“Aww, that’s so sweet of you, but I have to eat with—”
“All of us,” I interrupt.
“We get to have lunch together!” Tucker says. “Captain Monica says so. Can you teach me to draw a—”
“Pirate?” Ellie exclaims desperately. “Yes. I can teach you to draw a pirate. Or a parrot.”
“The golf man’s parrot said a dirty word.”
“Aw, Pop Rock’s working at Scuttle Putt today? His parrot usually does say dirty words. He’s a very salty bird.”
Our table is called, and we head inside with Tucker proudly holding Ellie’s hand. “Be careful, there’s a chair,” he tells her, steering her around one of the thick wood tables in the treasure-themed dining room.
“Thank you so much, gallant sir,” she replies, then adds under her breath to me, “Why are you here?”
“Serendipitous timing. And fate, of course. I sensed you’d be here, and I missed you.”
She looks at me closer, and there’s a gleam in her eyes like she’s gearing up to top me in the lovey-dovey new relationship game.
Which shouldn’t be a big surprise. She’s always been bright.
“Here, Miss Ellie. You sit on the end so you can put your foot up if you need to.”
Tucker helps her gracefully into a chair—as gracefully as a seven-year-old who barely hits four feet tall can—and gives her a funny look when she replies, “Thank you, kind sir, you may kiss my hand.”
“It’s what gentlemen used to do for ladies,” I whisper to him.
He wrinkles his nose at me like I’m asking him to hug an eel. “Dad, I like her, but I don’t want to kiss her.”
“Here. No cooties. Like this.” I bend over, take Ellie’s hand, and press a loud, smacking kiss to it, but I also trail my fingers down her palm.
Lightly.
Where no one can see.
Goosebumps visibly travel up her arm, and there’s a tremor in her hand before I lower it, still holding on.
“See?” I say to Tucker. “Nothing to it.”
I help Tucker into his chair on her other side and take the liberty of sweeping her short, dark curls back from her cheek before I pull out my own chair and sit.
Something squishes under my ass, and I register cold liquid on my left butt cheek the same moment a woman behind me shrieks.
I leap up as fast as I can, bumping into a passing server, who dumps a pizza all down the back of the woman who just got sprayed with—with what?
Whatever it is, it’s red and sticky and why the fuck is there a bottle of ketchup in a pizza joint?
“Oh my god, you sat on the French dressing!” Blond Caveman’s girlfriend says. Her eyes are round like she’s both horrified and trying not to laugh.
“French—what?” Tucker asks.
“The French dressing,” Ellie tells him, and I can hear her trying not to laugh as she scoots her chair, winces, and tries again to rise. “They put it on the pizza here, and—oh. Right. Bad time. Sorry.”
“I’m so sorry. Oh my gosh, ma’am, I’m so, so sorry,” the server is babbling. “Sir. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how—why—”
I try to help her pick up the pizza. “My fault,” I tell her. “Should’ve looked before I sat.”
Ellie’s sucking her cheeks in, face pointed at the ground. Tucker looks like he can’t decide if he’s supposed to laugh or cry.
“Daddy made a big boo-boo,” I tell him.
“This isn’t funny,” Monica whispers, like she’s talking to herself, while her face contorts with the effort of holding in laughter.
Her fiancé is on the ground helping me, lips twisted in a wry grin. “Could’ve happened to any of us, man. Ellie, sit. We got this.”
A manager rushes over, and Blond Caveman’s girlfriend leaps into action, checking the woman behind me for pizza burns. “I’m a nurse,” she says, like she just remembered. “May I?”
“Wyatt?” Ellie whispers in a strangled voice.
“Yeah?” I grunt while I swipe at melted cheese on the old wood floor.
“I’m sorry you’re having a shitty day.”
All of a sudden, the woman we’ve accidentally assaulted with French dressing and pizza bursts into laughter. “What are the odds?” she says.
“I’m really sorry, ma’am,” I say again.
