“No. You stuck it in the picture of the 2005 pirate crew above the board.”
I shoot out of my seat to look, swaying and grabbing Max’s shoulder for support, because it’s the nearest solid object.
Hello, Max’s muscles. Why am I not immune to you?
I’ve been around baseball players my entire life, because Cooper’s been a baseball god his entire life, and the thing you do when your older brother is good at something is trail along after him while he does that thing he’s good at for your entire childhood until he leaves for college and then the minors. You know that falling for a baseball player means coming second to the game every time, and you know that he’s gone half the year, and you know that one day, he’ll hang it up and come home and not know who you are since you’ve grown apart in the years that he was putting baseball first.
And I wouldn’t date a hockey player, football player, soccer player, you name it player for the same reason.
And I’ve never wanted to.
But Max?
I want to get to know this man who’s been getting under my skin for four years now. I want to know if we can be friends. I want to know if I do other things to offend him, or if he’s just an asshole and I have a complex where I’m attracted to assholes and I need to go back to therapy to work through this.
Supporting people is good.
Trying to fix people is bad.
Can’t fix an asshole that doesn’t want to be fixed, and even if he wants to be fixed, he’s the one who has to do the hard work.
I open my mouth to ask him if he really hates me so much because I flirt with him all the time, consider that he’ll be entirely too honest for me to handle, and also that if I was supposed to know the answer to that question, the universe would’ve let me in on the secret a long time ago.
So instead, I get a grip on my over-caffeinated self, jerking my hand away and looking up at my dart, which is impaled in a poster-size print of an old Pirate Fest crew picture.
“Oooh, I got Long Beak Silver!” I shake my booty and roll my shoulders. “Take that, you bad, bad parrot.”
I try to flip the bird off, but I’m not very good with my middle fingers since I use them relatively seldomly, and I think I give it the pinky instead.
Max glowers at me. “Do you need to go home?”
This is what I do. I piss him off, and he glowers, and why can’t I be attracted to guys who like me instead of guys who are impossible to please?
Fuck you, Max Cole. “Aunt Glory, can I have a grilled cheese sandwich?”
“You got it, sweet cheeks,” she calls back.
“Yay, chair.” I smile at Max as I sink into it, almost miss with half my butt cheek, and wiggle back onto it, my temper igniting in time with the java juice flowing through my veins. “Now you have to tell me why you flirt with me.”
His eyes close, and his chest rises and falls in one of those massive sighs that my parents never really made with me, but that Aunt Glory makes over her kids all the time.
My parents are awesome.
“Never mind,” Max says.
He starts to rise, but I fling my arm out to stop him.
I’m mad at him.
I want to make him mad too. “I flirt with you because it obviously annoys you, and it annoys me that it annoys you, because I am not your sister. You are not supposed to be in the circle of annoyed.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a very nice person, and I’m a good person to be friends with, and I get along with every other person on your team, but not you. Never you. I don’t think it would’ve mattered how we met. I think you’d be bound and determined to not like me no matter what.”
His Adam’s apple bobs and something flickers in his eyes, highlighting the flecks of caramel amidst the dark chocolate in them, and I realize I’ve struck a nerve.
He doesn’t want to like me.
He actively works at not liking me.
I fling another dart at the wall. I’m frustrated and mad and suddenly very, very sad.
“Cooper said you were valedictorian of your graduating class.”
My shoulders hitch. Apparently he knows how to hit nerves too. “School came easy to me and I like working hard. Cooper’s not the only winner in the family.”
He glances around The Grog like he’s asking what the hell I’ve done with my life since, and it’s like being back with Ben Woods, my former on-again, off-again boyfriend that I thought I’d marry when I turned thirty, despite the fact that he really should’ve been permanently off from the first time we broke up two weeks after our first date, since he kept pushing me to be something I’m not.
Go sell your paintings in Copper Valley, Tillie Jean. Make something of yourself. You’re smart, you’re talented, and you want to waste away in this little pirate town for the rest of your life? Go back to college. Be a doctor. Be a lawyer. Be an engineer.
I curl my fingers around the rest of the darts in my hand.
Max’s gaze lands back on me, and he holds me captive with that growly glare. “Everything comes easy to you, doesn’t it?”
It feels like a slap in the face, and I don’t know why. “So you don’t like me because you think I’m a spoiled princess.”
My voice cracks on the last word.
Crap.
Crap crap crap.
Should not have come out tonight. So what if he thinks I’m spoiled? Who the hell is he?
Nobody.
That’s who he is.
He’s nobody to me.
Someday, my somebody will come. And when my somebody comes, I’ll be ready for him.
But Max Cole is not my somebody.
He’s my nobody.
And I need to remember that.
I bolt straight upright again. “Aunt Glory, forget the grilled cheese. I gotta get home. Put everything on my tab, yeah?”
Max rises too. “Tillie Jean—”
“Don’t worry, Maxy-poo. I won’t flirt with you anymore. You don’t like me. I get it, okay? I get it. Enjoy your burger.” I reach for my glittery tumbler that usually makes me so happy but feels like a false front right now, and I knock it over.
Max snags it like it’s a line drive hammered straight at him on the mound. “I don’t—”
“Like me. I know.” I snatch the mug. “Thank you. Enjoy eating alone. I’m done here tonight.”
Tonight, and as far as I’m concerned with Max Cole, forever.
9
Max
I don’t like being a fuck-up, but I can’t seem to help myself around Tillie Jean. And now I feel like I need to fix it.
Because I have so much practice fixing shit with women.
Reason number eighteen million…
Except I don’t hate her for me screwing this up.
And I do need to fix it.
She’s Cooper’s little sister, she’s well-loved in this town, and clearly, I stepped over some invisible line that’s left me feeling like a thirteen-year-old kid who wasn’t supposed to tell my coach that I was late to practice because my old man couldn’t drive, because my old man didn’t want anyone knowing that his preferred therapy for the depression he didn’t talk about was vodka.
Difference is, I know now it wasn’t my fault when I was thirteen.