Page 70 of The Spite Date (Small Town Sisterhood #1)

SHE’S IN LOVE… BUT WHERE DID HER BESTIE GO?

Simon

This may be my first Sunday with Bea, but I have decided that every Sunday from here forward shall be my favorite Sunday ever, so it is simply my first favorite Sunday.

We laughed through washing all of the honey off her in the shower when we returned home sometime after two a.m., slept in, had a leisurely breakfast with lively debate over whether tomatoes should be served with breakfast, and now we’re lounging by the pool while the boys and a few of their friends splash about.

I’ve provided the script she requested yesterday—printed from a newly acquired, state-of-the-art, current-model computer and printer that I bought this past week as well—and she’s smiling and giggling her way through it as I scribble notes for a new concept that struck me in a dream.

“This isn’t what I thought it would be,” she says when she’s halfway through.

“I am a professional, darling,” I say with the barest degree of haughtiness that has her smiling at me again.

“I know.” Her eyes gleam with more mischief, though not nearly as much as they should. “I mean, I do now .”

I take her hand and press it to my mouth. “But you didn’t know my process when you stumbled upon the first draft. And you’ve had experience in being betrayed recently. I would have come to the same conclusion.”

She bites her lip. “Can I tell you something?”

“Always, my love.”

“I think your dialogue is a little saggy here. I mean, compared to the rest of the script. What if she said something more sarcastic like so you’re an expert on wildflowers now too? It just feels like it would be hilarious with the dry delivery I’m hearing in the rest of her lines.”

I blink at her.

She holds her face in a cringe. “Or not. You’re the expert.”

“No, no, that’s excellent. Much better line.”

“Simon. Don’t humor me.”

“Truly, I hate the line because it makes the scene better, and you know how much I detest being anything above adequate.”

She’s smiling as she rolls her eyes. “ Regardless , you should give this to the studio,” she tells me.

I hold her gaze. “No.”

“ Yes . It’s funny?—”

“Which suggests the studio will undoubtedly have some dreadful director in mind who would insist upon converting it into a space drama.”

She raises a brow. “Aren’t they giving you producer credits? Doesn’t that mean you have some sway on who the director is?”

“Yes, yes, fine, I have sway. Infernal success has made them believe I have some modicum of show business sense.”

“You should give this to them,” she repeats. “If it’s a success, you’re just going to have to learn to live with that. Possibly even enjoy it. For yourself. Because you deserve to honestly take pride in your work without giving a second thought to who else might have opinions about your success.”

We embark on a staring contest.

She doesn’t waver.

This is the Bea who kept her brothers in line at much too young of an age, when she should have been out going to parties and driving young men mad with those dimples and exploring all of the courses in the world to discover what her path should have been.

The Bea who will not take no for an answer because she knows in her heart what’s right.

What’s best.

“If I send this script to the studio and they accept it, which I would only do if you also tell me what else is wrong with it, because I prefer my co-writers to pull their weight?—”

“ Oh my god , I gave you one suggestion. I’m not a script writer.”

“How do you know? Have you tried it before?”

She opens her mouth, then closes it again.

I smirk. “I thought not. What if this is the professional path you’ve been missing? You owe it to yourself to at least try, darling.”

It’s remarkable to sit beside a woman and know that her brain is spinning with possibilities, with objections, with worries, with fears, and then to see?—

“You know what? Why not? And if it doesn’t work, I still have my spite bus.”

I beam at her. “Excellent.”

“Simon, if I’m terrible at this?—”

“Bah. All of us are terrible at it. Some merely better than others at fooling the studios into thinking audiences will love our clumsy attempts more than others. Also, you should know—there will eventually be a red-carpet premiere, and you will have to attend in a new dress and be photographed publicly with me if we do this.”

She grins. “Will you pick that new dress for me?”

“If you wish.”

“You have excellent taste.”

“I have excellent fantasies.”

She leans over and kisses my cheek. “I like living out your fantasies with you.”

