by Grant, Pippa
“Fine.”
“Fine?” What the hell? He’s not going to argue?
“Yes. Fine.”
“I’m telling Beck.”
“So he can blab to Monica that it’s fake?”
Fucker. “So he doesn’t freak out when he sees you grabbing my ass in any of Monica’s photos.”
He smirks. “So that’s what you want from me.”
“Yes, Wyatt. I want you to be a total Neanderthal and take me on every horizontal surface in Shipwreck, and then I want you to fondle me in public until we both get arrested for indecent exposure, because you’re so manly and I just can’t resist the allure of your testosterone.”
He smirks again. “Goodnight, Ellie.”
I scowl, because he’s not taking the bait, and I’m out of other ideas to annoy him. “Goodnight, Wyatt.”
He snorts softly, which feels like him getting the last word, when he’s probably making a not-so-silent commentary on me getting the last word.
I don’t snort back. For the record.
Not until he closes the door anyway.
Eight
Wyatt
Tucker and I are at the island in the kitchen, chowing on eggs, Mrs. Ryder’s biscuits—god bless that woman for teaching me to cook—and bacon, debating if we’re going to play miniature golf at Scuttle Putt first or go check out Davy Jones’s Locker—Shipwreck’s water park—when the doorbell rings.
We both look at the tablet hung under the cabinet, because everything around this house is wired with security cameras, including the doorbell. Half a biscuit falls out of Tucker’s mouth. “Dad…” he whispers while I take in the muscled guy on the front porch with a bicycle leaning against his hip and a white bakery bag in hand. “That’s Cooper Rock. Cooper Rock came to see us.”
“Yeah, bud, looks like he did.”
While I’m sitting there growling to myself, wondering why a pro baseball player is dropping by at this hour of the morning, Tucker takes off like a shot, dashing to the door and flinging it open. “Cooper Rock! You came to see us! Can I have your autograph? Can we play catch? Can you please win today? I know you can win. You won a game just last week. You can do it again.”
I put in the alarm code while it beeps in warning, then pull Tucker off the guy, who’s grinning in amusement once again. “Gonna do my best, little man. You like donuts?”
“Yeah!”
“Have to save two for Ellie, but here, you can have the rest.”
“Eggs first,” I tell Tucker, rescuing the bag before he can make off with it and eat all seven pounds of donuts inside.
“But, Dad—”
“Go on. You were almost done anyway.”
He looks back at Cooper. “Can you sign my arm?”
“How about a pirate sword?”
“Yeah!”
Cooper points to a sword on Beck’s entryway table. “May I?”
I hand it to him. He pulls a Sharpie out of his back pocket and scribbles his name, then presents it to Tucker, who stares in awe.
“How’s Ellie?” Cooper asks.
I cross my arms and study him carefully, because I don’t care if he plays baseball or if he’s a fucking priest, and I don’t care how nice he was last night, I want to know if he has ulterior motives for asking. “Fine,” I say shortly.
“She’s still sleeping,” Tucker offers.
Cooper clearly tries to swallow a grin, though I don’t know which of us he’s more amused by.
“She should be, the way she was dancing last night.”
“She was dancing?”
“But don’t worry. We helped her get up on the table and made sure she didn’t fall down.”
“You—”
“Man, you should see your face.” He shakes his head. “She sat at the balcony table at Crusty Nut most of the night, then did the mini-golf course with her friends. But good to know she’s in good hands.” He slaps me on the shoulder and turns, straightening his bike as he flashes Tucker a grin. “Thanks for the support, little man. Stay strong, okay?”
My boy nods. “The Fireballs are gonna come back and win the World Series this time for sure! I’ve waited seven years for this.”
“Yeah, I’ve waited twenty. And I gotta run, or I’m gonna be late getting back to the city for practice.”
“Hit a home run!” Tucker yells, but I hear something else too.
Something that distinctly sounded like a woman yelling, “Oh, fuck!”
Somewhere beneath us.
