Chapter 12

12

Annika

It's been a good day.

Good being a relative term.

We sold out of every last s'mores cupcake during the grand re-opening, and we have orders for six dozen more for a baby shower next weekend. The cakes Bailey and Mama put together yesterday for our special orders turned out brilliant, and helped put us in the black for the week. The toilet hasn't clogged in four days. Bailey figured out the secret ingredient to make killer banana pudding.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am petty enough to fight Grady's family for the title of best banana pudding in the entire state.

And in other good news, he hasn't stopped by and tried to hate-kiss me again.

I sigh over the last of the dishes at that thought.

I don't want him to kiss me.

Wait, that's not true.

I do want him to kiss me. But I also want him to be the Grady I knew when we were kids, and I want him to apologize for taking out his frustrations on me. I want him to kiss me because he missed me the way I missed him, and because he wants to be friends again like we used to be.

Or however that works when friends start kissing.

But, like my drill sergeant used to say, if wishes were leprechauns, we'd all be stepping in gold shit.

I never quite understood the expression, and if he meant literal shit made of gold or if shit was a generalization for stuff , but it seems relevant here.

Bailey and Mama got a ride home a few hours ago, and it's just been me and the college kid we hired for the grand re-opening weekend to help us clean up. I tell her she can head home while I finish everything here, and fifteen minutes later, the bells jingle on the front door.

"Hello?" a woman calls.

I rub at my sore neck and sigh, irritated with myself for forgetting to lock the front door. Who forgets that?

Not a staff sergeant with two combat patches known for her mastery of a color-coded planner and highly trained in operational security and paranoia.

I must be more tired than I thought.

"Sorry," I call, breezing out of the kitchen that really needs a paint job that I don't have time for. "We're— oh ."

Tillie Jean Rock gives me a tentative smile. "Hey, Annika. How's your mom?"

She's carrying a to-go cup of coffee despite the late hour, which doesn't surprise me, because she was addicted to the stuff before the end of her freshman year. Her light brown hair is piled on her head, and though I'm sure she spent all day working at one of the many businesses that the Rock family owns in Shipwreck, she looks fresh as a spring rainbow.

We could've been sisters, if I hadn't been from Sarcasm and her brother hadn't proven himself to be a shithead.

"Mama's adjusting," I say neutrally. "How's your family?"

Her lips twitch, which she tries to cover behind her paper coffee cup, but her blue eyes are twinkling too big for it to fully work. "They're good."

I sigh, because Grady is her family, and the last time she saw us together, I was driving a softball into his man parts. "Right. Awkward question. How can I help you?"

"I just…so, please don't think this is weird, but I wanted to say welcome home. And I'm sorry about your mama. And I'm sorry you had to come home. And I'm sorry my brother is an idiot. He misses you, but he?—"

"Doesn't know how to handle it," I finish.

"We all have our quirks."

"His was more endearing in high school."

"Yeah, but he bakes better now." She winces. "Sorry. I know he's being?—"

"A Shipwreck shithead?"

"Spoken like a true Sarcasm asshole."

We share a smile, and my shoulders relax for the first time all day, because it's so freaking normal to joke about all this with Tillie Jean.

She was Grady's annoying little sister back in high school, but she was also my sister in a lot of ways.

"He'll come around," she says. "I'm sure you have a lot of support here, but I just wanted to let you know that if you need anything, Mom and Dad and I are—whoa. That's a lot of bananas."

I cringe as I turn to follow her gaze to the mounds of bananas sitting on the worktable in the kitchen behind me, ready for us to tackle in the morning. "Ah, yeah."

When I turn back, the warmth in her eyes has cooled considerably. "Adding fruit to the menu?"

"You could say that."

She squeezes the coffee cup until the plastic lid pops off. "Tell me you're not stooping to his level."

"That's not a very nice thing to say about your brother."

"You are ."

My face is getting so hot that my hair's almost on fire. "I'm trying to run my mama's dream for her here."

"Oh my god, now you're using it as an excuse ?"

"Why don't you try getting a call in the middle of the night that your mother's gone suddenly blind and no one knows what's going on and your sister's falling apart because she's thirteen , so of course she is, and rearranging your whole entire life on the fly from halfway across the country, only to get home to a hostile welcome from someone who used to be your best friend and then tell me what you'd do in my shoes."

"You racked him in the nuts on purpose in that softball game!"

" Who does that? I hadn't hit a ball in four years."

"Well, you got three in one with that swing, didn't you? And now you're going after my banana pudding ?"

I suck in a deep breath that I have to reach all the way to my toes to find, pinch my eyes shut, remind myself that everything is going to be fine, and I hold up my hands in surrender.

"Tillie Jean. I'm not." I am. I'm an awful person, and I totally am. "Isn't what we had as kids worth more than banana pudding?"