I clear my throat and drop my notepad over my suddenly hard cock.

She smiles and goes back to the script, though the second half is clearly not as well-done as the first half, because she keeps checking her phone.

I eventually lift my brows at her. “Is this a good time to point out that I clearly need your guidance, if your lack of enjoyment is any indication?”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s Daphne. I just realized what time it is. She had to go home this weekend, which is similar to if you had to go back to London to see your parents.”

I grimace hard enough that Eddie calls to ask if I’m okay.

“Bea has a theory that she can find things to make me not smile,” I call back.

“Girlfriends do that?” Charlie asks.

“Indeed, and often. They’re quite terrible. You should never have one.”

Bea cracks up.

The boys grin at me, and they go back to their games.

“So her family is awful?” I ask Bea.

“I mean, they disinherited her, and she did have a real trust fund that had more zeroes than I’d see in a hundred lifetimes.

She doesn’t talk to them anymore. Margot’s pretty cool though.

Her sister. You met her. The day that you dumped me in the sink.

Daph loves her, but she still lives a different life than Daph now, so… ”

“I’m glad I never had a sibling,” I muse. “What a terrible life for someone else to live.”

Bea slants a look at me. “You would’ve gone overboard trying to protect them from what you went through.”

Quite likely.

She smiles as though she knows I’m agreeing with her in my mind but would rather not say so aloud.

“When is Daphne due to return?” I ask.

“She said she’d be back first thing this morning, but she hasn’t answered any texts since yesterday afternoon, and her phone is going straight to voicemail.”

“That’s not good.”

She bites her lip. “Tracking her phone is bad, right? I try not to track my brothers’ phones either, even though we all share locations, because they deserve their privacy, and she does too but?—”

“If she was due back and you cannot reach her, you’re hardly invading her privacy to verify that she hasn’t been in an accident. Or perhaps she simply misplaced her phone, and you would be doing her a favor to locate it.”

“I’m going to ask you later to say privacy again, but for now…” She taps her finger over her phone screen.

And then squints one eye.

Tilts her head.

The pulse flutter at the base of her neck flutters faster.

“Bea?”

“This isn’t right.”

“What, love?”

“Her phone last pinged six hours ago in eastern Pennsylvania.”

I sit straighter. “Where is her family?”

“She was going to the Hamptons. The tip of Long Island. Which is not eastern Pennsylvania.”

She holds the phone to her ear for a moment, wrinkles her nose, and sets it down again. “And it’s still going straight to voicemail.”

“Butch has former army friends across the country. Shall I ask him to have one of them check on her?”

“Simon,” she whispers. “Do you remember what Madame Petty said? That one day, she wouldn’t come home?”

My heart thumps in dread.

I swallow hard.

“Surely not,” I say, though my mind is also flashing to Madame Petty saying that a man would betray Bea, and I certainly did that, did I not?

She blinks hard and fast, but it’s not enough to clear the shine from her eyes. “Okay—” she starts, only to be interrupted by her phone ringing.

She wrinkles her nose at the readout—not a number in her phone—and then swipes to answer. “Hello?”

My heart starts beating again as I lean in to listen closer.

“Bea. It’s me.”

“ Oh my god , Daph, where are you? ”

“I’m okay. I’m safe. I’m voluntarily doing what I’m doing.”

“Why is your phone showing in Pennsylvania?”

“Shit. You weren’t supposed to see that.”

Bea squeezes her eyes shut and presses a hand to her forehead. “ Daphne .”

“The reason I don’t go home? I don’t go home because then I’m the Daphne who was an epic fuckup and things just happen that aren’t supposed to happen because I have the worst timing ever, and something happened again, but I am okay , and I’ll be home…sometime…and I just didn’t want you to worry.”

“There is nothing about this conversation that isn’t making me worry.”

“Remember when I moved in with you? When you had to teach me to drive and how to do laundry and grocery shop on a budget?”

“Yes,” Bea says while I file away my own questions for later about how she taught Daphne to drive.

