Page 63 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

SECRET MENU ITEM TODAY IS LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE

Bea

My head is a gelatinous mass of dull throbs and slushy slowness as I set up the bus for one of the last Monday food truck days at the lake this summer.

“You don’t have to do this today,” Hudson says to me.

He, Ryker, and Daphne haven’t let me have a moment to myself since Saturday night unless I was in my own bathroom, and even then, they wouldn’t let me take my phone with me.

They didn’t make this big of a fuss when I broke up with Jake. Or Will. Or Andreas.

So either they think Simon hurt me more or our breakup is international gossip and they don’t want me to know that the story of my life is once again tugging at heartstrings across the country.

Except this time with me as the cranky witch who dumped Simon.

Because he betrayed me.

My eyes water. “What else am I going to do?” I ask Hudson.

“I don’t know. Go blow shit up in a video game. Play with goats at Ryker’s place. Bug Daphne at work. Take Griff up on his offer to fly you to Atlanta to see his games this week.”

“And who’ll run the bus?”

“Me.”

“I can’t ask?—”

“You’re not asking, Bea. I’m telling. I’m telling you I’m a grown-ass adult with friends who can run a burger bus without getting arrested or shut down by the health department while you go take a vacation and clear your head and decide what you want to do.”

Decide what I want to do.

That’s always the question.

Well, Bea, you’re primary guardian for your three brothers now, so what do you want to do?

Ryker’s out of the house and you have more time, Bea, so what do you want to do?

Griff’s gone too now, Bea, so what do you want to do?

Hudson’s all grown up. Time to decide what you want to be when you grow up too, Bea.

Except there’s never a forever answer.

There’s a right now answer.

At first, it was I want to survive .

Then I want to be involved like Mom and Dad were so that my brothers don’t feel cheated, and it’s not like I don’t have the time.

Followed by Guess I’ll drive a bus or volunteer with the PTA or use some of those free classes the college still gives me or take a pity job from one of their friends’ parents to have something to do to bring in a little extra cash and plump up my resume.

And then there was I’m going to make my dad’s dreams come true with the man I’m going to marry .

Except it wasn’t my dream.

Not really.

It was the same thing I’ve done since the call came.

I buried myself in looking for something that would fill the hole my parents left and help me walk in the shoes I had to fill, time and time again.

I keep trying to find ways to keep them alive.

Their memories.

Their dreams.

Their hopes for all of us.

Including their hopes that I’d settle down with a solid guy who loved me and live a life that made me happy. I thought they’d like Will. I thought they’d like Andreas. I thought they’d love Jake.

And now—now I have a spite food truck and a betrayed heart.

Broken dreams of my own.

And the worst part?

I still don’t want to believe Simon used me.

I want to believe there’s a logical reason for what I saw that’s something more than he used me .

Because that’s also what I always do.

I always believe that somehow, I made a mistake. That it was my fault. That I did something wrong. That I read something wrong.

And I didn’t .

I have the photos of the script.

And one day…one day, I’ll be strong enough to ask why.

Today, though, is not that day.

Hudson sighs. “Bea. Go home. I’ve got this today, okay?”

“I don’t want to be alone,” I whisper.

He doesn’t tell me to go hang out at Ryker’s like he probably should.

Instead, he shakes his head, grabs an apron out of the box that also houses the curtains that Daphne insisted I get for those times when people wanted a high-end, private burger bus experience—so far only used by me for the purposes of seducing the man I don’t know if I ever want to see again—and he hands it to me.

“Then at least put on your uniform. And don’t like, cry in the burger meat or anything.

You won’t keep repeat customers if your burgers make them sad. ”

“That’s not how that works,” I mutter.

He snorts.

I snort back.

And then the asshole does the worst thing he could possibly do.

He hugs me.

He hugs me, and he says, “I’m sorry he hurt you, Bea.

I really thought he was smarter than that.

And I wanted him to show you the whole world.

After everything you’ve done for Ryker and Griff and especially me—I wanted you to have it all.

One day, I’ll make sure you see the world myself. You deserve it.”

“Dammit, Hudson.” God, it’s hard to not cry. “Just let me work and pretend this is all about Jake again, okay?”

