by Grant, Pippa
Tillie Jean’s eyes snap our way, and her blue irises light up like a Bunsen burner while I remind myself he’s talking about his sister’s hat and not her ass.
“I can imagine your lunch is gonna be decorated with spit if you don’t quit irritating your sister,” Stafford says.
“Dude, you should lay off the pranks,” Robinson agrees. “I like TJ. She’s nice. Be good if she stayed nice this winter.”
Stafford nods. “Don’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”
But Cooper’s still grinning. “You kidding? She lives for the off-season months when I’m home every year. You know how boring this place gets otherwise?”
Stafford, Robinson, and I glance around the restaurant. It’s designed to make you feel like you’re in the hull of a ship. Plank wood walls. Pirate statue in the corner that looks just like Cooper’s grandfather, who supposedly looks just like Thorny Rock, founder of Shipwreck, himself. Pirate treasure maps plastered to the walls between paintings of ships at sea, some with muted colors, some so bright you shouldn’t look at them without sunglasses. Barrels holding menus and tourist information stand at either side of the thick wooden doorframe, and more barrels make up the hostess stand. There’s a half-wall separating the bar from the rest of the restaurant, and a row of fake parrots sitting on bird swings hanging down above it.
Except for the one real parrot that keeps picking a different swing and insulting the fake birds.
And there’s even a mascot for the damn restaurant—a pirate peanut on a pegleg.
“You get bored here.” Trevor stares at Cooper like it’s the dumbest thing he’s ever heard.
“Only so many times you can do glow-in-the-dark pirate putt-putt and tube down a snowed-over waterslide before you’ve been there, done it all.” Cooper shakes his head. “Winter in Shipwreck is a sad, quiet, lonely time.”
“Beg to differ,” Annika calls from the bar. Cooper’s sister-in-law is seated between two other women I’ve met in passing a time or two in the past few weeks, and I’m starting to remember them all, less from experience and more because Cooper talks a lot.
Annika is the slender brown-haired one and was Grady’s best friend in high school despite living in Sarcasm, the next town over, which is officially Shipwreck’s enemy town. She moved home to help her mother and sister with their own bakery, and now keeps books for half the businesses in both Sarcasm and Shipwreck. Rumor has it she’s expecting, though I’ll be the last person to bring it up in conversation with her not showing at all.
Georgia works for Grady at Crow’s Nest bakery and runs an Etsy shop selling soaps and candles, and it took me a minute to place her. She cut off her cornrows since last week, and now her tight black curls are cropped close to her skull.
Sloane is the redheaded nurse who moved to Shipwreck after falling in love with it during a destination wedding here. She works for Georgia’s grandpa, who’s the town doctor, and basically every unmarried guy between the ages of eighteen and fifty regularly fights for her attention. All seven of them.
Pretty sure Georgia’s about to give her a run for her money though.
In short—everyone’s connected to everyone else here, and they’re all tight as family, or they want to make the people here their family.
“You haven’t been home long enough to know how very boring it gets,” Cooper tells Annika.
“I’ve been home a couple years. If you get bored, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Hush, both of you.” Tillie Jean slides three plates onto the bar, putting one in front of each of her friends. “We’re not starting the Shipwreck-Sarcasm wars again.”
“Sarcasm-Shipwreck wars,” Annika mutters loudly.
Cooper rolls his eyes.
Tillie Jean rolls her eyes.
Mr. Rock pops out from the kitchen just to roll his eyes, spots us, and waves. “Morning, boys. Good workout today?”
“We kicked ass,” Cooper calls to his dad.
“Good. Watch your language around the bird.”
My shoulders bunch.
Not because of the bird, or the warning about language, but because three generations of Rock men are all grinning at each other now.
I know it’s wrong to hate Cooper Rock for having everything I ever wanted growing up, but the anger and frustration still hit me sometimes.
He grew up playing pirate. It’s family tradition.
