Chapter 3

3

Grady

I shouldn't have gone to Sarcasm to see Annika.

I should never go to Sarcasm, period—that town has been a thorn in my town's side since before I was born—but going back to see the woman who told me to take a flying leap when I kissed her and asked her to give me a chance, a real chance, ten years ago before she left for the Army was an even worse idea.

Annika Williams does not now, and never has wanted me.

Re-opening Sarcasm's bakery is just more proof of how she always really felt about me.

Seeing her again, though— god , I wanted to touch her.

Hold her hand.

Wipe away that worry line between her brows.

For three seconds, I was back in high school. Admiring her grit. Wanting to see her smile. Wishing I'd brought a fucking cookie .

And then every moment of graduation night came crashing down, her eyes landed on me with panic and disbelief and dread, and I knew.

I knew .

I still wasn't who she wanted to see standing there, and the knowledge opened every last scar I'd forgotten I had.

Turns out, my heart's still bruised too.

"Quit moping," Tillie Jean says to me. I'm sidled up to the bar in Crusty Nut, Shipwreck's most popular restaurant, rolling silverware into napkins after delivering cookies here for their ice cream sandwich dessert tonight, and helping install a new fridge. She's working behind the counter, restocking the liquor before the night crowd hits since she runs the place. "So you have a little competition now. So what?"

"We were friends," I tell my sister. "Friends don't open competing bakeries."

And having Annika here running a bakery—let's just say she's never failed at anything she set out to do.

Which means my bakery might be in actual danger from the competition.

"Did you ask her why she opened a bakery?" my mom asks as she slides onto the seat next to me and plops a nine-by-thirteen dish of dirt cake in front of me.

"Ma. You can't bring that in here," Tillie Jean objects.

"Can and did. Your brother's had a rough day. He needs a dirt cake."

"It's not even two in the afternoon."

"But he's been up since three, haven't you, sweetie?" Ma kisses my cheek, and I let her ruffle my hair and fuss while I finish the last of Tillie Jean's silverware, because it makes Ma happy, and I'm feeling shitty and it's nice to know my mom still loves me.

I'm officially that pathetic idiot.

Shouldn't have come here to Crusty Nut either, but I knew TJ would take the help until I'm calm enough to go back to my own bakery.

If I walk in there now, Georgia will chase me out, because pastries and baked goods need love, not heartbreak, if they're going to taste good.

"What he needs is a girlfriend," my grandfather declares.

He, too, strides into the dark-paneled bar attached to the restaurant, but unlike my mother, he has a parrot sitting on his shoulder.

Tillie Jean points to the door. "Pop, Long Beak Silver can't be in here either."

"Fuck you and the unicorn you rode in on," the parrot says.

"Long Beak Silver, go swab the deck."

"All work and no play makes a parrot frisky."

My sister glares at Pop.

His weathered face wrinkles more as he smiles broadly.

"Can't argue with that," he declares. "Besides, it's too hot outside. His beak'll melt right off."

Tillie Jean throws her hands up. "If the health department shuts us down, I'm moving in with both of you," she informs our elders. She doesn't own the place, but Dad does, and she's his manager.

She'll inherit it one day, if she wants to.

"Pipe down, wench!" Long Beak Silver says.

I unroll the last silverware I fixed up, take the spoon, and dig straight into the dirt cake. It's a testament to how much my mother loves me that she doesn't chide me for my manners.

Or possibly I just look that shitty.

Annika Williams.

Fuck.

She's back.

With those expressive brown eyes. Those cheeks that could cut glass, but covered in deep olive skin so soft it rivals the silk of a good meringue. And her hair.

Her thick dark hair.

She didn't cut it in the Army. She left it long. It was pulled up in a ponytail under a hair net, and it was fucking adorable.

"Here, boy," Pop says, straddling the seat on my other side and putting the parrot between us. "I picked out a few more women for you to try out."

"Pop. He's not looking for a fucking car ," Tillie Jean snaps. "Leave the man alone. He just came face-to-face with the one who got away. He deserves five minutes to mope. Okay?"

Huh.

I owe my sister a nice birthday present this year.

"She warned me," I tell them all. Despite the fact that my mom always shows up with dirt cakes whenever my life hits a bump in the road, I've never told her the whole story of why I needed a dirt cake after high school graduation.

And I mean the good kind of dirt cake with cream cheese and vanilla pudding and whipped cream, and gummy treasures mixed in, and topped with crumbled Oreos, not the kind my brother Cooper used to bring in from the yard after digging for treasure.

"She told me a million times if she told me once that she wasn't interested in dating boys because she was going to college to get a degree so she could afford to buy a big-screen TV and a Toyota," I tell my family. "New. A new Toyota. Because that was making it to her."

"A Toyota?" Pop's frowning big-time now. "What's she want with a Toyota when Chevy's the good stuff? Here. Look at this one. Penelope Summer. Her grandpa cheats at pool, but I don't hold that against her. And if she hyphenates, she'd be Penelope Summer-Rock, and that's charming, isn't it?"