“What about me?” a man says in my window.

I rear back.

Hudson shoves me behind him. “Get fucking bent,” he snarls at my ex-boyfriend.

Because there’s Jake.

Standing there looking like he pressed his jeans and had his hair cut and his beard trimmed just to show up at my burger bus looking like a cover model while I’m in red-rimmed eyes with crusty lips and that constant, thudding ache in my head.

“I posted about your bus on my socials so that you’ll get more customers,” Jake says. “You’re welcome. Now, can we please discuss what it’s going to take for you to come to your senses and come back to me?”

Hudson looks back at me, utter disgust etched on his face.

Probably a good thing most of the weapons in the bus are things like ketchup bottles and burger flippers.

He could do some damage with one of the fry baskets though.

“Was he like this when you dated him?” Hudson asks me.

“Probably.”

“ Probably? That’s a yes or no question, Bea.”

“You overlook a lot when a guy’s offering to help you make your dreams come true. And he probably hid a lot while getting all of my ideas out of me.”

“I don’t have to be here offering to take you back,” Jake says.

“My mother’s opposed. She thinks you’re unsophisticated and that you use your parents’ death to get everyone’s sympathy, and you really overstepped with throwing a competing murder mystery dinner.

But the sex was good enough, and you can cook.

Doesn’t mean the offer doesn’t expire though. ”

“Is he for real?” Hudson asks me.

“Don’t know, don’t care.” I lean around my brother and lift a middle finger at my ex. “You’re slime, Jake. Get lost.”

“You’re going to die alone and miserable.”

Hudson blocks me again. “Projecting is a bad look on you, dude. You heard Bea. Go away. She doesn’t want you.”

Dying alone doesn’t sound so bad right now.

No one can hurt you if you’re alone.

But Jake—Jake doesn’t get to see that, so I grab a ketchup bottle and point it at him.

“I will use this again. Go the fuck away, and if your family doesn’t quit talking shit about me, I’ll destroy all of you.

You’ve spent your whole life fooling people, but you’ve fucked up one too many times and made one too many enemies. We. Will. Take. You. Down.”

He shrinks.

It’s a small shrink, but it’s a shrink.

“I knew you weren’t smart enough to know what you had when you had me,” he says as he turns to walk away.

“A gaslighting prick?” I say.

He turns back, and I let a squirt of ketchup fly in his direction, which sends him running, calling something about me making a mistake over his shoulder.

As if I care what he thinks.

Not long after, Ryker shows up with a box of vegetables that I don’t need until tomorrow, which means he’s checking in on me and I know it.

“You wanna come play with the goats?” he asks me. “Hudson and I have the bus. You can take my truck.”

I scowl at him and don’t answer.

He stays to help cook.

We’re serving fish on a stick as the secret menu item today.

I completely forgot or I would’ve changed it.

Because fish on a stick makes me think of Simon admiring it the first day we met.

Was that the day he decided to write a TV show about my life?

I shake my head and go back to my burgers.

Ryker runs the fryer so I don’t have to touch the fish.

Hudson takes orders and he and Ryker jointly agree we’re not selling spots at the chef’s table today so I don’t have to face customers with my face in the shape it’s in.

Namely, depressed and sad and brokenhearted.

Hudson’s not wrong.

My face is bad for business. Or it would be, if I showed it.

We’re thankfully busy, and we even sell out before it’s time to officially shut down.

Hudson and Ryker convince me to let them clean up and to let Ryker drive my bus home—he drives farm equipment, so he can drive my bus. And that means I take Ryker’s truck back to my apartment.

The plan is for me to shower so I can be a clean lump on the couch when Daphne gets home with the Chinese takeout she promised before she left for work this morning.

I can handle being home alone for shower time.

I might even peek at socials to make sure I’m not the subject of gossip anywhere. Locally or beyond.

If I need to start checking my bushes for paparazzi, I deserve to know.

I’m so focused on the bushes and random trees where people could hide when I get home that I don’t pay close enough attention to the cars around me.

And that’s when the ambush happens.

