Page 6 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

IF YOU GIVE A TEENAGE BOY A BURGER

Simon

I never wished to be a father. I expected I’d be dreadful at it, given that my parents taught me that children are a nuisance who are never good enough and will always require something inconvenient, whether it be larger clothes or a bedtime story or a day off school because of illness.

I assumed I’d resent the time and patience required of me to raise any little fuckers with minds of their own.

But then I met Lana.

She was newly out of law school and working for a prestigious firm in New York City.

I was serving tables at a restaurant near her office between acting gigs.

We started flirting, then fucking, and lo and behold, despite our best preventative efforts, I knocked her up.

It was her choice to keep the boys, which I begrudgingly accepted.

I was a complete twat about it, warning her that I’d be a dreadful co-parent and that she’d have to carry the majority of the load.

But now, approaching fourteen years later, I’m grateful that she was infinitely wiser than me when that pregnancy test returned with a positive result.

That she forgave me for being a twat.

That she carried the vast financial burden of providing for them—and sometimes me as well—while I was still attempting to make it in the acting world.

That I now have two young men in my life who are both so much like me that it sometimes hurts, while also being so very different from me that they confound me on a regular basis.

I’m not prone to declarations of people being my very world, but if I were capable of assigning such magnitude to another human being, it would be for my sons.

Since they were born, my life has been split into the months that I’ve acted as their primary caregiver while Lana was exceptionally busy with work and the times when I’ve felt as though I’ve misplaced a body part when I would land a role that would take me away from the boys for anywhere from days to weeks at a time.

Having an entire uninterrupted summer as their default parent, as Lana calls it, to watch them grow into young men is a treat.

Except for moments like now, when I must act as the disciplinarian.

“You’re to apologize to Ms. Best for booking her services without properly alerting me so that I could ensure security would allow her on the premises without issue,” I tell them both as we navigate the car park where a line of food vans are all set up at the edge of the lake in Athena’s Rest’s Harmony Park.

Mondays are food-trucks-at-the-lake days in the summer.

How bloody brilliant to take the sting out of the start of the week by encouraging outdoor lunches.

I’ve been told the town population is at a low point, with students from the nearby university mostly away for the summer months, but the shady areas around the small lake are nonetheless full of picnickers.

Business people and business casual people and parents and children and people who seem to be on dates are seated at various picnic tables and on scattered red checkered picnic blankets.

Quaint and perfect.

“Is she truly the best, like her name says she is?” Eddie, the older of my twins, asks me.

He’s more like me in the face, with my blue eyes and square jawline and my nose, and for the most part, he sounds fully American in his speech patterns.

He was an early bloomer, so his voice is fully deep as a man’s and he’s nearly as tall as me to boot.

I had to replace his casual shorts just last week, and his shoulders are testing the limits of his favorite cartoon T-shirt today too.

He also confessed to being the answerer of the phone call to confirm the party they had booked with Bea’s burger bus.

“Probably not,” Charlie replies. He has Lana’s lighter hair and more delicate features, and his voice has only begun to crack.

He’s more prone to Britishisms, as Lana and Eddie call them.

Charlie’s wearing a hoodie, jeans, and trainers despite the summer temperatures, which disturbs me only because he’s fought against wearing a coat every winter for the past three years.

The child’s internal temperatures must be inside out and upside down.

“She could’ve at least left us some fish. ”

“Definitely not the best then.”

“We’re the victims here.”

“Neglected.”

“Overlooked.”

“Undernourished.”

“Overdramatic,” I interject.

The boys share a smile and bump fists.

This apology will clearly go swimmingly well.

Much like me being the disciplinarian in this parenting gig.

The boys find it difficult to take me seriously. Likely because I’m rarely serious.

Had enough of that in my own childhood.

But I shall do my best to reinforce the importance of apologies today. “I wouldn’t have saved you any fish if you’d got me tossed in jail either. You’re lucky she hasn’t insisted you wash dishes for a month to compensate for your misbehavior.”

They look at me, then at each other, and then they make a scene by laughing so loudly that Tank, Butch, and Pinky all three heave matching sighs and huddle closer around us.

Clearly, I’ve done an excellent job parenting and they take my threats seriously.