" No! " she shrieks. Something green sloshes over the edges of her coffee cup and spills on her hand, and she curses under her breath while she grabs a handful of napkins from a dispenser on the nearest table.

"That's not coffee? But you love coffee. You practically needed an IV of it in high school."

"Things change," she snaps. " You changed. Grady changed. Cooper changed. Everybody fucking changed . And if you think you're going to out-bake my banana pudding, you just wait. You. Just. Wait."

She turns and stalks out of Duh-Nuts, and I sag against the bakery counter, head in my hands, rubbing my temples while my neck protests and my shoulders and lower back whine about being on my feet all day.

I need to get home and make sure Bailey was able to handle dinner.

And then I need to drown my guilt and everything about the last three weeks with a big bottle of Jack.

Except I can't.

Because I'm the only one in the house who can handle any emergencies that might pop up in the middle of the night.

The bells jingle again, and this time, I let out an audible dammit .

"Was that Tillie Jean Rock?" Liliana asks. "Holy turtles. You look like you need a drink."

I lift my head and meet her wide gaze.

"Where do you live?" I ask her.

"Over on Irony, by the library."

I pull a face, because Mama's place is all the way across town on Mediocre Street.

Which is all of sixteen blocks, but still.

"Want to have a sleepover and play sober adult?" I ask.

"Oh, hell, yeah."

I snort, because this is Sarcasm, and who wants to play sober adult? No one. That's who. "Never mind."

"I'm serious," she says. "I've never seen you drunk. I'll bet it's hilarious. Name your poison. It's on me."

And that's how, an hour later, we're lounging in Mama's cozy lavender living room, a bottle of Jack opened before me, a platter of the most adorable unicorn faces I've ever seen within easy reach for devouring—relax, they're treats, not real unicorns —and everything we need for a girls' spa night laid out on the coffee table.

Bailey made fajita quesadillas for dinner, along with the unicorn logs. I snort softly to myself, because they really do look like logs, though I know they're marshmallows wrapped in fondant with faces drawn on them in edible marker, which is also funny to me.

"Annika, when did you learn to drink?" Mama asks. Her nose wrinkles under her dark glasses, and she shifts her feet in the warm tub of sea salt water on the floor beside me. "And what is that? It's not the good tequila."

"The Army drove me to it," I declare. "And it's delicious. Tastes like denial and impending hiccups."

Bailey giggles. "Annika's gonna get trashed," she whispers while she selects an apricot face scrub. Her hair's already coated with argan oil and wrapped up in a towel, and I did Mama's hair before I got into the whiskey too.

"And then she's going to puke her guts out," Liliana whispers conspiratorially.

"All of my guts," I agree.

I'm barely a finger into the drink, but it's already warming me in all the places I need to be warm.

My belly.

My toes, which are weirdly cold despite the heat in both the bakery and the sunshine today, because late July weather is freaking brutal.

My heart.

My brain.

My brain definitely needs to be heated up.

Baked brains can't focus on all of life's troubles.

"Is this because she's secretly pining for that Rock guy?" Bailey whispers while she hands Liliana a tube of avocado oatmeal face mask stuff.

"Pining?" Liliana busts out laughing over her fingernails. "What have you been reading?"

" Anne of Green Gables . I love those books. And also cookbooks. Because once Annika realizes Mama and I will adjust to everything just fine , she'll go back to the Army and let me run the bakery and homeschool myself until she realizes on her own how much she misses us and comes home to be our accountant for our Sarcasm food empire."

Given the mounds of paperwork I'm still working on for emergency termination from the Army, I don't even want to think about the administrative nightmare that would be trying to get back in . And I like paperwork.

Paperwork is my happy place.

Doing homework for my accounting degree with a minor in business was fun .

I like catching up on the bakery's books every night before I go to sleep.

I am such a lame, boring nobody.

"You're schtuck with me," I tell her.

"Are we doing facials?" Mama asks. "We better not be doing those charcoal facials. You know I hate how they make me look."

"But it's so good for your skin," Bailey says. "Doesn't it feel good afterwards?"

"No."

I snort-laugh my whiskey, because Mama's being intentionally obstinate.

"Annika, don't let her lie to me and tell me she's using that nice avocado mask when she's actually putting charcoal on me, or I'll tell that mountain lion on the TV to eat her toes off."

"I— hic! —won't, Mama."

"I want the charcoal mask," Liliana declares. "Honey swears by them, so as long as it doesn't make me break out in a rash, I need to as well."

"Honey? The heiress at the winery?"

"Yeah."

"What's she like?" Mama asks while she lets Bailey rub green goop all over her face. "And is this really the avocado stuff?"

"Yes to avocado, and Honey has sparkly pink stilettos," Liliana says on a wistful sigh. "They're so…so…"

"Gross?" Bailey guesses.

I snort again, because my baby sister might love baking, but she also loves the color blue, rock band T-shirts, and Chucks, but not pink Chucks.