I’m sitting in Ryker’s truck, taking a hot minute to pull up socials and see what Jake actually said about me, when the passenger door opens and the man who just wrecked my heart slides into the seat.

“Please,” he says in that posh British accent that still makes my vagina a little swoony, damn her. “Please, may I have two minutes of your time to explain myself and apologize?”

I squeeze my eyes shut tight and my legs shut tighter. “Go on. Say what you need to say so we can just get this over with.”

He inhales loudly, but he doesn’t immediately speak.

I count to five, staring at the last family picture we had taken before Mom and Dad died. It’s been the background of my phone for over eleven years now.

And I’m realizing it might be time to change it.

“Clock’s ticking,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t sound froggy like I’ve been crying.

Simon takes another deep breath again, but this time, he fills the silence.

“The day I met you is the day my entire world changed. I failed to recognize the magnitude of your impact on my life until I’d already begun changing the script so as to not resemble anything that would impede on your family’s privacy, but I was wrong to not tell you that you inspired me.

I was wrong to not tell you that you inspired me in more ways than simply sparking the idea of a story that has shifted and woven its way into being something entirely different, and that I’ve nonetheless informed the studio I will not be delivering after all. ”

The sun is beating through the truck’s windshield, heating the interior of the cab and making me a little sweaty.

Or possibly that’s the effect of Simon sitting next to me.

Saying all of the right things so far.

“It’s not simply your family’s tragedy, Bea.

It’s you. You inspire me. Your determination to make anything work, good or bad, once you’ve got an idea in your head.

The burger bus. Our revenge date against your wanker of an ex.

Seeing to it that your brothers have every opportunity regardless of the time or expense required.

The way you can so easily reassure me that I’m not a fuckup of a parent for having had your own experience.

Your refusal to accept less than you deserve from those of us who want to exist in your orbit.

You—you are the best person I have ever known, the only person who could make me believe in family, who could make me believe that I, too, belong in a family, and the best person to complement me and all of my own hang-ups and traumas and stubborn ideas. ”

My breath wobbles.

My eyes burn.

I want to believe him.

I want to forgive him.

But I don’t know if I can trust him.

“You should have told me,” I whisper.

“I should have,” he agrees. “And I would very much like to make this up to you if you’ll let me. I want to prove to you that I can be the man you deserve. The man I’ve always been afraid to be, but the man that I know I need to be.”

If I sit in this truck one more minute, I’m going to start crying.

And I absolutely do not want Simon to see me cry.

I don’t know if it’s my own pride not wanting him to see me hurt, or if it’s worry that he’ll feel worse if he sees me hurt, and that makes me mad too.

I don’t want to care if he’s hurt.

But I can’t help myself.

He’s still in there. In my heart.

My hopelessly romantic heart.

“I don’t know.”

It’s all I can force out without completely losing control of my emotions.

I reach blindly for the door handle and stumble out of the truck.

“Bea?” Simon says.

“ I don’t know ,” I say again, and this time my voice cracks.

I spin to face him as he climbs out of the truck.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know . Say I take you back.

Then what? Then I just ride along doing whatever you’re doing because I still don’t know what I want to do for myself?

That you’re the next man whose life defines mine so that I don’t have to decide who I want to be or what I want to do? ”

His chest moves slowly, like he’s controlling how fast he inhales and exhales so he doesn’t lose his shit either. “I would be honored to be the lucky bastard who gets to watch you discover all the different places you might find your joy in life.”

I rub my eyes, then sigh, barely able to look at him for knowing he’s hurting. “I can’t do this right now.”

He blinks several times, then methodically nods.

“You have my number.” Dammit, his voice is froggy now too. “You can call me anytime. Day or night. To yell. To talk. To breathe. It’s only you, Bea. It will only ever be you.”

My nose burns and I can’t swallow right and the entire world is disappearing behind a waterfall.

I want to hug him.

I want to believe him.

But I’m too raw, and more than not knowing if I can trust him, I don’t know if I can trust myself.

Because this is just like every other boyfriend.

I sill don’t know who I want to be.

And how fair would that be to him?

So I give him a jerky nod, and I retreat into Daphne’s apartment.

Alone.

The way it needs to be.