Chapter 20 – Sunshine
TWENTY
SUNSHINE
“You good with me dropping you off here?” Ethan asked me, as he pulled up to the sidewalk next to the town square.
“Yep. Mom decided to come to town and is meeting me by the gallows.”
“Another girls’ lunch?” Ethan said, like it was so normal.
And the funny thing was – it was starting to feel normal. Group chats. Lunch dates. Morning run-ins with my half-brothers. I smiled, remembering how completely overbearing and funny they’d been just because I’d fallen asleep next to Tag last night.
“You’re not seriously bothered by me and Tag, are you?” I asked him. “That whole thing this morning was a joke, right? You know I’m a grown woman who is going to make her own choices.”
“Of course. Carter is the cavemen of our group. I just…” he trailed off. Took a breath and then tried again. “Tag is like a brother to me. To all of us. You know that.”
“I do,” I said.
“Mac called him elusive and that’s exactly what he’s like. Especially with women. He’s not quick to put his heart out there. In fact, the opposite is true.”
“Are you worried he’s going to break my heart?” I asked him.
Because that wasn’t going to happen. Both Tag and I understood that feelings had nothing to do with anything that was happening between us.
“No, sis. I’m worried you’re going to break his,” Ethan said, with a heavy sigh. “I wish I could tell you how quickly it can happen. One minute you don’t really know who this person is, and the next…she’s your world and you would die without her.”
“That’s not going to happen to us,” I assured him. “Trust me. We’re not you and Harmony. There just isn’t enough time for that. I’ll be back in New York next week, whether this works or not.”
“But, it’s going to work,” Ethan said, confidently. “Everyone is sure of it.”
I smiled, but said nothing. I was confident, but I wasn’t that confident.
Too many things could go wrong. But none of those things were what I wanted to be thinking about right now.
I’d told them to trust me and they were.
So, I had to believe I could deliver on my promise, otherwise I might freeze up with indecision.
I’d felt pressure before, but nothing like this.
“You got a ride home?” he asked.
“I do,” I said, hopping out of the truck. I looked back at him and took note of his somber face. It just meant he cared. About Tag, about this town. But most of all, about Harmony. “She was smart.”
He looked over at me.
“To not let you go,” I told him. “You’re a good guy, Ethan McGraw. ”
“Thank you sis-slash-sis-in-law,” he said, with a salute.
I closed the door and he took off in the direction of the clinic at the end of town.
When I looked across the square I could see my mother was already waiting for me at the gallows statue.
She lifted her arm and gave a big wave as if I couldn’t see her.
I waved back and was walking in her direction when Darryl H.
started up his weed whacker so he could clean up the hedges around the sidewalk.
When he saw me, he dropped the whacker and jogged over to me.
“Hey, Ms. Calloway. Just wanted to let you know we’re rooting for you. I took some books about bitcoin out of the library. I haven’t read them yet, but if you need me to help with some research, I can do that.”
Darryl J. suddenly appeared, coming from the opposite direction. Because where one Darryl went, the other Darryl followed.
“Hey Ms. Calloway. Yeah, Darryl and I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe it’s time we start investing for the future. I’ve been reading stuff online about stocks and stuff and-”
“Be careful with that,” I said, cutting him off. “There is a lot of misinformation out there. Sure, read everything you can, but before you invest actual money, if you have questions you can come to me.”
“I can?” he asked.
“We can?” Darryl H. asked, nudging the other Darryl in the ribs as if to suggest they were an investing duo.
I stopped myself for a second. Did I really want to be advising Darryl and Darryl on their investment prospects? I only had clients with multi-million dollar portfolios. Two with billion dollar portfolios .
This would be…less than that.
But, maybe more important.
“You have your phones on you?”
Darryl H. reached for his first. I took it and typed in my contact information.
“Text before you invest,” I said, with my best broker tone.
Darryl J. chuckled. “That could be your catch phrase, Ms. Calloway.”
That stopped me for a second. “Do either of you call Harmony Mrs. McGraw?”
They shook their heads. “Nah, she’s just Harmony,” Darryl H. said.
“What about Amity or Bliss? What do you call them?”
Darryl J. shook his head. “Bliss scares me, so I don’t try to call her anything. But Amity’s just…Amity.”
“Well, I’m in your phones as Sunshine. So, please feel free to call me that.”
Because that’s how I felt today.
Sunshine Calloway.
“Thanks Ms….uh, Sunshine,” Darryl H. said.
I left them and headed toward my mom, who was standing next to the bulletin board near the gallows statue.
There was no way, I thought, that the wanted poster had been…
“Again?!” I shouted, seeing a new tag line underneath my picture.
Wanted: Sunshine Calloway - If her crazy crypto plan doesn’t work
“I know,” Mom said. “Obviously, it’s someone who was at the town meeting, but it’s crazy how no one ever sees who does this. A complete mystery. ”
I fought the desire to bite my nail and to tear down the stupid poster. “It sounds like the town might still be uncertain about my plan.”
“Why do you say that?” Mom asked.
“Uh, because it says crazy crypto plan.”
“Maybe,” Monica admitted. “But there’s nothing to be done about it. We voted at the council meeting and what happens, happens.”