I grew up learning how to roll my old man onto his side after he drank too much so he wouldn’t suffocate in his own vomit since he didn’t know how else to handle the demons haunting him.
“TJ,” Mr. Rock says, “you get these boys drinks yet?”
“What do you boys want to drink?” she calls to us.
“Tillie Jean. Walk your butt over there and take their orders.”
“Cooper smells like a dog wash.”
“She’s got a point, Mr. Rock,” Robinson calls. “TJ, can I get some of your sweet tea?”
“Water for me,” Stafford adds.
“Plain tea,” I say without looking at her.
“Coming right up,” she says, cutting Cooper off before he can ask for a drink.
But he’s not offended.
Not Cooper.
He’s grinning.
Probably planning on egging her car later.
And when my eyes wander over to the bar, where she’s flipping empty glasses onto the counter beside two sweating pitchers of tea, she’s also smiling.
Cooper and Tillie Jean aren’t just brother and sister. They’re friends.
A weird kind of friends, but still friends.
“I can’t believe I miss him too when he’s gone,” Georgia says, barely loud enough for us to hear.
“Sarcasm would chew him up and spit him out,” Annika replies.
“We might need that by the first of December. He’s extra…Cooper this year.”
“That means extra fabulous,” Cooper translates.
My shoulders twitch again, but I roll them back and remind myself I knew what I was signing up for when I came here for the winter.
“How’s PT?” I ask Stafford, forcing myself to look away from where TJ’s taking a massive gulp off a huge coffee cup and muttering something about decaf to Annika.
Not my business.
Working out and keeping up with Trevor?
Completely my business.
While I’m doing strength training and conditioning with the coaches, he’s in physical therapy for his agitated shoulder. Again. He’s been a reliever for the Fireballs longer than I’ve been on the team, and no one’s talking about if he’ll be able to rehab enough to come back in the spring after irritating it all over again in our last game.
Or if management will sign his contract extension.
Not like any other teams are knocking for him.
He ignores my question and looks at Cooper. “You really go down the waterslide when it’s snowed over?”
“Hell, yeah. On inner tubes. But only in the middle of the night. Here’s my plan—we’re gonna get all the guys from the team who stayed in Copper Valley to come out right before the first big snowfall of winter, and then we’re having a midnight snowpark party. We’ll do all those videos they put on the scoreboard between innings. Debating who has the best form at the bottom, talking about DJ Darren Greene’s questionable choice in music, scoring each other on our lazy river performance. Hitting balls off the top of the water treehouse. The whole deal.”
“Coach Bloom’ll bust your balls if you break your leg falling off a waterslide, man,” Robinson mutters.
Can’t say it too loudly or she’ll hear.
And it doesn’t matter that she’s not in the restaurant.
She hears all. Swear she does.
But Cooper’s shaking his head. “That’s why we put the trampoline cover over the landing pool. I’ll talk to management. They have the best video equipment.”
“Cooper, come get your friends’ drinks,” Tillie Jean calls. “And bring me their ord
ers when you come this way.”
“No service, no tip,” he calls back.
“Seriously, man, she’s gonna spit in all our food,” Robinson mutters.
Stafford shakes his head. “No, she won’t. She’ll get him back by blowing a bullhorn through his window at two AM. And he’ll deserve it.”
TJ has four glasses sitting on a tray on the bar, and she’s eyeballing them like batters tend to eyeball me when I’ve struck them out twice already in a single game.
Cooper doesn’t move to get the drinks.
But then, he probably doesn’t know she fell off her damn roof a few hours ago, and he probably didn’t notice her limping, or if he did, he thought it was her actual pegleg impersonation.
Dammit.
I shove up out of my chair and stalk to the bar to grab the tray. My quads cuss at me. Today was leg day at the gym and that’s what they do on leg day. Feel like jelly until you sit, then they get angry when you try to move again.
But it means I’m alive, and I’m kicking ass at getting in top shape for next year, so I’ll take it.