I peek in the donut bag, which sends the heavenly aroma of fried dough and sugar wafting into the foyer, and I spy at least a half-dozen cake donuts smushed in there.
“Eggs,” I remind Tucker, and while he slumps off to the kitchen, I open the door to the basement and head down.
The game room’s open. Ellie’s on a stool, muttering enough fucks to make a pirate blush while she bangs on the controller on Beck’s Frogger arcade game.
The pink in her cheeks and that stubborn set to her jaw make my dick twitch.
Kissing her in December wasn’t a fluke.
Is she obnoxious? Yes. Short-tempered? Sometimes. Determined and smart and driven and fucking unstoppable?
Fuck, my pants are getting tight. Because there’s nothing hotter than a woman taking charge and going after what she wants, and that’s what Ellie Ryder has done every day of her life.
While thumbing her nose at me.
“Work work work, you son of a bitch,” she growls.
“Donut?” I ask.
She throws a wild-eyed look over her shoulder. “Frogger is broken.”
I almost drop the bag, which would be a catastrophe, and not only because they smell delicious, but also because I’d have to clean it up. “What? No, it’s not.”
“DO NOT TRY TO MANSPLAIN ME.”
I growl while I cross past the ping-pong table, pool table, and foosball table to the far wall. “I’m not—what the hell is—dammit, Ellie, this is called denial, because Beck’s gonna—oh, fuck.”
The screen on the arcade console is one big squiggly mess of greens and blues. Ellie hits the buttons, and nothing happens. “I can’t unplug it myself,” she grumbles. “I can’t fucking bend that way.”
I toss the donuts on the ping-pong table behind me and shift behind the machine.
“Wait!” she shrieks.
“What?”
“Beck’s high score. He’ll kill you if his high score is gone.”
I freeze.
She’s right.
He hit seven hundred thousand something points over a weekend about two years ago. It was one of those rare times we were all around—Beck, me, the Wilson brothers, the Rivers kids, Davis, Ellie—and the whole weekend turned into one big party of watching Frogger and drinking beer and eating pizza and shooting hoops under the stars and just having fun again.
No worries, no responsibilities. Only fun.
Like when we were kids.
The whole crew will have a fit if that score’s lost.
It would be like losing the weekend.
It’s all we did that weekend.
“Can’t you take out the screen and shake it and make it work?” she says desperately.
“It’s not a fucking Etch-a-Sketch.”
“But maybe it’s the video card. Maybe if we get the video card out, we don’t have to reset the whole system.”
“Dad? Can I have a donut now?”
We both whip our heads around to look at Tucker, who’s wearing a milk mustache and a yellow streak that I expect is egg down his Fireballs T-shirt, which isn’t what he was wearing five minutes ago.
Also, did he just hear me say fuck?
Shit. I need to remember he can hear me. Bachelor life on base isn’t good for a kid-friendly vocabulary.
“Yeah, bud. Help yourself.”
Ellie’s watching me with wide eyes, like she has an idea.
Like she’s thinking nobody would say a word if Tucker spilled milk on the video game.
And it could be our secret.
And—
She breaks eye contact, shaking her head with a high laugh. “We are terrible people,” she whispers. Then she shrieks. “No! Don’t hit the reset button! Maybe we can unplug it without losing the high score, but reset will definitely erase it.”
We’re an hour and a half by car into Copper Valley. The city’s our best bet for getting the system looked at, but just because it has a million residents doesn’t mean a single one of them will specialize in fixing a vintage 1980’s arcade game.
Beck said he had to go all the way to Atlanta to get this one.
“Two options,” I tell her. “We call a repair guy, or we reboot and hope for the best.”
“What if we can’t save it at all?”
“Whatcha doin’?” Tucker asks. He’s standing at the ping-pong table, donut in one hand, rubbing the top of a sparkly notebook next to it with the other.
“Mr. Beck’s game broke. We’re trying to fix it. Hang tight, bud. We’ll go golfing soon, okay?”