“We’re nearly there,” I mutter to Tank, who’s both the smallest and the kindest of the three of them. “They’re simply being children, and children are loud.”

“Butch could’ve cooked you burgers.” He’s clearly put out.

I can hardly blame him.

Butch does make excellent burgers.

But if Bea Best makes fried fish as magical as the fish I sampled on Saturday when it’s not even on her regular menu, I can only imagine the culinary delight her burgers must be, considering her bus is named after them.

They certainly smelt otherworldly on Saturday afternoon, but a smart man knows when he’s already pushed his luck, and I had pushed my luck too far to ask to add a burger to my order.

One could’ve argued I’d paid for it, but I would argue back that making a woman serve jail time unjustly does require bigger reparations.

And I’m anticipating our dinner on Saturday more than I acknowledge that I should.

I can’t quite convince myself it’s merely inspiration for the show that I’ve become obsessed with plotting and scripting during my working hours.

Not when I keep remembering the smiles she gave to her customers, the way she ruffled her brother’s hair, the whispers and giggles she shared with her friend.

It’s entirely possible I would like to win over Beatrice Best and have a summer fling with her.

Which is absurd.

But also appealing.

For multiple reasons.

“I like Butch’s burgers.” Charlie’s voice pulls me back to the car park, and I glance about discreetly to make sure no one seems to have noticed my head wandering.

“No one’s burgers will ever be as good as Butch’s burgers,” Eddie agrees.

“That’s why we requested the secret menu fish.”

“Why pay for what you can get at home for free?”

“Excuse me, boys, but food and Butch are not free .” I tsk to punctuate the sentiment, then inwardly wince. My mother used that sound on me time and time again in my own childhood. Have I become my mother? Is this our turning point when they realize I’m an arsehole?

There’s a reason Lana plays, as she calls it, bad cop .

I’m utterly incapable of intentionally being the disciplinarian that my parents were.

Or possibly that’s willfully incapable. Intentionally incapable.

Too terrified that my boys will one day feel the same about me as I do about my own parents.

Eddie grins at me. “They might not be free, but you’re rich now, so what does it matter?”

“Plus, whenever your parents kick the bucket, we’ll get all of their money, so it’s not like me and Eddie will ever have to worry about not being able to afford burgers,” Charlie agrees.

As I said.

Children are terrifying and confounding, and I am clearly a terrible parent.

I rub my brow and suppress a sigh. The boys are generally funnier than this. Truly funny. Not obnoxiously funny. “Please don’t say any of that in front of your mother.”

They share a matching grin.

Little bastards are fucking with me.

Though they’re not wrong—I’m quite the disappointment in every way beyond giving my parents a new generation to pass their assets to when they kick the bucket so that their wealth can stay in the family without going to their embarrassingly useless failure of an only child.

“With your grandmother in the state she’s currently in—” I start, and instantly regret it.

Because both boys’ smiles have now fallen away and they’re sharing another look.

I should be pleased.

This look holds guilt, and they did inconvenience Bea quite thoroughly a few days ago.

But I’ve held enough guilt in my lifetime for all of us, and I dislike making my boys feel it.

Even when they need to.

And especially knowing that watching Lana’s mother slip away is their first true experience with grief. Her father died before they were old enough to remember him.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” a feminine voice that I’ve been hearing in my sleep says from above us.

Bea Best leans out the window of her burger bus. Her light brown hair is hidden beneath a tie-dyed bandanna that matches her tie-dyed Best Burger Bus T-shirt. Sweat glistens on her forehead, which she wipes away with her forearm as her green eyes dart amongst the six of us.

I shake away the melancholy and give her my brightest smile. “Bea. You’re here. Lovely day for a burger in the park. I’d like to introduce you to my children. This is Eddie, and this is Charlie, and they have something they’d like to tell you.”

“Hello, Eddie and Charlie,” Bea says.

She doesn’t add nice to meet you .

That’s very distinctly missing.

“Hello, miss.” Charlie squints at her. “You know the United States has laws against false advertising.”

Eddie pokes him.

Charlie elbows him back.

I put a hand on each of their heads and separate them as I step between them. “That’s not what we discussed that you would say.”

“We don’t want to say what we discussed,” Charlie mutters.