“Honey, I was just sitting here mad because I have to go see my sister-in-law, who’s always talking about all the terrible calamities that happen to her, like getting a wart on her knee, which is a pretty lame calamity, but that’s my sister-in-law for you, and now I got a story that’ll top her for life.”
“Ma’am, we’re still going to have to comp your pizza and give you a coupon for more. And a free T-shirt,” the manager says.
“Can I get one of those glow-in-the-dark cups and a pirate mug too? I’ll pay for it, but I’m telling her I got it all for free.” She cackles as she rubs the French dressing on her shirt with a napkin. “She’s gonna be so jealous.”
“Her mug’s on me,” I tell the manager.
“I’ll buy her an Anchovies hoodie,” Jason pipes up.
“Put one of them squeezy treasure chests for her on my bill,” a grandma two tables over calls. “This is the best entertainment I had since Blackbeard stripped for me two nights ago.”
Half the people in the restaurant groan. “Didn’t need to know that, Sandy!” someone calls back.
“There are kids in this place, Nana,” the manager chastises.
“A stress chest? That’s it?” someone else says. “Cheapskate. I’m getting a whole set of mugs for her.”
“And I’m buying that table’s dinner,” another voice chimes in, pointing at us.
“Root beer all around!” someone hollers.
Despite sitting on French dressing for the next hour—the remains of which Ellie slathers all over her pizza and talks Tucker into trying too, after she’s taught him how to draw a pirate face—lunch is just as much fun as Scuttle Putt was, except with more sea shanties and souvenirs. Monica’s toned down the shrieking about Ellie and me dating, and instead is peppering me with questions about being a flight test engineer. Except for the occasional snide comment about my pay grade, the Blond Caveman keeps his attention focused mostly on his phone. Jason tells us all about the last time he went to Africa with the nonprofit he works for, and then brags on Monica’s recycled artwork.
And Tucker gets to color a pirate ship that Ellie draws him on the paper placemat, which keeps him happy long after he’s done eating. He’s loaded down with more loot than he picked up at the parade by the time we leave.
“This town is crazy,” I mutter to Ellie once we’re back out on the street, stuffed with the best thin crust pizza in the entire state.
“Customer service and reputation above all else,” she replies. “Welcome to the Shipwreck family.”
Two pirates on unicycles are juggling back and forth right in the center of Blackbeard Avenue, and the Sea Cow Creamery across the street is handing out free samples to anyone willing to shout Ahoy, matey! to distract them.
Everyone’s smiling despite the pirate insults flying.
Everyone except the Blond Caveman.
He’s scowling at me.
And I’m ignoring him.
“You guys are coming with us to Cannon Bowl, right?” Monica says.
“Wyatt promised Tucker a trip to Davy Jones’s Locker,” Ellie says with just enough regret in her voice that I almost hope Tucker announces he’d rather go bowling.
He doesn’t, of course.
Kid loves a good water park.
But I make sure to kiss Ellie goodbye before the bridal party departs. A good kiss.
The kind of kiss that suggests there’s more waiting where that came from.
And hell if I wouldn’t kiss her longer if I could.
Blond Caveman glares at me.
And I decide I’ll be perfectly content playing her boyfriend for the rest of the week.
“Dad, friends kiss
, right?” Tucker asks as we head to the car for the swim bag and more sunscreen.
“Grown-up friends do sometimes, yes,” I tell him.
“Does that mean you’re getting married too?”
I never should’ve gotten married the first time, but I thought it was the right thing to do. No chance in hell I’ll do it twice.
I squat down to his level. “You know you’re number one in my life?”
“Behind your job.”
I shake my head. “I do my job to keep you and your friends and your friends’ families safe. Because I love you first, even when my job keeps me away. I miss you every day. And I might have special friends come and go, but you will always be most important. Okay?”
He frowns like he wants to ask more, but just says, “Okay.”
And once again, I wonder how much I’m messing him up.
But this is my life in the Air Force. I move. I make new friends. They leave. I make more friends. Then I leave. It’s the life a lot of military kids live too.