"They're like unicorn shoes ," Liliana declares.

"Unishoes?" I ask.

Bailey rolls her eyes while she smears more goo over Mama's cheeks. " Shoenicorns , Annika. Shoenicorns ."

"Dammit. Quit being smarter than me. Hic! "

"Quit making it easy."

" Girls ."

Bailey's eyes are bright and sparkly and dancing with unicorns. "Mama, you know we only bicker because we love each other. And because I'm totally stealing her tan suede army boots when she goes to sleep tonight, because they're seriously badass."

"I'm a badass," I declare.

"When's the last time you got drunk?" Liliana asks.

Mama frowns.

Bailey leans in eagerly.

I take another swallow of the fiery liquid and shudder. "Never."

" What ?"

I don't know who said that. Probably all three of them.

"Never," I repeat. "Getting drunk makes you horny, and the next thing you know, you wake up naked in bed with a guy with more hair than Grady's goat and fewer brains than a chipmunk, and you realize the orgasm you thought you had was actually just a really good— hic! —pee."

"I…didn't need to hear any of that," Bailey says.

"Learn from my first roommate, kid. Don't drink and screw."

"Don't drink or screw," Mama corrects. "Not without protection. Double protection. We're very fertile. Not that I'd trade either of you for anything. Are you sure this is the avocado mask? What are you putting on my lips?"

"Yes, Mama, it's the avocado mask, and this is just moisturizer," Bailey assures her. "Remember the itty tiny baby jar that I keep on my dresser?"

"Oh, the white one? With the funny angles on the base?"

"Uh-huh."

"You never share that."

"Annika let me have some of her whiskey and now I'm going crazy."

"Lies!" I exclaim. "Quit besmirching my honor!"

All three of them giggle.

"Have you ever done anything crazy?" Liliana asks me.

"I fell in love with Grady Rock." I slap my hand over my mouth, because even heading into tipsy-land, I know I should've kept that to myself.

Mama purses her lips, but the edges are still dancing up like mischievous leprechauns singing I knew it, I knew it, I bet a pot of gold that she loved Grady, and now I'm rich!

"I was three and I knew you were in love with him," Bailey says, her eyes rolling so hard that they shift the gravitational pull of the earth and make me stagger in my seat. "But I didn't actually know that was him when he walked into Duh-Nuts last week, because when I was three, he was basically just this big blobby human with dark hair and a monster truck."

"He had a monster truck?" Liliana asks.

"He had a loud truck," I explain. "And now he has a loud goat. And a loud ass."

"A loud ass ? Oh my god, did he fart at you?"

"No, he's just so loud with his assishness. Rubbing it all in my face. But not his actual ass. I haven't gotten a good look at his ass. His shorts were too loose at the game and when—never mind. Do you think he has a good ass now? I'll bet his ass can't beat my ass's banana pudding. Wait. Does that sound wrong to anyone —hic! —else?"

"How much dinner did she eat?" Liliana whispers to Bailey.

"Annika," Mama says gently, "you're not going to get closure by making banana pudding."

"Maybe not, but we'll make a fuck-ton of money," I reply. "Bailey is a cunilary—culninberry—coobinalary—shit. She's a genius . With bananas."

I hiccup three times in rapid-fire succession, and they squeeze my heart and assure it that another two shots of Jack is all it'll take for the hiccups to strangle that backstabbing little organ in my chest with the poor taste.

"Are we playing over-make, or are we gossiping like old men?" I demand.

"Gossiping," Bailey says.

"I think she means playing makeover," Mama murmurs.

"Here, honey, have a unimallow." Liliana shoves the treat in my face. "The sugar will soak up some of the alcohol."

"Or she'll break out," Bailey says. "Sugar makes me break out all the time. It's a curse. But I'd rather be rich than pretty, so I'm going to keep perusing Pinterest for ideas to take Duh-Nuts to the next level."

"Are you thirteen or thirty?" Liliana asks her.

"Chronologically thirteen, but I feel a strong sisterly bond with women in their forties. They're kick-ass, they know how to do everything, and they have zero fucks left to give. By the way, Annika, I asked Roger's son to take you to the roller rink next Saturday night. Do you remember Birch? I think he was a year ahead of you in school."

" Bailey ," Mama chides while I hiccup again and the charcoal face mask goop that I just swiped onto my fingers starts to blur at the edges. "Annika can decide for herself who and when she dates."

"Actually, I don't think she can," Bailey replies. "The goats in her head keep baaing in her way."

Wait.

That's not what she said. Is it?

I squint at her.

Her nose turns sideways and acts like a diving board so her eyeballs can leap off onto the pool in the middle of the Mama's foot soak.

And that's the last thing I remember before I lay my head on the coffee table, with a bottle of nail polish digging into my cheek, and drift off to sleep.