Page 5 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

“Can’t have any more, or we won’t fit,” Daphne answers for me. “If you don’t want fish, how about a burger? You look hangry. Not growing enough food out on the farm?”

“Out of burgers,” I report, because I’ve delivered the last one to the customer waiting outside.

“You’re a farmer?” Simon asks Ryker.

We all ignore him.

Ryker keeps aiming his broody grump face at me. “You went to jail?”

“Hours ago. Chief let me out, and now?—”

“Hello? Are you still open?” a woman calls at the window.

“And now we’ve made more in sympathy tips today than I made the last three days combined,” I finish on a whisper as I turn to the window. “One last basket of fish on a stick, and that’s all we’ve got,” I tell her. “You want it?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“Out in a minute. Just stand there.”

“Are there three of you? Three brothers?” Simon points to the pictures on the wall. “There are, aren’t there?”

Daphne moves between them, which is basically useless since all three men now in my burger bus are at least eight inches taller than she is and outweigh her by approximately a burger bus too.

But what she lacks in stature, she makes up for in attitude. “What’s it to you?” she asks Simon.

“Simply learning the community.”

Nope.

I don’t trust him.

And not just because he was getting all buddy-buddy with Mrs. Camille.

“Ryker,” I say, “get out of the way so we can get the last fish done. Hudson, throw more food and you’re grounded. Daphne, please see our special guest out. We’re closed.”

No one does what I’ve asked.

Hudson sticks a french fry in Ryker’s ear. Ryker shoves him out of the way and approaches the fryers like he’s going to finish the fish himself.

And Daphne—Daphne peers around my brothers and gives me a look that I’m very familiar with.

It always means something different, but the results are generally the same.

We head out to do something , our efforts go sideways, and we get stories that we’ll tell our great-nieces and great-nephews someday.

Assuming any of my brothers or Daphne’s sister want to have children.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Daph says to me.

Ryker looks at her, then at me. He grunts in clear disapproval.

Hudson looks at her, then me. He grins with pure mischief.

If Griff were here, he’d look at her, then me. And then he’d lean in to listen and suggest ten times bigger than whatever Daphne’s about to suggest.

He’s such a middle brother. And currently in Milwaukee for a weekend baseball series.

I don’t acknowledge Daphne’s request because I don’t have to.

She’s going to talk to me no matter what.

Here now, or at home later.

She slips past my brothers. “Finish up that last order and close the window,” she tells them.

And then she pulls me into the entry well of the bus, which isn’t private, but it’s more private than anywhere else. She switches on our extra fan and aims it into the bus, which will make it harder for the boys to overhear.

Harder, but not impossible.

“You know what’s coming up next weekend?” she whispers to me, clearly up to something in a way that reminds me of my brothers back in their high school days.

“Full moon? Paddleboard races at the lake? Summer knit-off on the square? A cheese festival?”

“JC Fig’s grand opening.”

I stare open-mouthed at the woman I would’ve called my best friend for the past five years. “Ex cuse you?”

“Bea.” She puts a hand on my arm, grinning. “Do you know what the opposite of love is?”

“Hate.”

“ Apathy . The opposite of love is apathy.”

“And paying attention to a twatnozzle’s grand opening of the restaurant he stole from me is apathetic?”

She peers around me and into the bus, then cackles as she huddles closer to me. “Going to his grand opening would be being the bigger person.”

“Fuck being the bigger person.”

She drops her voice even lower. “Even if you went on the arm of his favorite actor?”

My chest heaves inward as a noise I’ve never made in my life flies out of my mouth.

It’s not quite a gasp, not quite a hiccup, but definitely something horrified.

Her entire face is squeezed up in unmitigated joy. “Right? Jake would shit himself. He’d have to serve you nicely without looking like the fuckwaffle he finally showed you that he really is, and you know what Jake loves more than anything?”

“I’m gonna go with a tossup between Peter Jones and himself.”

“Eating food full of butter and cheese.”

“ Daphne .”

“He won’t be able to cook a single thing that Simon Luckwood would eat or like.

I’ll handle the reservation. I know all the right things to say so that they’ll know a celebrity in disguise is coming.

You know Jake’ll eat that up because his socials game is shit without you, and I only know next week is his grand opening because I’m a petty bitch who wants to know my best opportunities to make him feel the way he made you feel. ”

“How is it possible to perpetually have a girl crush on you while also sweating in horror?”

“Because this means you have to take another turdnugget on a date.” Her face freezes, and she leans around me to peek into the rest of the bus again. “Okay. Phew. I don’t think he heard me.”

I eyeball the mirror over the driver’s seat that’s left over from the bus’s schoolkid-carrying days.

Ryker and Hudson are both watching us.

I squint past them, and yep.

Simon Luckwood is also staring up at the front of the bus.

He’s holding his phone close to his mouth, lips moving like he’s dictating a text.

“One problem—okay, many problems, but the biggest problem—there’s zero chance said turdnugget would want to be seen on a date with me in public.”

Daphne snorts. “The man who’s fascinated by how we keep fish on a stick and you having three brothers and who keeps looking at all of your family photos and smiling?

The celebrity who made a point to come apologize for getting you thrown in jail when I can promise you that every single person from his agent to his security guy to his massage therapist would’ve told him not to ever accept blame for anything that could get him sued?

You think we can’t make that man feel guilty enough to talk him into taking you out for one very deserved dinner at a fancy restaurant now that he’s seen how hard you work? ”

“He already paid for the fish. And then some, if I was looking over your shoulder at that tip right.”