“Okay,” he replies around a mouthful of glazed donut.
“Did you go out for donuts at Crow’s Nest?” Ellie asks. There’s pure lust in her eyes. And her voice. And my dick notices.
“Cooper Rock biked up to drop them off for you.”
She blinks at me.
Then blinks again.
And then she busts up laughing.
At me.
“Feeling inferior?” she asks.
“You want me to pull this plug?”
“No, I don’t want you to pull the plug! I want you to fix it.”
This is new, Ellie asking me for something. Usually she’d tell me to go away, that she’d do it herself.
We’re like…a team. It’s weird. But not unpleasant.
I yank out my phone and start googling, because if we’re going to work together, I’m going to have The Google on my side before I do anything stupid.
“Look up if the high scores are erased if you unplug it,” Ellie tells me.
“Who’s mansplaining now?” I mutter, which earns me a light shove in the shoulder.
My skin tingles under my shirt, like I’m in danger of getting struck by lightning, and I concentrate on reminding myself that getting Ellie riled up is good for her, and has nothing to do with me.
Even if I did toss and turn half the night thinking about kissing her again.
“Alright, we shouldn’t lose the high score if we reset it by pulling the plug,” I tell her.
“But it’s old,” she points out. “Are you sure that’s accurate for old machines?”
“You’re right. We did just invent radio signals two years ago. I should check out this internet that’s been around since the twentieth century some more.”
“Fine, Mr. Expert. Pull the plug. But it’s on you if the high score’s lost.”
“I wasn’t the one who broke it,” I point out.
“I wouldn’t have broken it if—”
She cuts herself off sharply, pursing her lips and looking over at the Ms. Pac-Man game.
Was she about to say if you hadn’t kissed me?
I don’t remember who kissed who, but I’d take the blame.
It was worth it.
“Leg hurt too much to sleep?” I ask while I bend over behind the machine again and trace the right cord to the outlet.
“Yep.”
“Huh. My lips bothered me all night. Probably need Chapstick. It’s the elevation. Dries you out.”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to.
I’m getting her goat.
I can feel it.
Plus, I’ve been practicing since I realized I annoyed her when I was about thirteen.
I know how to shoot a basketball, Wyatt. I don’t need you to show me how.
Damn if I didn’t have some fun telling her she was doing it wrong just to see her face light up in independent indignation for the rest of high school. It was almost as good as having my own little sister.
Until it wasn’t.
Because Ellie Ryder grew up, and she grew up stronger and faster and better at every sport she tried, and maybe it’s ego, but I swear she wouldn’t have been half as good if I hadn’t goaded her.
And I noticed. Believe me, I noticed. Even when I knew I shouldn’t, I did.
I yank the plug, and the fan inside the machine whirs to a stop. After counting to three, I plug it in again, then straighten to watch the screen.
Ellie’s rubbing her thigh, and I wonder if it’s aching this morning.
Not that she’d tell me if it was. She doesn’t admit weakness.
Not if she can help it.
The game flickers to life, the screen back in normal operating mode, and I breathe a sigh of relief while Ellie sags next to me.
Close enough that she’s almost sagging into me, matter of fact.
“Oh, shit,” she whispers.
Tucker giggles.
“Watch your mouth,” I mutter, but I realize she’s gone pale. “What?”
She points to the screen.
To the top. Where it’s supposed to say HI-SCORE 701,400, but instead says HI-SCORE 0.
“No, no, no,” she groans. “Do you know what this means?”
“Beck’s gonna kill you,” I offer. Fuck, I’ve got sweat gathering at my collar, because Beck’s gonna kill us.
Dating his sister might be okay—not that I have time in my life for that even if I’d let myself imagine it—but killing his Frogger score?
We’re both dead.
But I can’t say that to Ellie, because now I have to annoy her. It might be the only thing I do right for my buddy this week.
He spent hours. Hours. And we killed his high score. On his favorite game. Fuck, we all pitched in, egging him on, bringing him pizza. Levi even wiped his chin a few times so he didn’t have to break from playing.
