Page 49 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

BLUE BALLS AND TIGHT SPACES

Simon

The next week passes in a blur of enjoying every moment that I can with my boys, continuing to modify my new television script to make the fact that Bea is my inspiration even less recognizable, running out of printer paper and ink because my blasted computer somehow gave itself orders to print seven copies of the movie script I’m supposed to be memorizing for the shoot in September, ignoring yet another call from my parents, making plans for my own murder mystery dinner since I am that level of petty and annoyed with Lucinda Camille, and texting and phoning Bea.

Texting and phoning Bea is my favorite part.

The woman makes me smile in new ways, which should be impossible given how much experience I have with smiling, and I shouldn’t confess how many times I’ve re-read our text conversations.

I manage to join her late Saturday evening at a pub where Hudson is performing, and watching the pride and joy in her eyes when she cheers loudest in the entire establishment after every song makes something ache deep in my soul.

She loves him more than my parents have ever been capable of loving me, and she loves him every bit as much as I love my own boys.

And that—that deep capacity to love those whom she could so easily resent, her choice to continue loving them—that is what makes my soul ache with a desperate need that I’ve generally been able to ignore.

Until I’m texting with her, or phoning her, or arriving at her burger bus with my boys for lunch in the midst of our summer fun.

Then I feel it again every time—that longing for her—for someone —to love me for the absolute mess that I am the same way that she loves her brothers and her friends.

A smart man would recognize this is a fool’s path.

But as I am not a smart man, and as it’s once again Wednesday, and Bea is once again set up in a car park at Austen & Lovelace College, across the lake from the Monday car park.

My children are at their college program.

And I’m approaching the burger bus because I’m obsessed with wanting her to myself and increasingly desperate to find a way to see her.

Preferably finally naked once again, as I’m happy to lie to myself and insist this longing is coming from my cock and balls and not my heart.

I’m a man starved for his Beatrice fix.

But Tank and I are still at least five paces from her bus when a creeping sensation makes me slow my steps.

“Oh my god, it’s Peter Jones!” someone says in a falsetto voice from inside the bus almost instantly.

Bloody hell.

She’s not alone.

“Hello, Hudson,” I say amicably.

A man who is very distinctly not Hudson, with brown eyes and curly light brown hair and a very familiar pair of dimples, appears in the service window and grins back at me. “Hello, Peter.”

“Hey, Simon,” Bea calls from deeper inside the bus. “Guess what? Griff showed up on my doorstep this morning. He decided to come home for the All-Star break.”

“If I shake his hand, will he break every bone in mine?” I inquire.

“What kind of a question is that?”

“He was the victor when his team did the social media challenge where pro athletes have their grip strength tested.”

Griff smiles broader. “You’ve been following me.”

“Daphne was singing your praises, and my boys found the video,” I tell him. “Lovely to meet you. I shan’t be offering my hand to be crushed, but you may feel free to tell anyone you wish that I was a complete and total fool who’s afraid of you if it helps your reputation or your ego.”

Bea joins him at the window and smiles at me in a way that makes my lightheadedness once again go lightheaded.

She’s clearly bewitched me.

I clearly have no objection.

“Are you Magic Mike-ing for me again today?” she asks, eyes twinkling and dimples dimpling.

“Only if your brother does too.”

Griff’s shirt flies out of the burger bus window.

That seems to be a yes from him, which means?—

“Are you so for real right now?” Bea interrupts me from also stripping out of my shirt with her reaction to her brother’s chest. “A parrot? You got a tattoo of a parrot ?”

Griff points to the tattoo on his left pec. “Dude, this is Long Beak Silver. He’s famous .”

Bea lifts her eyes to the bus’s ceiling. “Your body. Your body. Your body.”

“Plus, I lost a bet,” Griff stage-whispers to me. “Long story.”

I pull my own shirt off and point to a small scar on my shoulder. “I lost a bet once as well. Though I suspect you have a far better story.”

“Mine involves accidentally crashing a future-Hall-of-Famer breakfast. Multiple sports. Crazy road trip.”

“Mine involves a friend in school not believing me when I said that my skin was fireproof.”

Bea’s moss-green eyes go the shape of saucers.

Griff rubs his chin. “You might actually win this one. I think that was dumber than thinking I could win a bet with the Berger twins and a bunch of Cooper Rock’s old teammates too.

