Annika is the slender brown-haired one and was Grady’s best friend in high school despite living in Sarcasm, the next town over, which is officially Shipwreck’s enemy town. She moved home to help her mother and sister with their own bakery, and now keeps books for half the businesses in both Sarcasm and Shipwreck. Rumor has it she’s expecting, though I’ll be the last person to bring it up in conversation with her not showing at all.
Georgia works for Grady at Crow’s Nest bakery and runs an Etsy shop selling soaps and candles, and it took me a minute to place her. She cut off her cornrows since last week, and now her tight black curls are cropped close to her skull.
Sloane is the redheaded nurse who moved to Shipwreck after falling in love with it during a destination wedding here. She works for Georgia’s grandpa, who’s the town doctor, and basically every unmarried guy between the ages of eighteen and fifty regularly fights for her attention. All seven of them.
Pretty sure Georgia’s about to give her a run for her money though.
In short—everyone’s connected to everyone else here, and they’re all tight as family, or they want to make the people here their family.
“You haven’t been home long enough to know how very boring it gets,” Cooper tells Annika.
“I’ve been home a couple years. If you get bored, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Hush, both of you.” Tillie Jean slides three plates onto the bar, putting one in front of each of her friends. “We’re not starting the Shipwreck-Sarcasm wars again.”
“Sarcasm-Shipwreck wars,” Annika mutters loudly.
Cooper rolls his eyes.
Tillie Jean rolls her eyes.
Mr. Rock pops out from the kitchen just to roll his eyes, spots us, and waves. “Morning, boys. Good workout today?”
“We kicked ass,” Cooper calls to his dad.
“Good. Watch your language around the bird.”
My shoulders bunch.
Not because of the bird, or the warning about language, but because three generations of Rock men are all grinning at each other now.
I know it’s wrong to hate Cooper Rock for having everything I ever wanted growing up, but the anger and frustration still hit me sometimes.
He grew up playing pirate. It’s family tradition.
I grew up learning how to roll my old man onto his side after he drank too much so he wouldn’t suffocate in his own vomit since he didn’t know how else to handle the demons haunting him.
“TJ,” Mr. Rock says, “you get these boys drinks yet?”
“What do you boys want to drink?” she calls to us.
“Tillie Jean. Walk your butt over there and take their orders.”
“Cooper smells like a dog wash.”
“She’s got a point, Mr. Rock,” Robinson calls. “TJ, can I get some of your sweet tea?”
“Water for me,” Stafford adds.
“Plain tea,” I say without looking at her.
“Coming right up,” she says, cutting Cooper off before he can ask for a drink.
But he’s not offended.
Not Cooper.
He’s grinning.
Probably planning on egging her car later.
And when my eyes wander over to the bar, where she’s flipping empty glasses onto the counter beside two sweating pitchers of tea, she’s also smiling.
Cooper and Tillie Jean aren’t just brother and sister. They’re friends.
A weird kind of friends, but still friends.
“I can’t believe I miss him too when he’s gone,” Georgia says, barely loud enough for us to hear.
“Sarcasm would chew him up and spit him out,” Annika replies.
“We might need that by the first of December. He’s extra…Cooper this year.”
“That means extra fabulous,” Cooper translates.
My shoulders twitch again, but I roll them back and remind myself I knew what I was signing up for when I came here for the winter.
“How’s PT?” I ask Stafford, forcing myself to look away from where TJ’s taking a massive gulp off a huge coffee cup and muttering something about decaf to Annika.
Not my business.
Working out and keeping up with Trevor?
Completely my business.
While I’m doing strength training and conditioning with the coaches, he’s in physical therapy for his agitated shoulder. Again. He’s been a reliever for the Fireballs longer than I’ve been on the team, and no one’s talking about if he’ll be able to rehab enough to come back in the spring after irritating it all over again in our last game.
Or if management will sign his contract extension.
Not like any other teams are knocking for him.
He ignores my question and looks at Cooper. “You really go down the waterslide when it’s snowed over?”
“Hell, yeah. On inner tubes. But only in the middle of the night. Here’s my plan—we’re gonna get all the guys from the team who stayed in Copper Valley to come out right before the first big snowfall of winter, and then we’re having a midnight snowpark party. We’ll do all those videos they put on the scoreboard between innings. Debating who has the best form at the bottom, talking about DJ Darren Greene’s questionable choice in music, scoring each other on our lazy river performance. Hitting balls off the top of the water treehouse. The whole deal.”
“Coach Bloom’ll bust your balls if you break your leg falling off a waterslide, man,” Robinson mutters.
Can’t say it too loudly or she’ll hear.
And it doesn’t matter that she’s not in the restaurant.
She hears all. Swear she does.
But Cooper’s shaking his head. “That’s why we put the trampoline cover over the landing pool. I’ll talk to management. They have the best video equipment.”
“Cooper, come get your friends’ drinks,” Tillie Jean calls. “And bring me their orders when you come this way.”
“No service, no tip,” he calls back.
“Seriously, man, she’s gonna spit in all our food,” Robinson mutters.
Stafford shakes his head. “No, she won’t. She’ll get him back by blowing a bullhorn through his window at two AM. And he’ll deserve it.”
TJ has four glasses sitting on a tray on the bar, and she’s eyeballing them like batters tend to eyeball me when I’ve struck them out twice already in a single game.
Cooper doesn’t move to get the drinks.
But then, he probably doesn’t know she fell off her damn roof a few hours ago, and he probably didn’t notice her limping, or if he did, he thought it was her actual pegleg impersonation.
Dammit.
I shove up out of my chair and stalk to the bar to grab the tray. My quads cuss at me. Today was leg day at the gym and that’s what they do on leg day. Feel like jelly until you sit, then they get angry when you try to move again.
But it means I’m alive, and I’m kicking ass at getting in top shape for next year, so I’ll take it.
Tillie Jean shifts that wary gaze my way as I stop across from her and reach for the tray. “Two parrot burgers, a grilled chicken salad, and whatever Cooper hates most,” I tell her.
“We don’t serve parrot burgers.”
“But you want to.” I glance at her grandfather and Long Beak Silver, who are entertaining her friends now.