Tillie Jean shifts that wary gaze my way as I stop across from her and reach for the tray. “Two parrot burgers, a grilled chicken salad, and whatever Cooper hates most,” I tell her.
“We don’t serve parrot burgers.”
“But you want to.” I glance at her grandfather and Long Beak Silver, who are entertaining her friends now.
“Go sit down. I can bring those over.”
“Yeah, limping and carrying a tray full of drinks go great together.”
“I’m not limping.”
I tilt a brow.
She ducks her head and grabs an order pad. “Two hamburgers, a grilled chicken salad, and the gristle leftover from the smoked pork butt for Cooper. Got it. What kind of dressing, and how do you want those burgers cooked?”
“Twist your ankle?”
“Vinaigrette because it’s what you always have, medium for one burger and well-done for the other.”
“Or is it your knee?”
“What’s wrong with your knee, TJ?” Sloane spins on her stool and glances between us.
Tillie Jean doesn’t blink. “Banged it on my footboard again.”
“Before or after you fell off the roof?” I ask.
“You fell off the roof?”
Silence descends, but only for a minute.
Annika’s the first one to talk. “Again?”
“What do you mean, again?” Cooper yelps.
“Get up on the bar and pull your pant leg up,” Sloane orders. “Let me look.”
But Tillie Jean waves her away. “It’s fine. I twisted my ankle a little, and I’m in that stupid ankle brace just to be safe. If it still hurts tomorrow, I’ll make an appointment with Doc, okay? It’s tweaked. It’s not injured.”
“You can’t be walking around on a twisted ankle.” Cooper’s next to me now, peering over the bar like he can see his sister’s injury through the wood.
“And who’ll serve your food if I don’t?”
“If you’d told me you were hurt, I would’ve come over here and gotten my own damn drink.”
“I’m not hurt. I’m irritated.”
Okay, that’s funny. Cooper’s used that line every time he’s been put on the injured list since I joined the Fireballs.
Not that it happens often, but a guy can’t dive for every baseball the way he does at second base and not get injured a time or two.
He shoves me. “How’d you know she was hurt?”
“Live next door to a person long enough, they’ll eventually wake you up cussing at a parrot and falling off a roof at five in the morning.”
Mr. Rock pokes his head out of the kitchen again. He’s in a pirate hat over his hairnet too, though his doesn’t have mostly dead feathers like Tillie Jean’s does. “Were you chasing that damn parrot again?”
“He stole my keys.”
“Pop.” Mr. Rock puts his hands on his hips and glares at his own father. “If that bird doesn’t quit causing trouble, we’ll have to retire him.”
“Rawk! Eat shit and die. Rawk!”
Robinson grunts behind us. So does Trevor.
All of us made the mistake of sitting down after working out, and they’re rising to join Cooper and me at the bar.
“We can sit over here,” Robinson says, pulling up a stool next to Georgia.
“I’m fine,” Tillie Jean insists once more. “Who’s having the hamburgers? You two again? Fruit on the side, Robinson? Trevor, you want to upgrade your side to a salad with just vinegar because you’re insane, right? Go sit. Quit fussing.”
“The cussing’s a serious problem with tourist season, Dad,” Mr. Rock grumbles.
“It’s only a problem because people are afraid of words. What can words do? Not a damn thing.”
“Rawk! I’m gonna eat your pussy! Rawk!”
All of us turn and stare at the bird.
Pop Rock shifts in his seat and goes red in the face. “I didn’t teach him that,” he says gruffly.
“That’s not what Nana says,” Tillie Jean mutters under her breath.
The things I did not need to hear.
“Brain bleach,” Trevor says.
Robinson’s grimacing next to him. “I think I just lost my appetite.”
“Pop, Dad’s right.” Cooper grabs a tea off the tray, takes a sip, makes a face, and hands it to Robinson. “That one’s yours. Back to the parrot. He needs remedial training or he’ll start scaring the tourists away. Gah. That’s really sweet tea.” He sticks his tongue out and waggles it around like that’ll get the taste out of his mouth, then grabs another cup of tea and takes a big gulp.
