I jump back at the very same second Tate does. I don’t wait to see his reaction or let him see mine I just turn and storm back into the house, ignoring whoever it is who yells out after me. “Hey! It’s your turn to spin!”
Back in the kitchen I see Daisy standing by the beer pong. “Hey! Where were you?”
“I was just outside.”Getting completely turned on by my mortal enemy. “Getting some air.”
Daisy’s eyes slide over my shoulder and narrow as a frown starts to curve her lips downward. “What are you doing here?”
I don’t dare turn around. If I look at Tate I will turn crimson…and maybe kiss him again. No. I will definitely not. I think. I just can’t turn around.
“Your sister owes me a tiebreaker game of beer pong,” I hear him say.
Daisy shakes her head. “Nope. Not gonna happen. I’m calling it an official tie.”
“No! No ties!” Tate barks. “She doesn’t play, she forfeits and I win.”
Daisy stares at him then me and shakes her head. “You two are going to be a mess tomorrow. Remember tomorrow? First farmer’s market of the fall season?”
“Right. Shoot. Okay. Let’s go!” I sound overly enthusiastic suddenly and I know it. I take a couple steps too quickly and end up grabbing the wall because it keeps the floor under my feet from tilting too much. I can’t help but steal a glance at Tate who just smirks his smirkiest smirk of all smirking time. “If you don’t wanna play another game of pong, we can go back out onto the porch and play more of the game out there. If you want to. I think you want to.”
“Are you trying to make me puke?” I ask and my voice might be ice-cold but my face is red-hot.
“No more games for this Pong Princess.” Daisy sighs heavily and she doesn’t even know what game he’s talking about, thankfully. She would blow her top if she did. “Let’s go. Jasmyn already took Caroline home.”
“You’re forfeiting, Firecracker,” Tate calls out.
“I’m better than you, the end,” I call back as Daisy tugs me toward the front door. “If I wasn’t you wouldn’t be sharing your booth with me.”
“Let’s see if you can even make it there tomorrow,” Tate calls back and somewhere in the back of my brain I wonder if this was his plan all along. To get me drunk so I’m too hungover to show up tomorrow.
“I’ll be there with bells on, Tater Tot,” I call out and someone we’re passing snickers at the nickname I just invented.
Once we make it to the sidewalk out front and start down the street I turn to Daisy. “I don’t care if you have to throw a bucket of ice water on me tomorrow morning, you make sure I get my ass up and get to the market. Got it?”
Daisy laughs. “Whatever you say.”
The only good thing that might come from this drunken night is maybe I won’t remember kissing Tate when I wake up in the morning. And I don’t care if it feels like I’ve been smacked across the forehead with a two-by-four tomorrow, I will be at that farmer’s market.
6
Maggie
It feels like I have been smacked in the forehead with a two-by-four. Or maybe ten of them. Ugh. I was so jealous when I hauled my hungover butt out of bed at seven this morning and Caroline and Jasmyn were still tucked snug in their beds, sleeping off their hangovers. So jealous.
And now, as if this pounding headache, foggy brain, and dry mouth aren’t enough of a problem, I’ve got Clyde staring at me with his hard, mean, bloodshot eyes and for the millionth time I wonder what it’s like to have a grandfather who isn’t a bitter, hateful little man. The kind you see on TV shows and movies that wraps you in gentle hugs and pinches your cheek and has cute nicknames for you. I’ll never know. My mom’s dad died when I was one and all we’ve got is Clyde.
“I flat out refuse to work with that asshole,” Clyde announces. He’s standing there in his battered old overalls and green plaid shirt, which hangs off his emaciated frame. All he needs is a straw hat and it would look like we have a scarecrow on our porch to anyone driving by on the street. Clyde needs to consume something other than alcohol. I’ve never known him to be anything other than painfully skinny, but there is one picture on the mantle of him sitting in a camping chair down by the lake, a fishing pole in one hand and a smile on his face, and he’s heavier. His body more like my dad’s with a thicker waist and broad beefy shoulders. My dad is in the grass at his feet with his own tiny, plastic toy fishing rod and he’s about two or three, which means the picture is from the year my grandmother ran out on them.
“That’s okay, Clyde,” Daisy responds for me. “We can do this without you, like we do everything else.”
“I work hard young lady. You don’t think I work hard? You two are off galivanting around your fancy campus so you don’t know nothing,” Clyde barks and our dad pats him on the shoulder as he emerges on the porch, the screen door to the house banging shut behind him. I wince at the noise which feels like a firework going off too close to my ears.
“Dad, they aren’t galivanting. They’re learning,” our father clarifies, leaning heavily on the cane he now uses every day. “And we all know you work. Daisy, apologize.”
Daisy sighs and rolls her eyes dramatically which makes Clyde turn a new shade of red. “Sorry, Grandpa. But with all due respect, it’s better if you’re not at the farmer’s market. Youarethe reason we don’t have our own booth anyway.”
“It’s that George Adler’s fault. He butted in line. I was last, sure, but if he hadn’t gotten all flirty with that Oleson woman in front of me then he’d have been standing behind me. That dirty, slimy, womanizing—”
“Relax!” Dad repeats, cutting Clyde off before the expletives start again. The man swears like a drunken sailor, especially about all things Adler. Uncle Bobby rounds the corner of the barn. He’s got two of our Cashmere goats with him, Blair and Jo.