“I have to do that for someone else right now.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Daphne—”

“Bea. Listen. I love you more than I love anyone else on this planet. You saved my life, and I would literally die for you, but I cannot tell you who I’m with.

It’s—it’s sensitive, and it’s just easier if you don’t know, okay?

But I’m okay. I’m on a little unplanned road trip.

My phone is, um, temporarily out of commission, so I got this burner phone.

I’m going to have it off a lot, but if you need need me, you can call me on this number or my other cell.

I’m…working on getting it…working again. ”

“What about your job?”

“I’m calling in sick for the week. If Margot calls—if Margot calls, just tell her I got twitchy and had to go camping off-grid, and that I’ll call her back in a week or two, okay?”

“Daphne—”

“Did you make up with Simon?”

“Yes, but?—”

“For real?”

“He’s right here. Want to say hi?”

“No, I need to go. He’s going to notice that I’m taking longer than I should in the bathroom.”

“He? Who’s he ?”

“Bea, I really have to go. But quick—are you happy?”

“Other than my best friend disappearing with an unnamed he and being really cryptic about it? Yes. Very happy.”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“Madame Petty told me you wouldn’t come home one day,” Bea blurts.

“Fuck Madame Petty. I’m coming home, and then I’ll tell you everything. I’ll call you every other day or so. So you know I’m still alive. Gotta dash, Bea. I love you.”

“Daphne— dammit .”

Bea throws her phone down and stares at it in the grass.

“She hung up?” I ask.

“Did you hear that?”

“Every word. Has she…” I’m not certain how to finish.

“Done something like this before?”

“I was trying to find a more polite way to word that question.”

“Not since she was disinherited.”

“Bea?”

She looks at me, worry lines grooving her forehead and between her eyes.

“You taught Daphne to drive?”

The barest smile tilts her lips up. “Not exactly. But you want a good script for another show? I can tell you aaaaall about how much I had to teach Daph when she moved in with us the first time. Rich girl suddenly poor without a clue how to get along in the real world. I have some stories.”

My hand hovers over my heart, which has begun beating wildly with excitement at the scenes taking place in my head. “Don’t tease me, darling. That would be brilliant fun to write together with you.”

She taps the script in her lap. “Give this to the studio, and I’ll start talking. If Daph agrees. Which she will. If I tell her to.”

“Beatrice Best, you are a wicked woman.”

“The stories probably aren’t really script-worthy. Especially not the one about dish soap at the laundromat. Or the one about her first time trying to dye her own hair. Or the one about when she discovered bulk beans on the internet.”

“You are a veritable smorgasbord of life experiences that belong in a television series.”

Her smile is growing, even as she glances at her phone again. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“For what, love?”

“For reminding me of all the reasons Daphne’s going to be okay. She’s come a long, long way, and if someone from her former world needs help learning the same things she did, they’re in good hands.”

I toss aside my notebook and pull her into my lap. “She will be more than okay. As she said, she’ll be home soon. She’s doing a good deed.”

Her nose wrinkles. “He better appreciate what she’s doing. And if he hurts her?—”

“As I believe I’ve recently noted, your brother has all of the resources necessary to solve that problem.”

She snuggles into me, her face in the crook of my neck, exactly where I like it. “I love you,” she whispers.

“I love—” I start, but I’m interrupted by a giant wave of cold water splashing across us.

Bea shrieks and prances out of my lap. “Oh, that’s how it’s gonna be?” she says to my boys, an impish grin taking hold of her face. “You have no idea who you’re playing with here.”

They grin back at her.

She jumps into the pool, executing the most perfect, splash-tastic cannonball that I’ve ever witnessed, making my boys and their friends shriek with glee.

My eyes mist over as I watch them all water fight each other.

I didn’t think love was the reason I came to Athena’s Rest.

But as it turns out, love is the reason I’ve done nearly everything in my life since the boys were born.

The difference is, now I choose to embrace it instead of hiding from it.

And that is how a true happily ever after is made.