Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills Series Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  When we’d finished, and the lock release mechanism was fitted onto Fonzie’s collar so that the door would open when he wanted in and out, Mom had sat us down for some lunch, which was what we were doing at this precise moment. She’d been quiet to begin with, but once my parents started telling Tamsin embarrassing stories about me as a kid, she came out of her shell.

  Mom was holding onto Dad’s arm, laughing. “I-I came home, his sister, Cat, was on the couch watching a Transformers cartoon, and there’s no sign of Garrett and Raoul. I thought maybe they’d snuck out because they were shitheads like that, but when I went to our bedroom to make sure, there they were, makeup all over their faces and my grandmother’s clip earrings on their ears,” she wheezed, mascara trailing down her face with the tears. “Garrett smiles at me—” she broke off, howling as I tried to sink under the table.

  Dad, who was also laughing, held up a finger. “Wait there, it might be better if I got something.”

  Laying my face on the table, I muttered, “No, it wouldn’t.”

  Did my family give me a break? Did they hell.

  Within minutes Dad was back, but I didn’t look up when he started talking. I really should’ve, then I could have hidden or burned what he was about to show her.

  “Let’s see… Ah, this is it.”

  I heard something move across the top of the table and assumed he’d brought through the earrings, but when Tamsin gasped, I lifted my head and blinked rapidly at what she was looking at.

  A photo album.

  A photo album I’d never seen before in my life.

  An album that held all of the horrors of my childhood, apparently.

  Why? Because on the page the woman I was falling in love with was looking at was a photo of Raoul and me smiling, dressed in Mom’s clothes—bras on the outside, for fuck’s sake—with makeup all over our faces, including our freaking teeth.

  We’d also found her bright red lipstick and colored in our cheeks and lips, not realizing that if you pushed too hard as you did it, the shit went between them and onto your teeth.

  Groaning, I rubbed my face with both hands. “It looks like we’ve been shot in the mouth!”

  “Well, you were eating it, honey.”

  Lifting my head quickly, I glared at my mom, who up until five minutes ago I’d loved hugely. “You’re lying.”

  Shaking her head, she said earnestly, “I am not.”

  Thinking back to that night and what little I could remember of it, I fast-forwarded through the clothes, the jewelry, makeup, and… Oh, for the love of shitting hell. Dropping my head forward again, I groaned against the surface of the table.

  “Raoul told us Garrett had said it tasted like cherries, so both of them bit into it to check,” Mom snickered. “It took about an hour of brushing their teeth to get rid of it.”

  The sound of plastic being peeled apart followed it, and I lifted my head again and snatched the album out of Tamsin’s hands when I saw what she was looking at now.

  Rubbing her lips together, she couldn’t hide the laughter building inside her. “You proposed?”

  Why me?

  “I was only little,” I snapped, wincing at the semi-lie.

  “He was ten,” Dad interrupted, winking at her.

  “Why are you still here?” I hissed.

  Staring at me innocently, he shrugged. “Because it’s my house.”

  Standing up, I held the album close to my chest. “Good point. So why are we still here?”

  “Oh, sit down, Garrett,” Mom chuckled, waving her hand around. “He was always so serious, Zuri. You’ll have to grade him on a curve and ignore that from him.” Then, turning to me, she nodded at the book in my hands. “You can keep that.” Just as I relaxed and went to sit down, she added, “We’ve got duplicates hidden around the place.”

  Throwing her head back, Tamsin burst out laughing.

  “I’m glad my humiliation is amusing,” I huffed, placing the album on my chair and then sitting on it.

  “Listen, you fell in love when you were ten. There’s no shame in that,” Dad said, reaching for another biscuit and the butter. “When you said you needed to buy a ring, we weren’t sure if it was for your sister or just because you wanted one, so we said okay and let you. Boy, you were absolutely determined to give it to her as well because we stood in that line for over an hour.”

  I hated my life. Maybe not all of it, but there were chunks I did hate, including right now.

  Every word he said made Tamsin laugh harder until she was gasping in oxygen.