"Pop, Grady's not getting married just because a woman's hyphenated name would be charming," Ma says. "But show him Meredith. The one with the degree in plasma physics. I didn't even know that was a thing, but imagine how smart their kids will be."

Tillie Jean and I share a look.

My dad bustles out of the kitchen with a basket full of gold nuggets, which the rest of the world calls fried pickle chips, and one of potato swords, which are—you guessed it—french fries.

Shipwreck might be nestled into the Blue Ridge Mountains, but we have a long and storied history of being founded by a pirate on the run from the law, and so we pirate-ify everything.

The tourists love it.

Most days, so do I.

My whole family is in the business of running Shipwreck, so loving it is a good thing.

Dad bought Crusty Nut before I was born because he loves to cook, and he and Ma decided to have Tillie Jean so that they'd have at least one kid who could run his restaurant one day.

I fell down on my role of running Ma's coffee shop, but she's holding out hope Cooper will come home and take it over when he retires from baseball in another ten or fifteen years.

"Heart attack in a basket," Dad says proudly, sliding the food onto the bar beside Ma's dirt cake. "Rather have you dead than moping over a Sarcasm girl."

" Dad ," Tillie Jean says.

He grins. "What? Perspective." He taps Pop's notebook. "Did you show him Neveah yet? Fascinating name. And she took dance classes all through high school, so you know she's good and nimble. What? That's important for childbirth."

I pick up the dirt cake and the heart attack baskets and head for the door.

"Where are you going?" Pop calls. "We're just getting started."

I should head back to my own bakery and make sure everything's running fine, but Georgia chased me off the minute I got back from Sarcasm and said—rightfully so—that if I tried to bake a thing in the mood I was in, the cakes would fall and the cookies would come out tasting like chalk and don't get her started on what would happen to the donuts.

Makes more sense to pay her to not screw up than for me to ruin two days' worth of baking. I'll deal with what that means for the bottom line later.

Which means I'm going home.

To my goat.

Who loves me even though I never asked him to, and even though I tried my damnedest to get rid of him when he invaded my yard a year ago.

"Gonna go dig for pirate treasure," I reply. "Stress relief from being related to all of you."

I'm not three feet outside the door before Tillie Jean catches up with me in the blazing summer heat that's gonna melt my dirt cake before I make it the three blocks home.

"What?" I ask her.

"We need to find them all hobbies. You okay? For real?"

I hand her the fried food baskets so I can eat dirt cake and walk while we stroll past pirate-themed shop after pirate-themed shop.

"She looked at me like we were never anything at all," I tell my sister, which is a hard confession to make, since it involves admitting to feelings.

I've been pretty damn good at denying that I have feelings where Annika's concerned.

Time helped.

And her being gone helped.

Her coming back and opening a bakery not ten miles away does not help .

Especially not when it's affecting me more than it should.

It's been ten years.

Yet here I am, completely off-kilter.

"And she couldn't even bake no-bake cookies when I knew her," I add.

Tillie Jean sighs and shoves a french fry in her mouth. We pass Davy Jones's Locker, the water park in town where all the kids out for summer are shrieking and playing and having a grand ol' carefree time. This town—you wouldn't think a town based on a tale about a pirate coming inland to hide his treasure from the authorities would still be going strong in the digital age, but here we are.

Hosting pirate weddings and a pirate festival and treasure digs. Growing a little every year, tucked into a little valley in the mountains with the blue haze hanging over the spruce and firs and oaks covering the mountainsides.

It's a small town where people stay .

Not like Sarcasm.

Where they all leave.

Like Annika did.

"Maybe it's good that she came back," Tillie Jean says as the sound of all the kids playing in the park fades. We turn a corner and head into the residential area behind Blackbeard Avenue. "Maybe now you can get over her."

"I got over her ten years ago."

"Grady. You were secretly in love with her for four years, finally found your balls to tell her so, and she didn't just crush you, she ground your whole soul into dust, packed it into a cannonball, and shot it off over the mountains and wished you luck in finding all the pieces again. And that's the last thing she did before she left. For ten years. So, yeah, you still need to get over her . Face her. And get over her."

I snort, which isn't the best thing to do when trying to shove dirt cake into your mouth, but she might have a point.

I didn't go to Sarcasm with any plan other than see her with my own two eyes .

And possibly have her be so happy to see me that she falls into my arms and I get my best friend back, except better .

"When—" Tillie Jean starts, but I growl at her, because I know what she's going to ask, and I'm not going to answer.

When's the last time you dated a woman that you could've imagined yourself spending forever with?

"I gotta go do some research," I tell my sister. "Got a request for a tres leches donut this morning." And I need to look into bubble waffles.

Her blue eyes squint, and I know she doesn't believe me, but she doesn't call me on it either.

Probably because she knows that when Pop realizes I'm a hopeless cause, he's moving on to her next.

Maybe I should take one of his dates.

It'd solve one problem. The rest?

That's what Ma's dirt cake and Dad's fried food is for.