I rolled my eyes.
It wasn’t like my Thanksgiving turkey would even do anything.
I mean, my sister, Nora, spent the holidays with her husband’s family. Danny would have a new wife and their family to spend theirs with. Murphy went to the Waffle Corner to spend his Thanksgiving with his veteran friends.
What exactly would I do?
Nada.
“Doesn’t look much like a kid.” Zach’s words came quiet, but I still heard them.
I sighed and put the Dr. Pepper back.
I wouldn’t need it today after all. Especially when Zach spoke like that.
Sadly, when I came out, Zach was gone.
But I did have a twenty-dollar bill on my counter for the food I’d made him.
I also had half my store cleaned up, the broken display shelf taken to the dumpster that I would’ve never been able to get on my own, and a handwritten note.
One from Zach that said, ‘Thanks for lunch. Had a bad day myself.’
CHAPTER 4
Me: Little Caesars is hot and ready.
Danny: is it good?
Me: It’s hot and ready.
-Text exchange between Danny and Crockett
CROCKETT
“I’m telling you,” I said for the fourth time. “She’s going to do something. Seriously, she can’t help it.”
“It’s my wedding, Crockett,” my brother, Danny, said. “She won’t do anything.”
“Listen, Dan the Man,” I said as severely as I could. “She’s going to do something.”
“Then make it so she can’t,” Six suggested. Why Six was at my brother’s house, in the middle of the day, when I hadn’t brought her, was beyond me. But that was my best friend for you.
“By doing what?” I asked. “Putting a muzzle on her?”
“Sure.” She shrugged. “If that’s what it takes.”
I rolled my eyes.
“What you need is a badass man. You know she’s scared of really badass looking men,” Belinda, my soon to be sister-in-law, said. “You know any of those?”
One immediately came to mind. One that was, by far, the most badass and scariest man I’d ever met.
One that only spared me a glance and that was it, every single time he came into my store, since blurting out my full life story.
Which was a lot since he lived close. He bought his ‘essentials’ there once a week—milk, eggs, cheese, lunch meat and bread—and then came by randomly as well to get himself coffee, drinks, or a snack.
Every other week he treated himself to a burger and fries.
And every other week I began counting down to the second when I could see him longer for a few minutes at a time, until the next time that he came for a burger.
“I know someone,” Six offered.
I looked at my friend.
“I am not, under any circumstances, allowing Bruno to take me as his date,” I said. “Do you know how painful that would be?”
And it wouldn’t be painful because I had any feelings for Bruno whatsoever.
It would be painful because Bruno and I did not get along.
A long time ago, Bruno had been Six’s best friend.
A long time ago, Bruno had dropped Six like a hot potato because of something her dad had instructed him to do.
A long time ago, my friend had suffered a blow that she’d barely come out of.
When I’d met her years later, she’d been a shell of the person that she was now.
She’d been given up on by everyone.
Everyone except for me and her best friend, Wyett.
“You know, you never used to be like this when I first met you.” Six rolled her eyes. “So freakin’ stubborn.”
“She also had to rely on our father to pay for her shit,” Danny said. “She had to remain nice and cordial or she didn’t get money for tampons since he said, and I quote, that those weren’t a necessity.”
Like I had any choice at freakin’ all that I had a period or not.
“Your father is a douche canoe,” Six said. “And he didn’t send her any money at all. Did you know that in the final year of school, Crockett had to buy all of her clothes at a second-hand shop and Goodwill? Because your daddy dearest, who always gave y’all everything, wasn’t willing to give her anything?”
Danny’s eyes came to me.
I winced.
I shouldn’t have told Six that.
A couple of weeks ago, when the Rockett incident had happened, I’d told her all about my dad over one drunken night.
And then, from there on, I found myself with the ultimate protector in a way only Six could manage.
“I don’t think that Melody will do anything,” Belinda finally said. “But, Crockett, if you wouldn’t mind, I would absolutely love it if you could kind of play ref for me. Just… watch her. Make sure that she doesn’t accidentally knock over our cake.”
That was a very real possibility.
At my graduation from college, Melody had done exactly that.
I’d watched as my cake had fallen to the floor in a messy pile.
It’d been… something.
Something that was just a disappointment, like every other disappointment that came at the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Murphy Archer, II.