Flirting with the Frenemy (Bro Code #1)(38)

“Dad, can I get a tattoo?” Tucker asks.

“What? No. You’re seven.”

“Motherfucker! Motherfucker!” a voice calls.

I clap my hands over Tucker’s ears and look around at the various tourists joining us on the sidewalk, but they’re all just as confused as I am.

Grady Rock pops his shaggy head out of the bakery. “Hush your craw, Long Beak Silver. There are kids around.”

We all follow his gaze to the cannons sticking over the edge of the roof at Cannon Bowl next door, where old Pop’s parrot is perched. “Eat shit,” the parrot replies.

“Ah, go walk the plank,” Grady says.

The parrot waddles to the end of the cannon, lifts a foot, sways, and plummets toward the ground.

Everyone gasps, but the bird flaps its wings at the last second and takes off across the street to perch on the movie theater’s marquee.

“Asshole parrot,” Grady mutters as he ducks back into his shop.

I let go of Tucker’s ears, but he’s stopped and is staring in the bakery window. “Those tattoos, Dad,” he says.

Oh. Right.

The temporary tattoos that are in baskets all over town. “Oh. Yes.”

We grab a handful inside, and Tucker tells Grady he makes the best donuts in the universe, and I end up getting both of us a plain glazed donut for fuel for the dig, though I’m eyeballing the banana pudding donuts. “Banana flavoring?” I ask Grady.

He shudders. “Vanilla pudding with real bananas. They’re new. Want one?”

“Ellie will.”

That earns me a knowing grin. He glances down at Tucker then back to me, and mouths, padded headboards.

I give him a glare that usually makes lieutenants quake, but he just grins bigger.

“Tucker, say thank you for the tattoos,” I instruct.

“Aahnk oo,” he says around a mouthful of donut.

We make it to the crowded town square just in time to see Pop in full pirate regalia making a speech about the pirate Thorny Rock on the makeshift stage in the center of the square. Tucker tugs my hand, and I follow, thinking we’re heading for a better view, or to get closer to what looks to be the line.

But nope.

He’s pulling us over to gawk at a group in full costume.

The men are dressed as pirates, but the women are a dog, a monkey, and a parrot.

“Do you think that one uses bad words?” Tucker asks me while he points.

The parrot turns our way, and—oh, fuck.

It’s Monica.

She waves and gestures us over while the crowd applauds Pop.

“I love your feathers,” Tucker tells her, reaching out to pet her stomach.

“Whoa, bud, we ask before we touch,” I tell him.

Monica offers an arm instead while I nod to Ellie, who’s decked out in the monkey costume. The inside corners of both her eyes are swollen and purply-red, stretching halfway across her lids, and there’s no mistaking that she took a hit to the face.

Just like there’s no mistaking I took a hit to my right eye, though my bruise is smaller.

She’s ridiculously adorable in the costume though.

“That thing hot?” I ask her.

“Not yet, but it will be soon.” She casts a glance at the rising sun in the clear blue sky, and I swallow a smile.

“Don’t even think about it,” she says when I reach for my pocket, like I’m going for my phone to take her picture, but there’s an easy smile that she usually doesn’t have for me, and seeing the friendliness lifts a weight off my chest I didn’t realize I was carrying.

So we can be friends.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dixon, have you met Ellie’s boyfriend?” Monica asks, turning to an older couple I hadn’t realized was with the group, since they’re not also in costume. “This is Wyatt and his son, Tucker.”

I stifle a wince, because Tucker heard that. Does a seven-year-old understand the difference between girlfriend and girl friend?

Doesn’t matter, I decide. Ellie’s my best friend’s sister, so odds are, Tucker will see her again. It’s okay for him to know grown-ups he can trust, even if he doesn’t see them often.

Mr. Dixon—tall, white-haired, and stuffy—barely spares me a glance, but his wife—slender, in pearls and a pantsuit—looks me up and down. A haughty smirk makes her thin face even less attractive. “Dear god, what happened to your face?”

“He accidentally got hit with a log when he was saving a baby from a wolf,” Ellie says.

The woman looks at her, and her lip curls as she leaps to the conclusion everyone else apparently has this morning. She turns back to me. “And what do you do?”

“My dad’s a superhero,” Tucker announces.

“An actor, hm? I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, given the circles Ellie’s close to.”

“I’m in the Air Force,” I correct.

“Oh. A working man.”

“He has a really cool job testing airplanes,” the Blond Caveman’s girlfriend says, surprising me.

Surprising the Blond Caveman too, by the looks of the what the hell? look he sends her way.

“How do you know what he does?” the caveman asks.

“Ellie told us about it at dinner the other night. Remember?” She smiles at me. “My brother’s a commercial pilot. So thank you.”