The WRONG Brother (Love You Forever #1) - Alexis Winter Page 0,14
and turn my attention to the water.
“Ugh,” he groans. “Fine, my queen.” My queen is what I always made Calvin and him call me when we were little. This trick isn’t new. In fact, the two of them took turns being my royal servant throughout our childhood for various reasons, mostly because I got hurt in the middle of the boys’ roughhousing.
I turn to look at him with a smile, happy that he’s remembered this game so well. “That’s more like it. I’m getting hungry. I’ll take my wiener now,” I tease.
“I thought we agreed to call it a hot dog?”
“We did, but I’ve changed my mind and now you must also call it a wiener for the rest of the day.”
He stands and walks toward the snack stand, grumbling under his breath about hoping I choke on my wiener. I can’t do anything but drink my beer with a smile. And on the plus side, my nose has stopped bleeding already. Looks like I win this day!
I wonder if I could maybe use this to my advantage. Perhaps I could get a kiss out of the deal, but that would probably tell him the one thing I’ve never been able to bring myself to say and my secret would be ruined . . . probably along with our friendship.
No, I won’t out myself today, but I’m sure as shit going to take advantage of this situation. I smile to myself as he walks back over.
He holds out his hand with his head bowed forward. “Your wiener, my queen.”
Four
PIPER
I eat my wiener and move on to strawberry ice cream in a waffle cone. I wash all of it down with more beer. Preston is acting as my gopher. He goes for bottled water I don’t drink, sunblock I don’t use, and a bag of cotton candy I don’t eat. I hate cotton candy. It’s sickly-sweet, sticky, and gross, but Preston doesn’t need to know that. He does everything without complaint—well, he mumbles under his breath as he’s walking away, but other than that, there’s no complaining.
The two of us sit on the beach, talking, tanning, and swimming when we get too hot. He cuts back on drinking because he’s too afraid to leave his car here overnight. So once again, I’m left drinking alone. By the time the sun is going down, I’m completely trashed and no help when it comes to picking up our belongings to leave.
Preston folds up his chair and I stand to do the same, but I can’t get it to fold. I push and push, but it’s not folding.
He laughs. “Get out of the way before you hurt yourself.” He steps up to the chair, pushes a couple little buttons, and it easily folds up. He grabs the cooler and chairs and walks them to his car while I stuff my things into my bag. I grab my pair of shorts and step one foot into them. As I lift the other foot, I lose my balance and fall over. Thanks to the tanning lotion, sand is stuck to the entire right side of my body.
He walks back over to me with a smirk. “Seriously, you can’t even dress yourself?”
“That’s none of your business. Maybe this is how I get dressed every morning,” I say, getting up on my feet and tugging my shorts into place.
He chuckles. “It probably is. Everyone knows you’re not the most graceful person on the planet.” He grabs the blanket up off the ground and it sends bits of sand in every direction, only covering me further.
At this point, what does it even matter? I’m pretty sure I have sand where the sun doesn’t shine, but at least the ordeal has resulted in a nice tan. And maybe some black eyes. I’ve been too afraid to look.
We make the journey back to the car and I fall into the passenger seat, completely exhausted from the sun and drinking all day. Not to mention, having a hangover and not enough sleep. He climbs behind the wheel and starts up the car.
“Your mom is going to hate me if I keep bringing you home drunk,” he laughs out.
I wave off his concerns. “Again, at least we didn’t get arrested,” I point out. No matter what we do, as long as we don’t get arrested, we’re doing well. At least in her eyes.
Traffic is heavy on the ride home and we’re moving at a snail’s pace. I’m tempted to grab another beer out