“Just what I needed,” I muttered, under my breath. “More pressure.”
My mother patted me on the back. “That’s your special skill set, dear. Handling the pressure.”
She wasn’t wrong, but it was kind of sweet that she noticed.
Mom and I sat down at a small four top table. Amity was going to join us once Marion, one of the teenagers in town who she’d hired for some part time work, showed up for her shift.
Bliss was also coming over before she opened the bar.
As long as Harmony didn’t join us, I thought, we’d be fine.
No talk of Tag. No talk of me falling asleep at his place and what that meant.
Not that it meant anything.
Only, that since I was twelve years old, I’d never slept through the night without my thoughts waking me up at some point…except last night.
Last night, I’d slept so soundly until my ridiculous half-brothers woke me up. Again .
I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about anything except the end goal.
The South Korean export market was signaling a run and that was going to be our chance to catch the tiger by the tail. The market would surge, and when it did, I was going to see a mass spike in value which I needed to then sell at its peak before it regulated. Another day, two, tops.
What wasn’t helping my anxiety, was the fact that Clive Bohman knew one of the partners in the firm. He hadn’t mentioned who it was, but what if he reached out to him?
It was bad enough Jared was all over my ass and contacting my clients without clearance from me.
I wasn’t doing anything unethical. It wasn’t like I was misappropriating funds to buy bitcoin. Every penny we’d poured into this operation had been McGraw money. And some of my own personal savings which I could use for any reason I chose.
It was more of an implied rule at Berkley.
Don’t invest on behalf of family. You lose perspective, and when you lose perspective…you lose money.
Still, it’s not like they could fire me over it.
Could they?
The door to the Last Meal opened, and my relief that Harmony wouldn’t be joining us crashed and burned when I saw her coming in behind Bliss and making a beeline for us. The expression on her face spelled trouble for me.
“Oh, no,” I muttered.
“What’s the matter?” My mother asked, and then looked up to see my sisters approaching. “Oh, how nice. We’re all here. Sunshine, grab that extra chair from the table and we’ll scootch in.”
I pulled over the chair and Amity came out from behind the kitchen with a tray of food. Fun fact, I’d just discovered on this trip home, my sister cooked like a badass.
And not just the cowboy stuff. She worked with Asian flavors, Indian spices, along with traditional things like barbeque. All of it was amazing.
Harmony held up her phone with a picture of me sound asleep tucked against the naked chest of one Tag Durham on the screen.
“Talk,” Harmony said, and showed the picture to everyone seated at the table like she was showing state’s evidence.
“Oh, it looks like things are certainly progressing,” Mom cooed. “They’ve gone from getting air, to getting lai-”
“Mom!” I cut her off. “Do not finish that sentence. It’s innocent.”
My voice was an octave too high, which always happened when I lied. Because the truth was, nothing about what happened between me and Tag outside of last night had been innocent, but that was the story I was sticking to.
“Oh, that looks so sweet,” Amity cooed.
“Who knew Tag looked that good shirtless?” Bliss said.
I immediately grabbed the phone out of Harmony’s hand. “Stop looking at Tag like that,” I told Bliss. “Harmony, can we put this away? There’s nothing there to talk about.”
“Just a few days ago you were asking about Tag’s former girlfriends…” Harmony let her voice trail.
“I was just curious.”
“Curiosity got the cat pregnant,” Mom interjected.
“Mom,” Bliss said, throwing up her hands. “No one even knows what that means.”
“Ethan said there’s something there,” Harmony said, smugly, taking one of the sandwiches. “He thinks you like each other.”
I kicked her under the table.
“Ow!” Harmony complained. “Mom, Sunny kicked me.”
“Stop kicking your sister and tell me how you just happened to find yourself in bed with Tag.”
“I wasn’t in bed with Tag! I mean, I was, but only because we fell asleep watching Seth on ESPN.”
“Yes, but why were you at his cabin? How did you end up in his bed in the first place?”
“Uh, well, I…there was all that extra food Amity sent over. And I was playing chess with his dad, and then Tag wanted to lay down and…he wanted company.”
Four pairs of eyes were staring me down with equal measures of incredulity.
“Stop,” I told them. “We just connected, is all. But it’s not going to amount to anything because I’m-”
“Going back to New York,” all my sisters said in unison.
“Remember the city-girl chants from the town meeting,” I reminded them. “It’s not like anyone in this town wants me to stick around.”
“But, you turned them all around on crypto currency,” Amity said. “Even Cookie has bought into it. He’s having a BBQ special at his truck this week where he’ll discount the food if you pay in bitcoin.”
“Okay, that’s not how that should work,” I tried to interject, but Amity was still talking.
“Everyone’s so excited to see what you can do.”
“That’s fine,” I told my family. “But, even if I am successful and I save the ranch, I’m still going back to-”
“New York,” my sisters and mother said in unison again.
“Good. As long as that’s settled,” I said. Hoping we’d put an end to the Tag conversation, I reached for a sandwich of my own. It looked like a curried chicken salad with raisins.
“Or, you could move back home with me, date and marry Tag, and maybe someday give me grand babies. A man with a chest like that would make good grand babies.”
“Mom!” We all shouted in unison.