The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(51)

“I haven’t been in a school mindset in a decade. This takes time.”

“A decade? You were twenty-eight when you graduated?”

My grandmother’s essence floods my body, and I feel myself levitating off the bench. “I am not almost forty, you—you—”

“Wow, Dad’s right. This really is easy.”

Anya visibly stifles another laugh. “Bridget, be nice. It’s hard being off your normal game.”

“I was just testing the theory, Aunt Anya. This was scientific. I swear.”

The bells jingle on the door, and five people I don’t recognize peek their heads in. “Oh my gosh, this is just like the picture on Tavi’s feed,” one whispers.

Bridget rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out. “Deer Droppers,” she whispers, like we’re friends and she wasn’t baiting me moments ago.

“How the hell did Tavi update her feed with pictures from this place?” I whisper back, since her baiting me doesn’t matter if there’s a secret method of getting Wi-Fi.

Bridget smirks. “Ten bucks for that information.”

“I bought your coffee.”

“Not yet, you haven’t. For all I know, you’ll stiff my stepmom and my aunt.”

“It’s not like they don’t know where I live to come get payment if I do. Or maybe you’ll invent a love interest for Tickled Pink Floyd’s ghost so that we have to hear extra moaning and mutterings all night long. Or maybe you can torture us by intentionally sending us plumbers who keep booby-trapping the hot water in the school. Or maybe you can just give me the damn Wi-Fi password like you did for Tavi.”

“Bluetooth transfers still work even without Wi-Fi, so she transferred the pictures to me, and I sent them to her publicist. Need anything sent to your people? I’m super affordable.”

“I’ll buy you a car myself if you pass algebra for me. And quit helping Tavi cheat.”

“Your grandmother would probably buy me a house and a car if I told her how much you guys are all skirting the corners of your assignments on being better people. Lucky for you, I don’t like manipulative beasts, though, so I won’t tell. At least, not today. Although do you know what I will do for you?”

It’s a trap.

Whatever this is, it’s a trap. “What?”

“I’ll be your private tutor to help you get through algebra.”

I gesture to the paper. “News flash—I can’t understand a single word you just said when you were trying to explain this to me. And I’m not hiring a tutor who speaks in demonic tongues instead of English.”

“Okay, okay. Here. Start again.”

“Oh my God, is that one of them?” I hear one of the tourists whisper.

My shoulders want to bunch, and my face wants to get hot.

I’m a Lightly, dammit. I can handle this.

Bridget squints at me. “They can’t hurt you, you know. Not if you don’t let them. The only person whose opinion matters is you and anyone you choose to let in.”

“That’s—”

“Easy for me to say?” She quirks a grin. “You really are sheltered, aren’t you?”

I suck in a deep breath.

I don’t think I’m sheltered.

I think I’ve just never had the kind of support that this kid has.

“We’re solving for x,” I remind her.

She rolls her eyes with a laugh. “Okay, lake lady. Let’s do this.”





Chapter 17


Teague


Lake’s crowded today, like it is most Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through the summer, but the fish are biting, my cooler’s loaded down with Jane’s Garage honey-wheat ale and another round of cold roast-beef sandwiches, I like everyone on the boats around me, and Estelle Lightly actually went a shade of horrified as I was showing her the best office space Tickled Pink has to offer the other day.

Wins all around.

“That a bass?” Willie Wayne calls to me as I unhook a fourteen-incher and toss it back into the lake late afternoon.

“Largemouth,” I call back.

He grins. “Those are biting on- and offshore, aren’t they?”

“Shush your mouth before that Lightly woman quits throwing money at us,” Jane says.

Don’t really want her money.

Took it all right the other day, though. Again. And I know the town’ll put it to good use.

But I also chased a reporter from Madison out of town this morning when I caught him snooping on the overgrown football field behind the old high school, and there’s no telling how many have sneaked in when I wasn’t looking.

“What’d the older Lightly guy want at your house last night?” Willie Wayne asks Jane.

She tips her head back and laughs. “Wants to know how to make his own beer. He’s thinking he’ll put Tickled Pink on the map with Michael Lightly Brews.”

I wince.

Willie Wayne winces.

Even the Deer Droppers out on the lake close enough to overhear wince.

You don’t walk into Jane’s garage and assume that because she does it, anyone can. She’s been perfecting her recipes for years.

And if Michael Lightly’s planning on brewing the way he was sweeping floors that first day that we all pitched in to help clean the high school—which is to say, shortcut after shortcut when he wasn’t trying to bribe someone else to do it for him—it’s safe to say his beer would taste like bear piss.