Page 68 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

THIS TIME, I’LL BLOODY WELL GET IT RIGHT

Simon

My head is a sour lemon that has been squeezed one too many times and has now turned into petrified cotton.

Is petrified cotton a thing?

Why must alcohol make me so bloody miserable?

But—“Bea!”

I bounce to sitting so quickly that the room spins.

Was it a dream?

A nightmare?

The show.

I missed the show. At the drive-in.

Surely it was a nightmare. But?—

“Whoa, hey, easy,” a feminine voice, husky with sleep, says nearby.

It’s followed by a gentle hand on my arm.

A very real hand belonging to a very real woman whose head is on the pillow beside mine.

I think.

Everything is still swimming.

“Bea?” I whisper.

She sits up beside me, a whirl of color in the soft morning light poking through my curtains. “How’s your head?”

“Are you real?”

She presses a water bottle into my hand. “Drink.”

Memories float back to the surface, coming easier than they do when I’ve got pissed on bubbly.

“My parents?—”

“They’re gone, and they know what’ll happen if they come back.”

I stare at the woman in my bed. “Are you real?” I repeat.

She smiles, but the light is too dim for me to see more than a blurry flash of white teeth in the general shape of a smile.

Stupid eyesight in the dark.

I reach for her cheek, feeling—yes.

Yes, there it is.

A singular dimple.

“The next time you decide to drink, we’re staying home,” she tells me. “I was afraid to leave you alone.”

My vision clouds, but it’s not the wine, and it’s not the lingering effects of that horrific pasta—oh, bloody hell.

“You saw me on cheese.”

“Simon. I went through the full teenage boy experience twice, plus another half experience with Ryker. You on cheese doesn’t faze me.”

“I was…quite rude.”

“You were in pain, and whoever served you dairy deserves your hangover. How’s your stomach today?”

I take stock and find it tender, but no longer anywhere near the same level of uncomfortable. “Better. How are you the perfect woman?”

“You have very low standards.”

“Bea—”

“You bought a drive-in movie theater and showed my favorite movie,” she whispers.

I swallow hard. My nose burns, and my vision clouds again. “I did. And I would do it again if it would make you happy. Ten times over. Every day, even, until I could no longer afford it, and even then, I would find a way.”

She leans into me, looping her arm around my body.

“I was trying to figure out what to wear to come here. To ask if I was too late or if you would still give us another chance even with me being a mess. Before I knew about the drive-in. You didn’t have to—but you did—because you’re you—and I love you and I want to make us work.

I meant what I said last night. You are the best man I’ve ever known, and my dad set the bar so high, most of us mortals can’t even see it. ”

“I didn’t dream that.”

She kisses my shoulder. “You didn’t dream that.”

“You told my parents to fuck off and threatened to make a terrible documentary about their life.”

“They were being unnecessarily rude.”

“Bah. It’s simply how they?—”

“ Simon . No one— no one gets to speak to you like that. Ever. For any reason. And God help them if they try it in front of me.”

“You told Jake to fuck off.”

“Yes.”

“You told the world what he did to you?”

“I did. And I’m renaming my bus. It’s re-opening this week as Spite Burgers. I started new socials for it and shared where the name came from and I already have seven hundred followers.”

My heart swells as my smile stretches my cheeks at this news, and I cannot hold it in any longer. “I love you,” I say, my voice going hoarse with the magnitude of the words said exactly in that order, to exactly this woman, who will own me, heart and soul and body and mind, for all of eternity.

“I didn’t wait too long?”

My head is sloshing about. My body aches as though I’ve run six marathons and lifted a car off someone.

I don’t want to move.

I want to flop back onto the bed and lie perfectly still until everything stops spinning.

But none of that matters as much as pulling her into my lap and breathing in the scent of her hair and her skin and her morning breath, which is just as perfect as every bit of the rest of her. “I would wait for you to the end of my natural life, and then some.”

She shudders against me. “I don’t know that I deserve you.”

“Will you chide me in that schoolteacher voice at least three times a day?”

“ Simon .”

I rest my head on her shoulder and draw lazy hearts over the fabric covering her side. “Yes, like that.”

She huffs out a laugh. “We’re working on your standards and expectations for yourself and all of the good things you deserve.”

“Quite a bit of trouble when I’m exceedingly content with my life exactly as it is now.”

“Headache and all?”

“Perhaps that part could see itself out.”

She runs her fingers through my hair and brushes a kiss on my forehead. “I’m sorry I got so mad.”

“You should have been angry. I knew it was wrong of me to continue to draw so much inspiration from your life without your knowledge, and yet I persisted longer than I should have.”

“But the final script was nothing like my life?”

“No one would recognize it for the leaps my mind took in revisions.”

“Can I read it?”

My hand stills. “I’ve told the studio I won’t be delivering it to them.”

“But can I read it?”

“Certainly, if you wish. I have no desire to hide anything from you, no matter the consequences.”

“What if the consequences are that I think it’s amazing?”

“May I remind you, darling, that I was the head writer for In the Weeds ?”

She laughs.

I cringe at the noise. How can something be so perfect and so painful at the same time?

Blasted alcohol.

“Maybe a little more sleep?” she says softly. “Lana has the boys. You don’t have to get up.”

“Only if you stay.”

“There’s nowhere else I ever want to be.”