  “I’ll never forget when it was finally his turn, he went running up to her, pushed Donald Duck out of the way, then dropped down onto one knee and yelled how much he loved her,” Mom giggled.

  Dropping her head forward, Tamsin snorted loudly, still laughing. Both of my parents looked delighted by this move, and when Mom looked over at me, she winked and gave me a thumbs up. I wasn’t about to fall for that bullshit, so I just glared back at her.

  Finally, when she was able to, Tamsin croaked, “You proposed to Daphne Duck!”

  Yes, I, Captain Garrett Evans, had proposed to Daphne Duck while we were at Disney World. I was that much of a sad sack that I’d queued in the hot sun for over an hour to propose to her. Somewhere out there was a woman in a Daphne outfit with a ring from a machine on her finger, telling her other friends in their costumes about the kid who’d declared his undying love for her.

  My humiliation wasn’t complete, though. Oh, hell no.

  “If you’d like, Harry had a new video camera at the time, so he caught it all. Do you want to go and watch it?”

  Suddenly, spending time with my new ugly brother didn’t seem like such a bad option. I could handle the nightmares from it versus the ones this would give me.

  Then a thought occurred to me.

  “Didn’t Raoul shit his pants—literally—when we went to that fishing place, and a stingray came out of a rock pool and landed on him?” When they both looked at each other and nodded, I grinned evilly. “Did you happen to get that on video?”

  Their smirks suddenly made me very happy.

  We’d left my parent’s house and were driving home after a humiliating and amusing afternoon, and I thought that Tamsin was almost asleep, so when she spoke, I jumped slightly.

  “Our parents can never meet.”

  Frowning and not liking this, I gripped the wheel tightly. “Why do you say that?”

  Angling toward me, she played with the seatbelt while she replied. “My parents aren’t exactly normal, so if we put them together in the same room…”

  Relieved by her reason, I chuckled as I stopped at a red light. “I doubt yours are as bad as mine, pretty girl. You’d need to warn them about mine, maybe even get them drunk so they don’t remember it.”

  Shaking her head, she bit down on the corner of her lip. “You don’t understand. I’m an only child, so I’ve had their undivided attention my whole life. Think about it—if your parents have that kind of stuff of you, Raoul, and Cat, what would a parent with one child have? Plus, my mom has an obsession with the People of Walmart and goes around asking people she’s certain are going to make it onto the page for their autographs.”

  That… Okay, that was weird. “And people do that?”

  “You’d be surprised,” she sighed, facing forward again. What she didn’t realize was, I probably wouldn’t be surprised. “She goes up and explains it to them, shows them her top supporter status on Facebook, then passes them her autograph book for them to sign after she takes a selfie with them.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered, rubbing my chin with my hand. “And your dad?”

  Covering her face with both hands as much as she could with the cast, she mumbled something into them.

  “I missed that. What did you say?”

  “He does reenactments.”

  That wasn’t so bad. “Like the Civil War type ones? Loads of people do those, baby.”

  Clearing her throat, she lowered he
r hands and stared at the dashboard. “No, as in Jaws ones.”

  Without realizing I was doing it, I turned the indicator on and pulled over to the side of the road, relieved that no one had been behind us when I did it. Rolling to a stop, I threw the car into park and turned to face her fully.

  “Okay, I could’ve sworn I heard you say he did Jaws reenactments. Are we talking about the movie?” When she nodded, I tried to think of what to ask next, but so many questions were hitting me at once it was hard to decide. Finally, I went with, “He hunts sharks?”

  Her head snapped around so quickly there was a small crack, and I was grateful she’d finally had all of her stitches removed and that the tiny wounds from the tears were almost fully healed too.

  “God, no. What kind of barbaric piece of shit do you think he is? You don’t hunt sharks, they’re endangered. Did you know that the population of some species has declined by over ninety percent over the last couple of decades? Do you know what that means for our future generations and our oceans? I mean, female great white sharks only reach reproductive age at thirty-three years old, and they carry the babies for eleven months. Why would anyone hunt sharks with—”

  Holding up a hand, I stopped her mid-rant. “Right, so he doesn’t hunt sharks. How does your dad re-enact the movie Jaws, then? You can’t throw that information out there and not expect me to bite.” I chuckled at the pun.

