’d bet even people who liked the show would say the same.

I finish the burger and pass it out the window, and as I straighten back into the bus, another shadow falls over the rear door.

I catch myself mid-eye roll when I realize it’s not another Simon Luckwood-slash-Peter Jones fan.

Ryker, my oldest little brother, fills the doorway as he scowls at Simon.

His straight dark hair is in need of a trim, there’s dirt on his cheek, and his boots don’t match, which pretty much tracks for Ryker.

He cares more about the plants and animals on his farm than he does about his fashion choices.

He was the only one of my brothers at home when the house caught on fire. The other two were on a campout with friends. While he won’t often say it out loud, I know Ryker still carries guilt and PTSD from everything he saw and went through that night.

“Didn’t do enough damage today?” he says to Simon.

“Erm—” Simon starts as I give Ryker the knock it off signal.

“I left the farm for this,” Mr. Grumpypants says to me. “I’m gonna give him shit if I want to give him shit.”

“Bro, think fast.” Hudson tosses a fish on a stick, throwing it like it’s a paper airplane, toward Ryker, who stands there with his hands tucked into his overalls and watches the fish hit the ground, then looks back up at Hudson.

“No,” Ryker says.

“But it’s free fish . And it’s Bea’s fish. And you ruined it.” Hudson staggers with his hand to his heart as though this will be what finally does him in, and I have to actively suppress a smile.

My brothers are the best. We did a good job with them. Mom and Dad and me. I think they’d be proud of me. Of us .

Though I have no idea what they’d think of how little I know about what I want my life to be now that I’ve done my job of raising my brothers and can focus on finding my own future.

And that thought makes my eyes burn a little because time doesn’t heal all wounds, so I distract myself with shutting off the grill to get ready for cleaning up for the day.

But I’m still watching out of the corner of my eye.

“Bro—are you brothers?” Simon straightens, no longer trying to be subtle about looking for his security person. “You are, aren’t you? Bea’s brother’s?”

Ryker grunts and walks past him, ignoring the question. “You have enough help today?” he asks me.