It’s just a game.
This is stupid.
Except it’s the memories. And the glory. And Beck’s favorite game.
Tucker giggles again. “Daddy, what’s a ball chain?”
“What’s a what?”
“A ball—”
Before he can answer, Ellie’s shrieking again. She leaps off the stool, almost goes down to her knees, but doesn’t stop as she dives for the notebook in his hands. “Ohmygod, that’s not for you!”
She snatches the notebook, but not before I see—a drawing of a short penis? And two boulders?
“I like Dick and his Nuts,” Tucker says. “They’re funny.”
Her face is a cherry tomato with eyebrows and flashing blue eyes. “Please don’t open random notebooks and sketchpads in this house. You don’t know what you’re going to find, and my brother has some very adult things that you shouldn’t see.”
Beck doesn’t have notebooks and sketchpads.
Beck plays video games when he’s here. Sometimes poker.
But he’s never doodled or written stuff a day in his life.
Ellie, on the other hand…
“Not one word.” She lifts her palm to me and hobbles out of the room, but not before grabbing the donut bag too. “Not a single word.”
“Hey, you’ve got some Frogger to catch up on,” I call after her. “Seven hundred thousand points worth.”
She glances back at me, sees Tucker isn’t watching, and lifts a middle finger.
I stifle a grin, because that attitude?
That’s pure, classic Ellie Ryder.
And seeing her coming back in full force is more relief than I can ever admit to anyone.
Especially her brother.
Nine
Wyatt
Tucker and I are on the eighteenth hole, after having survived leaving the house with Ellie insisting she didn’t need a ride anywhere and that she’ll make sure none of Beck’s notebooks get left out again.
I smirked at her, letting her know I didn’t believe her, and she flipped me another bird when Tu
cker’s back was turned.
On the miniature golf course, we’ve made it past the English cannon attack hole, the mermaid hole, the hurricane hole, and more, to finally reach the Kraken hole. It seems wrong that we’ve come this far just to lose our balls to one of the sea monster’s mouths—or possibly his eye sockets—but I guess that’s the life of a pirate.
“Dad! Dad, I got it in his nose! Did you see?”
“You gave him a golf ball booger. Good job.”
Tucker throws his arms around my waist. “I’m so glad you’re my dad.”
My sinuses get heavy and I blink a couple times before I hoist him up for a hug. Most days, I feel like I get more wrong than I get right, and I don’t have a fucking clue what he’ll think of me when he grows up—I’m supposed to be there for him every day, not just calling him at bedtime from Gellings Air Force Base five hundred miles away in Georgia—but he still seems to think I’m good at the dad job for now.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“I know,” he replies, and I set him down with a chuckle. “Your turn, Dad. I’ll bet you can get it right in his forehead. That’s the hardest shot, so they made the hole really big. I’ll bet even Cooper Rock couldn’t get it in his forehead.”
I oblige and sink my ball into the Kraken’s forehead, which, indeed, is the biggest hole. But I don’t tell him that makes it the easiest, because I like being his hero.
“Someday, I’m gonna be a putt-putt master just like you,” Tucker informs me.
I take his hand while we head over to turn in our clubs. “Someday, you’ll be even better than me.”
“Yeah, because I’m gonna be Captain America one day,” he says sagely.
“Captain America? Who wants to be Captain America when you can be Blackbeard?” the wizened old man behind the counter says with a wink while we hand him our clubs. He’s sporting an eye patch, a pirate hat, and a parrot on his shoulder.
“Fucking Blackbeard,” the parrot says.
“Hush, hush, Long Beak Silver.” The old pirate—pretty sure they call him Pop around here, head of the Rock clan—looks sternly at Tucker. “Don’t ever let your grandkids parrot sit. They teach terrible words. But I’ll get ‘em. I’ll get ‘em all. I’m fixin’ to set every one of ‘em up with the love of their lives, and that’ll teach ‘em.”