The One Who Loves You (Tickled Pink #1)(69)

Two months ago, I could’ve given a speech with both eyes tied behind my back.

Wait.

With one arm closed.

Dammit.

Oprah help me, there’s a table of reporters in the corner, and I’m about to put myself back in the gossip pages.

I set my ice pack aside so I can use both eyes to climb onto the table with Bridget, grateful this isn’t one of the wobbly tables. I’m not feeling my Lightly enough to will it into staying steady.

Bridget hops down.

Willie Wayne whistles while the clapping continues.

My eyes get hot.

I don’t know if they’re mocking me or accepting me. I probably deserve the mocking. Not so sure I deserve the acceptance.

“Quiet, quiet,” Bridget calls. “Let her talk.”

The bar settles into a rough silence, the kind that suggests it could get raucous and crazy at any second all over again.

Gigi’s glaring at me.

Mom looks embarrassed.

Dad—he’s smiling.

So is Tavi.

Carter’s clapping. He’s not smiling, but he’s not grumble-glaring either. He nods, and oh my God.

That’s respect.

I blink, and now he’s rolling his eyes.

But there was respect.

I saw it.

“C’mon, Phoebe. We know you can talk,” Bridget prods.

The bar laughs but quickly settles again.

I touch the halo, don’t think about how many other heads it’s been on over the years, and struggle to get my face to cooperate. “Ah, wow. Thank you. This is what you give the people you don’t want to play anymore, right? So I can’t fuck up the rest of your season too?”

They laugh again.

At me.

And I like it.

Phoebe Lightly, self-deprecating entertainer of the year.

“In all seriousness,” I continue, completely unsure what’s about to come out of my mouth, “thank you for letting me make all the mistakes. This halo was worth the price of losing my Louboutins to the Tickled Pink Monster.”

And I’m going to cry.

So I hop back down, start to turn in to Teague’s arms for a hug, remember that I’m not ready for public displays of affection with a guy who only wants to schedule me on his calendar for weekly booty calls, no matter how friendly he’s become in the meantime, and instead, I dart out of the bar.

“I didn’t want this,” I whisper to the looming shadow of the half-finished Ferris wheel. “I didn’t want to grow. I didn’t want the pain.”

The Ferris wheel doesn’t answer.

It doesn’t have to.

One, because it’s a freaking Ferris wheel.

But two?

I think that half-finished Ferris wheel totally gets where I’m coming from.





Chapter 23


Teague


It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself I shouldn’t care, that this is a temporary infatuation with the wrong woman, all I want to do is follow Phoebe out of the bar and find out what’s wrong.

But if I follow her, everyone will notice.

Estelle Lightly might have her suspicions about whatever this relationship is, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for the whole town to be talking about it.

I still feel like a massive asshole by the time I tell Bridget I’m taking off. Both because I’m abandoning my daughter while she’s having fun and while she still needs an adult to remind her to watch her mouth, and because I didn’t take off sooner to make sure Phoebe’s okay.

Know the last time I had an internal conflict between staying with my daughter and going to see another woman?

Never.

Never.

This isn’t good.

Bridget perks up over her root beer. “Hold on. Let me tell Ridhi I’m coming with you.”

Shiloh’s pulling a two-day shift at the fire station, which is rarely what prompts Bridget to change her mind on where she’s sleeping. And any other night, I’d be thrilled to have her join me. But she’ll expect to go home, and I want to head in the opposite direction.

“You can stay—”

“Dad. Don’t be dense, okay?”

Either she wants something, or I’m not doing a very good job of hiding that I have somewhere else I’d like to be, and she’s trying to save me from myself.

Or possibly she needs to tell me where my own game sucked but doesn’t want to do it in front of anyone else.

She flits off to hug Ridhi and high-five Willie Wayne and snap a selfie with Tavi, and then she claps Carter on the back. “If you’d put half as much effort into writing songs as you put into resisting having fun, I really can’t see why you won’t be, like, the best rock star on the entire planet someday.”

“You need to remember your manners,” I tell her while we leave the bar behind, the high school also at our backs farther down the street. “Don’t bait grown-ups. You don’t have enough life experience to back it up yet, and it’s not your place.”

“I’m not baiting anyone. I’m dropping truth like it’s glitter. But don’t worry. I won’t truth-glitter Mrs. Grandma Lightly. She’d take it out on you and Mom, and then I’d feel bad.”

I loop an arm around her shoulders. She’s a few inches shorter than me and ten times kinder. “We can handle a cranky old rich lady.”