Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills 5)

I hated my life. Maybe not all of it, but there were chunks I did hate, including right now.

Every word he said made Tamsin laugh harder until she was gasping in oxygen.

“I’ll never forget when it was finally his turn, he went running up to her, pushed Donald Duck out of the way, then dropped down onto one knee and yelled how much he loved her,” Mom giggled.

Dropping her head forward, Tamsin snorted loudly, still laughing. Both of my parents looked delighted by this move, and when Mom looked over at me, she winked and gave me a thumbs up. I wasn’t about to fall for that bullshit, so I just glared back at her.

Finally, when she was able to, Tamsin croaked, “You proposed to Daphne Duck!”

Yes, I, Captain Garrett Evans, had proposed to Daphne Duck while we were at Disney World. I was that much of a sad sack that I’d queued in the hot sun for over an hour to propose to her. Somewhere out there was a woman in a Daphne outfit with a ring from a machine on her finger, telling her other friends in their costumes about the kid who’d declared his undying love for her.

My humiliation wasn’t complete, though. Oh, hell no.

“If you’d like, Harry had a new video camera at the time, so he caught it all. Do you want to go and watch it?”

Suddenly, spending time with my new ugly brother didn’t seem like such a bad option. I could handle the nightmares from it versus the ones this would give me.

Then a thought occurred to me.

“Didn’t Raoul shit his pants—literally—when we went to that fishing place, and a stingray came out of a rock pool and landed on him?” When they both looked at each other and nodded, I grinned evilly. “Did you happen to get that on video?”

Their smirks suddenly made me very happy.

We’d left my parent’s house and were driving home after a humiliating and amusing afternoon, and I thought that Tamsin was almost asleep, so when she spoke, I jumped slightly.

“Our parents can never meet.”

Frowning and not liking this, I gripped the wheel tightly. “Why do you say that?”

Angling toward me, she played with the seatbelt while she replied. “My parents aren’t exactly normal, so if we put them together in the same room…”

Relieved by her reason, I chuckled as I stopped at a red light. “I doubt yours are as bad as mine, pretty girl. You’d need to warn them about mine, maybe even get them drunk so they don’t remember it.”

Shaking her head, she bit down on the corner of her lip. “You don’t understand. I’m an only child, so I’ve had their undivided attention my whole life. Think about it—if your parents have that kind of stuff of you, Raoul, and Cat, what would a parent with one child have? Plus, my mom has an obsession with the People of Walmart and goes around asking people she’s certain are going to make it onto the page for their autographs.”

That… Okay, that was weird. “And people do that?”

“You’d be surprised,” she sighed, facing forward again. What she didn’t realize was, I probably wouldn’t be surprised. “She goes up and explains it to them, shows them her top supporter status on Facebook, then passes them her autograph book for them to sign after she takes a selfie with them.”

“Jesus,” I muttered, rubbing my chin with my hand. “And your dad?”

Covering her face with both hands as much as she could with the cast, she mumbled something into them.

“I missed that. What did you say?”

“He does reenactments.”

That wasn’t so bad. “Like the Civil War type ones? Loads of people do those, baby.”

Clearing her throat, she lowered her hands and stared at the dashboard. “No, as in Jaws ones.”

Without realizing I was doing it, I turned the indicator on and pulled over to the side of the road, relieved that no one had been behind us when I did it. Rolling to a stop, I threw the car into park and turned to face her fully.

“Okay, I could’ve sworn I heard you say he did Jaws reenactments. Are we talking about the movie?” When she nodded, I tried to think of what to ask next, but so many questions were hitting me at once it was hard to decide. Finally, I went with, “He hunts sharks?”

Her head snapped around so quickly there was a small crack, and I was grateful she’d finally had all of her stitches removed and that the tiny wounds from the tears were almost fully healed too.

“God, no. What kind of barbaric piece of shit do you think he is? You don’t hunt sharks, they’re endangered. Did you know that the population of some species has declined by over ninety percent over the last couple of decades? Do you know what that means for our future generations and our oceans? I mean, female great white sharks only reach reproductive age at thirty-three years old, and they carry the babies for eleven months. Why would anyone hunt sharks with—”