Don’t mess with hockey and baseball royalty when they get together, especially when most of them are bored in retirement.

Hey, you want to trade autographs? Mine’s gonna be worth more than yours someday. ”

Bea points to him behind his back and mouths something that looks like huge fan .

I, naturally, smile delightedly. Assuming I’ve read her lips correctly.

Though even if I have not, it’s never a hardship to watch Bea’s lips.

“I can see you,” Griff says to her.

“Good. Go shake your booty and bring in some customers. But put your shirt back on before the kids get turned loose for lunch. You can take it off again after they’ve all gone back to their program.”

And that’s how I end up not having lunchtime nookie with Bea on Wednesday.

Though I am fond of this last brother of hers before she’s sold out for the day.

He’s rather amusing.

And less inclined to tell me to leave her alone than her other two brothers.

Yet, at any rate.

Likely because he’s too busy talking to all of the locals who want to hear about his baseball career. And the young man does mention a time or two that he’s seen a little of In the Weeds , which Bea informs me later means all of it, multiple times .

“So he has terrible taste?” I murmur to her.

She simply smiles, putting those dimples on display and reminding me that I still have not had the chance to lick them properly.

We’ve been heavy on the friends side of this friends with benefits situation these past days, despite my constant longing for more.

“Do you have plans this evening?” I ask Bea when Griff is distracted with three younger women as she’s cleaning up.

“Griff’s taking us all out for pizza.”

“Welcome to join us, my dude,” Griff says.

Clearly not as distracted as I thought he was.

Bea opens her mouth, but I leap in before she can say a word. “Brilliant. My boys love pizza.”

“Griff—” Bea starts, but both of us look at her, and she shakes her head again. “Never mind.”

“I suspect she intended to tell you that I can’t eat cheese,” I tell Griff.

He grins back at me. “She was going to tell you that I’m only using you because every good baseball player needs celebrity friends.”

I smile broader at that. “I’m happy to be used for my talents before the world tires of them.”

“I’m going to trick you into eating cheese.”

“Truly, that’s a relief. I hadn’t expected Hudson to be harder on me than you were. And I enjoy a good challenge.”

Tank glares at Griff.

Griff grins back at my security man.

And several hours later, my boys are ecstatic beyond belief to be having a pizza night out.

I sequester them at one end of the table, one across from me and one beside me, and tell them they can only escape to the arcade room if they actually eat dinner and behave politely, and I remind them that both Butch and Pinky are at the next table and can see them as well.

Daphne has joined the family dinner.

To my utter surprise, and the boys’ delight, Lana takes the final seat at the reserved table with us.

“I invited her,” Bea tells me. She’s managed to sit beside me, and our knees are constantly brushing against each other. “Daph’s sister is having a problem, and I have this gut feeling that Lana’s a better person to talk to her about it than I am.”

“With the hotels?” I inquire. “That’s not Lana’s specialty.”

“No, it’s a personal thing.”

My boys are discussing pizza toppings with each other, so I lean in closer to Bea and drop my voice. “I rather miss being personal with you.”

She visibly shivers as her eyes go dark. “Same.”

“Dad? Can we try anchovies?” Charlie asks.

Hello, mood-killer. “On the side so that you waste minimal pizza if you don’t like them.”

The boys dive back into the menu, and soon we’ve all ordered—salad sans cheese but with chicken for me, all of the pizza that the kitchen can make for the rest of the table—and the conversations resume.

It’s remarkably casual.

Easy.

Comfortable.

Almost unreal in how much this feels as though we’re on the set of a family show where everyone gets along, and everyone likes each other, with Bea and her brothers including Lana without an ounce of awkwardness over the fact that she and I were once lovers who now share teenage boys.

Except this is real.

Completely real.

Another now-familiar longing hits in my chest. I pretend to ignore it.

I’d generally never admit that I smile as a shield to my feelings, but when sitting in a place where I feel as though I’ve found a family to belong to, one that cares more about how you are than about how you perform—I’ve found the parts of life that have been missing.

That I’ve been terrified to embrace for fear that they’d be taken away again.

And with a woman I’m falling harder and harder for every day sitting beside me, soothing my soul with her easy acceptance of all of my quirks and flaws and enticing my body with her actions.

While Griff tells more of the story of his tattoo after the pizza and my salad have arrived, Bea drags a finger along my upper leg, getting very close to my inner thigh.