“And he’s been creating distractions for us all afternoon.”

“Bringing in more business than we’ve seen since we opened, you mean?”

I know it. Daphne knows it. Simon could probably figure it out if he wanted to give it half a thought.

She ignores me. “The worst he can say is no.”

“You’re devious.”

“Only about ten percent. The rest of me is a very nice person. We just happen to need my devious side today.”

“ Need ?”

“Rocking chair test.”

Rocking chair test. It’s what we do when I’m telling her something’s a bad idea and she’s positive it’s a good idea.

Seventy years from now, when we’re sitting in the rocking chairs of the farmhouse where Ryker, Griff, and Hudson’s grandkids all come see us for cookies and stories about the good ol’ days, is this one more memory we want to share with them of the trouble that we got into and the fun that we had?

“Dammit, Daphne,” I mutter.

Hey, kids, wanna hear about the time your great-aunt Bea blackmailed a famous Hollywood actor into taking her on a date to troll her ex-boyfriend?

Yeah.

This passes the rocking chair test.

And she knows it.

She cackles and claps her hands. “So, do you want me to do the talking, or have you got this?”

“I’ve got this.”

Because honestly?

The idea’s rapidly growing on me.

Jake Camille is the most charming man on the face of the earth when he wants you.

He makes you feel like the center of the very universe when he’s lavishing attention on you.

He volunteers his time all over town. He donates to charity, and he knows how to do and say all of the right things at nearly every moment.

Meeting his celebrity hero is apparently not one of them, but trust me.

Any other time, if there’s an audience, he’s performing, and they’re buying it.

But the man puts the dick in dickwad when he decides he’s gotten his maximum use out of you.

And he got maximum use out of me.

The press coverage of my family last year was insane. Griff got called up to Atlanta from the minors, and everyone wanted to hear the story of the baseball player whose sister made sure he could still play ball after their parents died in a tragic fire.

Jake was by my side for all of the interviews.

By the end of the season, we were talking to reporters about how we were going to open a restaurant in honor of my parents together. I put together marketing materials. Started socials for updates on our progress. Planned the menu.

And then, mere weeks after signing the papers to finally buy the building and make our dreams come true, Jake dumped me.

Said it just didn’t feel right anymore.

That I was too high maintenance for a guy who was about to open a new business.

He already has a new girlfriend who’s telling anyone who will listen that I’m cold and uncaring and that Jake was the victim in our breakup.

Such utter bullshit.

He used me.

He used me, he used Griff’s fame, he stole my dad’s dream, and he knows I can’t do a fucking thing about it because I used most of my parents’ insurance money to make sure my brothers could do whatever they wanted after high school to live the lives they want.

I’m scrappy. I’m frugal. I can go back to college more or less for free anytime I want at the school here in town that my mom used to work for.

I still have the world in front of me as my oyster, and I would’ve worried more about my brothers if I hadn’t done what I knew my parents wanted to do for them.

There’s just enough left for a small emergency fund for me, and after not having any kind of emergency fund immediately accessible when my parents died, I’m terrified to touch it.

So while I’m not broke, I’m also not feeling solid.

And everything I planned for my future with Jake?

I’ll benefit from none of us.

My name wasn’t on the purchase paperwork for the restaurant.

He had all of the passwords for the social accounts, so he changed them and locked me out.

He’s still using the marketing materials I made for him and doing interviews where he still uses my name and Griff’s name to get more attention for the restaurant that was meant to honor our family, not his.

So making Jake look bad?

Yeah.

Yeah, count me in.

And Simon Luckwood can always tell me no.

That’s what I always told my brothers.

Ask. The worst they can say is no, but the best they can say is yes. Don’t say no for them. Give them the chance to tell you yes .

I swing myself up the stairwell and back into the bus. “Luckwood,” I call from across the whole vehicle.

His face lights up, which again, so weird .

Especially after all of the hours Jake made me watch that show, where he was always scowling and plotting ways to help three brothers murder each other in a fight over inheriting a weed farm in rural Maryland, and after the way all of us have continually ragged on him all afternoon.

“Yes, Ms. Best?”

“We’re not quite even. I want you to take me to dinner next Saturday night at a new restaurant that’s opening up on the lake. And then we’ll be done and I’ll forget all of this ever happened.”

Ryker growls.

Hudson chokes on the french fry he should’ve put in the last basket of fish, so that serves him right.

Daphne leaps over to pound Hudson on the back.

Simon’s brows do a slight lift. “You’d like me to take you on a date?”

“I want a free dinner,” I lie. “I miss men buying me dinner while I wear fancy clothes.”

“No,” Ryker says.

“Oh, yes,” Hudson says between coughs.

Ryker frowns at Daphne.

She grins back at him.

“Will it just be the two of us?” Simon asks.

“Unfortunately.”

His smile grows almost as broadly as Daphne’s. “Brilliant. When shall I pick you up?”

“Told you,” Daph whispers.

“Still very suspicious,” I whisper back.

“Duh. He’s a man.”

“Hey, I can hear you,” Hudson says.

Daphne smiles at him. “Good. Don’t be that man.”

“I’ll make the reservation and let you know,” I tell Simon. “Assuming I have your phone number?”

I don’t know how it’s possible, but the man smiles even bigger. “You do indeed. I believe you called it and talked to one of my boys when you confirmed their party.”

He’s ridiculous.

Next Saturday will be…something.

Unless I get cold feet and call the whole thing off.

But a chance to torment Jake after the way he left me?

No chance I’m calling it off.

He fucked around.

And I’m entering my help him find out era.