  Shooting me a glare, she sank down in her seat. “Dad belongs to the Jawesomesauce Crusaders. Every year, they go out on a boat with Quints Shark Fishing JC on it, and they re-enact the struggle to catch the shark.”

  I laughed so hard after she told me the fan club's name that I almost missed the rest of what she said. “What do they hunt if they’re not hunting sharks? Oh shit, is it an inflatable shark?”

  The mental image was so good that I leaned forward with the force of the laughter that came out of me and headbutted the horn.

  “No,” she snapped. Leaning my head on the steering wheel, I watched her blush harder and cross her arms in front of her chest. “One of the members is an engineer who builds robots and shit for the military, so he built a mechanical version of the shark from the movie… to scale.”

  Throwing my head back, I swear I tore something in my stomach when I laughed this time.

  Then she whispered, “They’ve got a YouTube channel and sell merchandise.”

  Hearing that, I took a deep breath and put the truck back into drive to get us home as quickly as possible. The moment I turned the engine off, my phone was out of my pocket, and the YouTube app was open on it as we walked toward the door.

  When I found the account, I discovered—to my immense happiness—that they’d uploaded over three hundred videos of their encounters with the shark. They also had ones of their preparations, them re-enacting scenes on shore, in the sea—who could forget the banana boat scene—and a whole host of other things to do with the movie.

  Six hours later, I’d had a stitch in my side for three hours, but I couldn’t stop watching the videos. When I eventually saw the time, I couldn’t believe I’d been watching them for that long and winced when I noticed that Tamsin had locked the house up and gone to bed.

  How deep the hole go when it came to watching the videos? Considering I watched them on my phone on and off for the next week… the answer was very deep.

  Chapter Ten

  Garrett

  I was exhausted when I walked into work today. Between trying to figure out how to keep Tamsin safe, out how to take our relationship to the next level without fucking shit up, work, training at work, life in general, and everything else in the world that was going on, I was running on little sleep.

  So, walking into work while tugging at my vest because I was so hot today, I almost turned around and left again when I saw Hurst Townsend sitting on DB’s desk, laughing with him at something on the screen of his phone.

  Unfortunately, he saw me before I could do it. “Why Captain Evans, as I live and breathe—which upsets Lindee, by the way. If she could find a way for me not to be breathing right now, I think she’d risk the prison sentence.”

  Smirking at him, DB asked, “What did you do this time?”

  Wincing, he hit the screen of his phone, and the screaming coming from it stopped. “The shorter list might be what didn’t I do. But, it keeps the relationship healthy, you know?”

  Rubbing the back of my neck, I dropped my head down to study my boots for something to distract me from the possibilities of what he meant by healthy.

  Think good thoughts, think good thoughts.

  “Hear you had some fun with Miss Sheena, Garrett,” Hurst called.

  Sighing, I raised my head back up and nodded slowly. There was little chance of me lying and getting away with it with her dad standing beside him. “Yeah, she spackled Zuri’s floor with her ass.”

  A bellow of laughter came out of him. “How’d you get on with that?”

  “It was fucking disgusting.”

  Laughing loudly, DB added, “He was dry heaving and gagging when I got there.”

  Just the memory of it and the smell made me feel like doing it all over again.

  Grinning widely at me, Hurst held his phone up. “Wanna see Levi in action when it comes to dealing with his kid’s poop? Lottie says he’s got something called coprophobia, I say he’s just a pussy.”

  I knew what coprophobia was. A guy I’d been in the Air Force with had it, too. I’d seen a grown man have a panic attack at having to clean the portable heads out when we’d set up a base camp that was going to be built on and expanded. They’d brought in temporary toilets until the proper ones could be installed, and those things got nasty as hell, but I’d never seen a man do it with baby doodie.