And promptly sputters and chokes on it. “What the hell? Are these all sweet?”
Tillie Jean beams at him. “Yep.”
And then she does the most Tillie Jean thing possible and winks at me with another of her saucy grins. “Don’t worry. I would’ve warned you. I like you better. Hold on two seconds and I’ll get you the fresh stuff. No sugar and two lemons, just the way you like it.”
I’m twitching.
She’s flirting with me merely to annoy her brother, and I know it, and I’m still twitching. “We have to quit coming here,” I mutter to Cooper. “She’s gonna break both of us.”
He laughs. “Speak for yourself, man. The fun’s just getting started. But if she gets to be too much, let me know. I’ll make her stop.”
Right.
I need someone else to tell a woman to stop flirting with me.
I’d ask what’s wrong with me, except I already know.
It’s Tillie Jean. Tillie Jean is wrong with me, and she has been from the moment we met.
8
Tillie Jean
There’s exactly one cure for a long day, and it’s Aunt Glory’s whiskey sour, but replace the whiskey with fresh dark roast coffee and the sour with a little splash of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and then add more coffee, which is exactly what she does before serving it in my stein. She knows my mother worries about my caffeine consumption but also that I need a cure for a long day.
Probably I shouldn’t be on my second already, especially considering my dinner was a side salad—spend all day delivering greasy fried food to people, and it loses its appeal after a while—but the beautiful thing about Shipwreck is that I can walk home with one leg tied behind my back.
Preferably the leg with the achy ankle, but it’ll be fine tomorrow.
I swear. It’s only cranky because it’s tired, not because it’s anything more than tweaked. And I’m not drunk. I’m buzzed. Caffeine buzzes aren’t illegal, no matter what laws the town council tries to pass to get me to cut back when I fall off the wagon and back into the latte pool.
Buzzkills.
Sloane looks up from her phone and shakes her head at me. “You missed the dart board.”
“You wouldn’t know. You weren’t looking.”
She flashes her phone screen at me. “You’re trending in Shipw
reck’s Facebook group. Dakota’s counting how many darts you get stuck in the wall.”
I glance over my shoulder at Dita’s son, Dakota, who’s out for a night with his wife while Grandma Dita babysits their four-year-old twins.
He lifts a beer. “Keep going, TJ. I got five bucks riding on you not hitting the board at all.”
“No cheating,” Vinnie Carpelli, a middle-aged electrician who’s been everyone’s favorite person at some point in the last few years, calls from across The Grog. “I got ten on her finishing out the night with a bull’s-eye.”
“Aunt Glory, TJ’s next drink’s on me,” Dakota hollers.
“Make it water,” Vinnie orders.
I turn back to the wall and launch the last dart in my hand.
It bounces off the side of the board and clatters to the floor near my seat.
Possibly I’d hit the board better if I were standing up, but I like lounging on one chair with my foot propped up on the other.
The jittery hands most likely aren’t helping either.
Aunt Glory makes seriously good coffee. It’s like she sprinkles it with magic mocha dust or something, whereas my coffee grinder hasn’t been the same since Cooper left those roasted goat turds in it last winter.
No, I did not brew goat turds. And yes, it took me off coffee for at least three months, which he swears was his only intention, and the reason my coffee grinder hasn’t been the same is that I got a new one and haven’t found the right setting yet.
“Anyone who wants to make money off my very bad dart game better get over here and pick up the darts for me,” I call.
Sloane grins and shakes her head.
“Game over,” Dakota crows.
“Not if I get my ass off this stool and pick up her darts,” Vinnie replies.
A shadow moves behind me. All the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and not just because that’s a semi-normal reaction to two of Aunt Glory’s not-whiskey-sours at nine at night.
Max is here.
When did Max get here?
Whenever it was, he apparently came without a coat. Actually, I haven’t seen him in a coat all week. Did he lose it? I didn’t ruin it too when I spilled all that paint water on him, did I?