The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(50)

Anya’s shelf was full when I left this morning, which means the tourists who were gawking at the high school must’ve bought some.

Thank Oprah for curtains. One was trying to look into my bedroom window.

I lean back in the booth and gesture for Bridget to sit opposite me. “You’re in school.”

“I’m on summer break.”

“But you’ve been in school more recently than I have. You have more recent practice at good homework habits.”

She squints at me, then looks over her shoulder. “Aunt Anya, Phoebe’s buying me a coffee. Can I have one of those fancy coffees, please? The one that tastes like crème br?lée? Oh! Or one of the s’mores lattes? Or both?”

I don’t twitch as I nod my agreement to Anya. It’s a good thing they don’t give us the best, fanciest, most delicious coffee here, even though, despite what Anya told me the first day, they clearly make it.

They’re wearing us down.

Making us want to leave.

That’s the plan, right?

“Whatever she wants,” I agree.

Ridhi pokes her head out of the kitchen. “One coffee, Bridge. Remember what happened the last time you overdosed on caffeine?”

Bridget rolls her eyes again. “No one got hurt.”

“What happened the last time you overdosed on caffeine?” I ask her.

She flashes a grin that has so much Teague in it that I subconsciously lean forward.

Stop it, Phoebe. Stop liking the lumberjack, and stop trying to get close to him through his kid.

“Tickled Pink secret,” Bridget says. “I’d tell you, but you haven’t had your initiation yet.”

Oh, for Oprah’s sake. “That’s fine. I’ll make up my own version.”

“Can it involve fairy wings and a sparkly clutch and diamond-crusted heels and me saving Prince Charming from a flock of baby bunnies that we adopt afterward?”

“There’s nothing embarrassing in that.”

“You can have an embarrassing story about me and keep fumbling through your algebra homework, or you can spread a rumor to all the New York tabloids that I’m the catch of the century, and I’ll show you what you’re doing wrong with that polynomial equation.”

“So you want your father to kill me.” I slowly sip my own coffee, contemplate how it doesn’t taste like it was made with dead fish today, and wonder if that’s on purpose. Have I passed some kind of initiation right here? Have I leveled up my coffee? It was legitimately good yesterday too. Good good. With a shot of caramel and a dash of milk, even.

Maybe Fridays are good-coffee days.

Or maybe, just maybe, there’s more to this town than I thought.

“Actually, I want a job,” Bridget says. “It gets so boring here in the summer, and I’m getting my driver’s license next year, and I want a car so I can go hang out in Deer Drop.”

“Deer Drop,” Anya sneers to herself behind the counter while Ridhi pokes her head out of the kitchen to frown at us again.

Bridget slides me a sly smile.

I’d bet my Louboutins—the ones not at the bottom of the lake—that she’s baiting her aunt and stepmother on purpose.

“You know algebra?” I ask her.

“I’m a genius. If we were in New York, I’d be running your family’s company. Not that I want to. I’m going to engineer the next generation of solar panels when I graduate college.”

“Today,” Anya murmurs as she hands Bridget a small coffee cup. “Tomorrow, you’ll be plotting how to be queen of a small nation.”

“Tomorrow, Deer Drop; next week, Canada,” Bridget replies. “Thank you for the coffee, Aunt Anya. Now, Phoebe, tell me what x is supposed to be here.”

If she weren’t hounding me about my homework, I might honestly appreciate this teenager. “Do you ever wonder what you’ll use algebra for when you grow up?”

“Who cares? It’s fun when you’re good at it.”

“Is algebra itself fun, or is mocking others for not knowing algebra fun?”

“I’m not mocking you. I’m building your character. There’s a difference. Do you want help or not?”

What I want is to pay her to do my homework for me. But Gigi would find out.

Gigi knows all.

That’s the one trick my grandmother has that I haven’t yet learned.

“I would love help. Thank you.”

Her whole face lights up like this is the biggest gift she’s ever been given, which is interesting.

When we got here, I was sure seeing Tavi was the biggest gift she’d ever been given. And then learning about her own journey—I would’ve thought having supportive parents was her biggest gift.

But she’s clearly excited about algebra.

So excited, in fact, that she’s leaning toward me, pointing at the equation scrawled across the top of my paper, rambling in a foreign tongue.

I stare at her blankly with the same look I use—no, used to use—on my underlings at Remington Lightly when they’d start going into the weeds on issues I didn’t care about.

She pauses midway through her lecture and cracks up. “Oh man, you’re really lost, aren’t you? Is this a Friday-afternoon thing, or are you always bad at math?”