  Moving closer, I gestured with my chin at his phone as I took a seat on the desk next to him. “Lemme see.”

  Hitting play, I watched Levi bend over with his hands on his knees and heave. “Oh, that’s…” he stopped and then gagged again.

  In the background, his kid was lying on its back while it played with its toes. “Baby, damn, why can’t you save that for your momma? You know she’s okay with this shit,” he dry heaved again.

  Straightening up, he stared down at a bag on the floor. “I’m the master of my mind and soul. I’m the master of my mind and soul,” he chanted as he leaned over to pick it up, aborting at the last second and dancing away from it. “I can’t do it.”

  Then, he disappeared for a moment and came back with a mask on and these long black gloves that went up to his armpits. After he pulled the last one on, he reached behind him and pulled out a pair of tongs.

  “I can do this.”

  “No, he can’t,” murmured Hurst, shaking his head and laughing.

  With his arm stretched out as far as it could go, Levi bent over and tried to pick up the bag with the tongs. For some reason, they wouldn’t pinch it hard enough for him to lift it all the way up, though, so he kept dropping it and having to start all over again.

  “It’s like that grabbing arm game in an arcade,” DB mused. “I don’t get why he can’t get a pair of tongs to work.”

  Shrugging, Hurst shook his head slowly. “The guy’s afraid of his kid's poop. I’d say not being able to use one of the easiest things in the kitchen is the least of his worries.”

  I was inclined to think they were tied.

  Eventually, Levi managed to balance the bag on top of them and was walking carefully toward the camera, like he was carrying a bomb. As he got closer, I groaned when I saw the bag.

  Pointing at the opening, I muttered, “He didn’t tie it shut, did he?”

  “Nope.”

  Just as he got to an open area in his living room, someone knocked on the door, making him jump.

  In the background, we heard a, “Hey, honey. Just thought I’d stop by and check on y’all,” but our eyes were on the bag.

  See, as he’d jumped, he’d also turned his head to look behind him, and his hand had bounced the ba
g slightly. With the load inside shifting with it, the opening of the bag moved toward him. Thanks to it not being tied shut, the dirty diaper inside dropped out, and there was an audible thud as it hit something.

  The look on Levi’s face as he looked down will live in my head for the rest of my life. I hope that when I’m ninety and eating pudding with my own diaper on, I’ll remember it and chuckle enough to dribble some of the pudding back out again.

  Seeing what’d hit his foot, Levi dropped the tongs, grabbed two handfuls of hair, and let out a scream that would make a horror movie victim proud.

  Then, he kicked his foot, booting the diaper far away from him, but unfortunately dislodging some of the poop at the same time, which we saw visibly land about a foot away from him.

  Sadly—for him–he wasn’t looking at it. Instead, he pointed at his foot and yelled, “Shit on my toe!”

  His mom, Erica, came into view as she ran toward him with her hand over her mouth, just as he took a step forward, right onto the poop.

  I didn’t see what happened next because I was laughing so hard I had tears, and it wasn’t helped by the other two guys with me laughing just as hard. But I definitely heard the moment Levi puked.

  After it ended, Hurst turned his phone off and put it on the desk. “His wife sent me it last night, but I still haven’t seen it all the way through. As soon as he steps in it and bellows out that noise like a buffalo, I start laughing too hard to see anything.”

  Smacking his large hand down on my shoulder, DB gasped, “Just as well you only gagged and didn’t follow through with barf.”

  True story!

  It took us a moment to settle down, but Hurst cleared his throat and picked up a cup of coffee I hadn’t noticed once we did.

  “How’re things with Miss Hadid? You looking after her, son?”

  “Sure am. She met my folks over the weekend.”

  One corner of his mouth tipped up in a smile. “Now, I like the sound of that. How’d it go?”

  DB moved away from us and over to the coffee machine in the corner, then picked up a mug and held it in the air, asking without words if I wanted one. It went without saying that I needed as much caffeine as I could get right now, so I nodded and looked back to Hurst.