“I won’t say a word about the devil. But you’re working too hard. I’m helping. Okay?”
I blink back the burn in my eyes, then smile at him. “Thank you.”
He grunts. “Least I can do.”
With two of us on the job, it doesn’t take long, and soon, I’m driving the burger bus back toward the apartment.
Hudson lounges in the lone front seat that we left in the bus for cases just like this, when someone’s riding with me.
“You gonna talk about the other elephant in the room?” he asks me.
“What elephant?”
“The one where Simon Luckwood liiiiiikes you?”
My heart hiccups even as my brain tells me he’s wrong. “He doesn’t like me.”
“Bea. I know when a guy’s making googly-eye faces at my sister.”
“He was wearing sunglasses.”
“And you could tell even with the sunglasses. So why the long face?”
“One, he doesn’t like me. He told me so. Two, I’m not interested in dating right now, so it doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t. And three, even if he did, he basically abandoned me after he destroyed the fishbowl toss game. Who does that?”
“Guys whose security team recognized that the crowd was gonna get hella big once everyone realized he put the game out of commission. Everyone hates that game. He’s a hero now. A hero who liiiiiikes you.”
And this is why I don’t want to talk to Hudson about it.
Because he’ll say things like that and make me think he’s right.
And what’s more complicated than my ex-boyfriend’s favorite actor giving me all the signals to suggest he likesme when I’ve already weaponized the appearance of our relationship and turned the town’s worst family against me with it?
“What do you care?” I ask. “You were all overprotective caveman when he came to pick me up last night, and you’re making excuses for him today?”
I catch sight of him lifting a shoulder in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know. He just—he seems like he needs a friend. And you’re a good friend. Andyoucould use some new friends too. People who weren’t here when Mom and Dad died. People who can honestly not give a fuck what the Camilles say about you and your burger bus. So you don’t have to ask if they only became your friend out of pity or spite or if they actually like you. That’s why Daphne’s so great. No history. Not that far back. So you know she likes us for who we are now and she doesn’t give two shits about what Jake and his family do either.”
That’s remarkably insightful.
And it doesn’t help me battling theI like him, I shouldn’t like him, he doesn’t like me, so why is he acting like he likes me?conundrum still pinging around my brain.
“Explain thishe needs a friendthing.”
“Bea.No onesmiles that much. He’s trying too hard to make people like him.”
“Maybe that’s Hollywood.”
“Not according to Daphne. Or logic. He wrote and starred in the world’s current biggest show. Everyone wants a piece of that, whether he’s smiling or not.”
I don’t have a good answer for that, so I drive us the rest of the way home, caught up in my own thoughts.
Once we’re in the apartment, I head straight for the shower while Hudson collapses face-first on the couch.
And that’s how I expect to find him when I get out of the shower, but it’s not.
No, when I wander into the living room in my rubber ducky robe with my wet hair pulled up in a towel on top of my head, Hudson’s in the kitchen pulling mozzarella sticks out of the air fryer.
And on the other side of the front of the apartment, Simon is sitting on the couch.
