Page 65 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

BUT IS THIS SCARY SCARIER THAN THAT SCARY?

Bea

This is the week that will not end.

It’s a mixed bag of good and bad.

The good—I’ve sold out every single day, and it’s not because Jake posted about me on socials.

It’s a combination of Daphne’s protest outside of JC Fig every day this week with the reputation I have for being associated with Simon.

And the customers who tell whoever’s manning the window in my bus that they’re checking me out because of Simon don’t say it’s because I’m his girlfriend— was his girlfriend.

They say it’s because he personally told them my burger bus is his favorite place to eat in town.

Or that they heard from a friend that he and his boys were always eating here.

Or that they saw pictures of him in a Best Burger Bus T-shirt on his socials.

That’s crazy.

We don’t even have Best Burger Bus T-shirts.

Daphne takes Friday off work and joins Hudson and me to work the bus. And she’s as agitated as I am, though I don’t know if she’s agitated because she’s sleeping worse and worse, or if she’d be agitated regardless of her own issues.

“I’m not mad at him anymore,” I tell her as we work. “So you don’t have to be mad either. I’m not saying I know if I want to try again with him, but I’m not mad.”

Daph and Lana have become pretty good friends, and Lana relayed the information that, as someone in Simon’s circles with more than a passing understanding of intellectual property and defamation laws, plus a vested interest in him continuing to provide for the twins, she’s read the final draft of his script that was based on my life and it is actually nothing like my life.

It’s now about four people—two men, two women—who grew up together under the care of a woman they called Aunt Zelinda, and who are now operating a honey stand and solving murders at the farmer’s market.

The ultimate inspiration he drew from my life was about found family and how much he wanted to murder Jake on my behalf.

And also apparently that honey fantasy that we never tried, which I would know, but no one else would.

Lana also reiterated that Simon had told the studio he was wrong, the script was trash, and he was going to miss his contracted deadline for new material.

She didn’t say he felt terrible.

Or if she did, Daphne didn’t pass that part along.

“It’s not Simon,” Daph grouses. “I have to go home.”

“To the apartment?”

“ No . To New York. The Hamptons, actually. Margot’s about to do something really, really, really stupid, and I can’t stop her, so I have to stop him .”

I open my mouth, then close it again.

Daphne hasn’t been back to the city or to her family’s summer home in the Hamptons since her parents cut her off.

It’s not that I want the money , she told me once. It’s that I want to belong, and I don’t. I never have, and now I know they don’t want me to . So I’m done, and I’m never going back .

And she hasn’t.

“Daph—”

“You should give Simon another chance, Bea. He makes you happy. He makes you laugh. He makes you look more alive than I’ve ever seen you.

That’s what Margot deserves too. She’s family, even if my parents aren’t.

And when you love people, you have to do the things that you might not like and the things you might not want to do when you know it’s what will make them happy. ”

Hudson’s staring at her now too.

My brother and I make eye contact, and we both keep saying nothing at all.

Him, likely because he wants to tell her Simon doesn’t deserve me.

Me, because I’m suddenly back in Madame Petty’s fortune-telling tent, where she’s telling me that one day, Daphne won’t come home.

Not even for the first time this hour, my eyes start stinging. “Just—just be careful, okay?” I grab her in a hug. “You’re my family, and I don’t like seeing you hurt either.”

“I want to be wrong, Bea. I want so bad to be wrong that she’s taking him back. How can she really trust he won’t hurt her again? Even if she’s serious when she says it would just be a business arrangement, how can she really think she’d be happy?”

I swallow hard. “How do you know Simon won’t hurt me again?”

“Because he’s sorry. Oliver’s not. Simon’s a normal guy who got accidentally rich and famous in his mid-thirties.

Oliver’s had a silver spoon in his mouth since before his mouth even developed.

Simon could lose his career by not turning in this script, but he canceled it for you.

Oliver couldn’t handle dating and his job at the same time, and he picked his job over Margot.

They’re not the same. Not anywhere close. ”

My heart cramps again.

But it’s not fear for myself.

It’s worry for Daphne. “I’ll come with you.”

“No. No . Bea. Stay here. Where it’s safe and people love you and no one will care if you show up to a party in a dress that’s so last year . I just—I have to do one thing . I’ll be back before the sun’s up on Sunday morning.”

“But will you be okay?”