You have to say goodbye a lot, but you meet a hell of a lot of good people along the way.
I’ll miss it when I’m done, which will be sooner than I ever wanted, but the odds of me having a long career in the Air Force close to Tucker are slim to none.
“We’re pretty dang lucky,” I tell him. “We got to share lunch with a bunch of people who think you’re awesome.”
He grins at me. “That’s ’cause I am awesome, Dad.”
He sure is.
Chapter Ten
Ellie
I spend the rest of the day feeling weirdly lonely despite being with Monica and Jason.
Yes, and Patrick and Sloane too, but it’s weird to hang out with a man I’ve seen naked, knowing he gets naked for someone else now, so I’m concentrating on my best friend instead.
And not on Wyatt.
That kiss.
Tucker and his sweet insistence that no one else could ever draw pirates like I could.
“The parents get here tomorrow,” Monica tells me with a nose-wrinkle as we reach my car in the parking lot. She insisted on walking with me, and since we haven’t had much alone time the last few weeks aside from driving out here, it’s good to have a few more minutes of us time. “My mom still doesn’t understand the pirate wedding thing, but I think when she sees Jason sword fight the mutinous pirates who want to steal me after we say our vows, she’ll get it.”
I laugh. “I love you.”
“Of course you do. Everyone else you know is B-O-R-I-N-G.” She gives a mock eye roll, and we both crack up again, because there’s nothing remotely boring about the people I’ve known longest in my life.
Beck and half the guys we grew up with have been world famous since before I graduated high school, and it hasn’t always been easy to find the true friends from the people who just want to get close to Beck and his Bro Code bandmates. But Monica’s all country, all the way, and she always has been. She couldn’t pick a boy band out of a lineup, and she’d rather drool over Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean and Captain Hook from Once Upon A Time than check out my brother’s Instagram page.
She also always asks me to turn the cardboard cutouts of him around whenever she stops by his house.
Or my parents’ house after Beck’s been there and left a few more.
He’s such a goober.
“Seriously, though, I will completely understand if you beg off anything with Jason’s parents. I sometimes wonder how he came out of the same gene pool as the rest of them.”
“Every family has a black sheep.” The Dixons’ is Jason. He works for a nonprofit whose mission is to provide clean drinking water in third world countries, instead of going into the banking business with his father and brother.
Or even into the socialite business with his mother.
It’s been long enough since Patrick and I broke up that I’ve finally been able to see clearly how my priorities have been messed up most of my life. I thought having a solid career, a stable husband in a complementary career, and adorable children to carry on the Ryder family environmental engineering firm was what it’s all about.
But the idea of being one-half of a power couple doesn’t appeal to me anymore.
And the more time I spend around Patrick, the more I question everything I ever wanted.
He spent half of lunch checking out his phone. He missed an entire two games of bowling for an important work call. And it wasn’t until Sloane took his phone away at dinner that he finally engaged in a conversation that wasn’t about his travel, clients, or work hours.
Or baiting someone. Like Wyatt at lunch.
The military? That doesn’t pay very well, does it? Oh, that’s right, you’re divorced. I would never let my child go a week without seeing me.
When we were together, I thought he was charmingly cynical. Now, I can see he’s truly an asshole in the way that makes Wyatt look like…not such an asshole.
And Patrick learned it from his parents.
“There’s no way I’m making you face Jason’s parents by yourself. I’ll be there, and if they get snippy, I’ll just mention how many of my other ex-boyfriends sent flowers after my accident.”
Monica sighs. “They’re just so oblivious sometimes.”
I bite my tongue.
My brother is oblivious. The Dixons are just mean.
Except Jason.
Who’s jogging into the parking lot now after stopping to help talk Pop Rock’s cussing parrot off a roof. “Sorry, ladies,” he says as he joins us. “Stubborn bird. How’s the leg, Ellie?”
“Good.” It’s almost the truth, comparatively speaking. “You guys aren’t going to The Grog without me tonight, are you?”
“Nope, we’re saving that for tomorrow after our mothers drive us nuts,” Monica replies happily.
Jason shakes his head, making his curls shake too. “They mean well,” he tells her. He gives me a sheepish grin. “And I told mine to be nice to you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve been through worse. You just enjoy your wedding week.”
“Are you having fun?” Monica asks.
“Of course.”
“Don’t even try that with me. You’re one degree of separation from needing to meet Willie Nelson for a joint. Do I need to talk to Wyatt about your need for backrubs and wine this week?”
“No, he’s got that covered.”
“So what’s with the weird tension between you two at lunch? And don’t tell me you were embarrassed about the dressing, because your brother models underwear for a living. Nothing short of full frontal exposure in public is grounds for you to get embarrassed.”
Oh, no, she noticed? I drop my voice and try to come up with a reasonable explanation. “Tucker found my doodle pad this morning.”
When the idea of a seven-year-old looking at Dick and the Nuts doesn’t seem to faze her, I add, “While we were trying to fix Frogger.”
“Holy shit, you broke Beck’s Frogger?”
“Ssshhh! We’re going to get the high score back,” I say quickly. I have no idea how, but we will. “And did you miss the part about my doodle pad?”
“No, I’m trying really, really hard not to laugh at how Wyatt must’ve handled his son getting an eyeful of a penis cartoon. It’s easier to do when I’m concentrating on the threat of your brother banishing you from ever using his weekend house again. Remember the time we snuck up here for my birthday party?”
“Oh my gosh, and all your friends from work?”
“And the poor shaved poodle?”
“And the stripper?” we say in unison, and we both double over laughing, which sends a jolt of pain to my knee, but screw it, laughing feels too good.
“You had a stripper?” Jason asks mildly.
“A pirate stripper,” I explain.
“A really bad pirate stripper,” Monica adds.
“He tripped over his scabbard and accidentally mooned us trying to turn on his music.”
“He w
as so cute.”
“In a frat boy out of his element kind of way.”
“We ended up getting him drunk and tutoring him in calculus.”
“He still emails me his grade reports. I think he’s graduating next year.”
Monica’s eyes dance. “He is? We should go to his graduation! Engineering school, right?”
“No, he decided political science was more his speed. His parents are crushed, but he’s riding a 4.0 since he switched majors.”
“We are so going to his graduation.”
“It’s a date.”
“Hey, Ellie, you need a ride home?” Grady Rock calls from the edge of the makeshift parking lot.
“Got my car right here, but thank you,” I call back, patting my white Prius.
“Still happy to give you a ride. My TV’s out. Can’t watch the game.”
“Go crash Cooper’s house.”
“Pop’s there.”
“Go see your grandfather. It’s good for your soul.”
“Not when Nana’s with him. They’re disgusting. Heard she was telling stories at Anchovies about him stripping for her. Would you want to watch that?”
“We’re going with her to make out on the couch,” Monica tells him.
“Fucking hell,” he mutters loud enough to carry. “Next time, then.”
He waves good-naturedly and heads down the road.
“Aww, now I feel bad,” she says. “Where’s he going to watch the game?”
“His TV’s not broken,” I tell her. “He’s just spreading that rumor so the rest of his family doesn’t crash his place.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Spend enough weekends in Shipwreck, you’ll know what color underwear everyone wears too.”
“What color underwear are you wearing today?” Jason asks Monica.
She grins at him. “Want to see?”
“Ack, not here.” I shoo them both away. “Go on, go do your soon-to-be-newlyweds thing somewhere else. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
We pass around hugs, and I climb into my car for the drive up the mountain. The sky’s still a hazy gray-blue, but the sun’s dipped below the mountain ridge to the west and dusk is settling. I make it home without incident before darkness has fully engulfed the roads, and when I limp into the basement from the garage, I find Wyatt and Tucker snuggled on the basement couch watching the Fireballs game.
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