“I’m Daphne fucking Merriweather-Brown. There are some things my family can’t take from me. Like who I am.”

“She’s really scary when she says stuff like that,” Hudson muses.

“We’re lucky she’s on our side,” I agree.

Daphne laughs. “Of course I am. You’re the best family I’ve ever had.”

“Does this mean you’re not protesting at Jake’s restaurant tonight?” Hudson asks. “I was really excited for the signs about how he fucks over and cuts out his business partners.”

She shakes her head. “I’m heading to the city to stay with an old friend before the party in the Hamptons tomorrow night. But I think a few people are carrying on without me.”

I swallow the we should’ve just protested the restaurant in the first place .

Because it’s not true.

I don’t regret asking Simon to take me there for dinner. It’s the first time in my life I’ve stood up and took a stand for myself against the shitty ways my exes have treated me, and honestly?

Jake deserved it.

In the past week, three of Jake’s other ex-girlfriends have contacted me to tell me about the ways he stepped all over their hopes and dreams and plans while they were dating too, spurred on by Daphne’s protest of the restaurant and the whispers that have started in town about where the idea for JC Fig truly came from.

He’s gotten away with thinking he’s the man for entirely too long.

Being someone who made him uncomfortable?

Someone who’s regularly telling him no now?

It’s powerful.

And Simon knew what I was doing that first night, and he went along with it anyway.

Even when he was mad at me for it.

I keep circling back to our conversation in Ryker’s truck.

Where he didn’t say a word about anything I’ve done wrong.

Shouldering the entire blame.

Just like he was taught to do as a kid who deserved so much better.

We sell out early in the burger bus again.

And as I’m standing in my bedroom in my robe after showering, looking at the wardrobe I’ve systematically hung up and sorted while I’ve been processing my feelings this week, debating if I’m brave enough to take the risk of going to see Simon and talk about everything that still worries me, Hudson stops and lounges in the doorway.

“You hear?” he asks quietly.

My heart thumps at his tone. “Hear what?”

“Somebody bought the drive-in. Stole it right out from under Lucinda Camille and her investors.”

I gasp.

Then go a little lightheaded.

Then tingly in my extremities.

But I don’t think it’s dehydration or working too hard or anything other than a gut feeling that the drive-in being sold is life-changing.

“Who?” I ask.

“No one’s saying. But the grand opening is tonight.”

He stares at me like that’s supposed to mean something.

I do quick math.

Not my birthday. None of my brothers’ birthdays. Not Daphne’s birthday either.

No significant anniversaries come to mind.

Griff’s playing Copper Valley at home in Atlanta tonight. Not an insignificant rival, but not Atlanta’s most hated rival either.

“Secret show,” Hudson continues. “Have to go to see what’s playing.”

And then it hits me.

Tonight is the first night of the community theater’s summer show.

I gasp again. “ No .”

Someone is stealing Lucinda Camille’s audience.

My brothers and I all have the same identical evil smile. Doesn’t matter that half of us have Mom’s mouth and half of us have Dad’s mouth.

We all grin evilly the same way.

Hudson’s aiming that diabolical smile at me, and I know I’m giving it right back to him.

“So. Wanna go see a movie?” he asks.

My toes tingle. My fingers too.

And my heart.

My heart is tingling a little.

I tell it to chill out.

That it’s probably Daphne.

Maybe she’s not going to New York at all. She still has the connections to organize a hostile takeover of a college town’s closed-up drive-in movie theater.

She has launched a full-scale war against the Camilles since Logan started showing up everywhere my bus has been this week and since Jake posted that ridiculously condescending just because she’s not a great businessperson doesn’t mean a town like Athena’s Rest shouldn’t support her social media post on Monday, and since the whispers started about Damon Camille, patriarch of the assholes, wanting me to change my business name because of false advertising.

This is absolutely something Daphne would do.

But she’s not the only person in town who would do it.

And that’s what has me undecided on what to wear right up until Hudson tells me he’s going without me or taking me in the robe, my choice.

I grab the first sundress my hand makes contact with, belatedly realize it’s the same one I wore when I made barbecue chicken and risotto for Simon at Ryker’s farm, almost burst into tears, and then put it on anyway.

When I dash to the front of the apartment, it smells like Chinese food.

“We’re not going?” I ask Hudson.

He lifts a soft-sided cooler. “Post said to bring your own food. I heated up leftovers.”

Once again—I almost cry.