Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The Coastal Taco Bar menu had already blown over twice, and both times Bunny had re-staked it like she was planting a flag on the surface of the moon.
Aspen scraped the cilantro off her fish taco and took a bite, savoring it as she looked around at all her family and friends, warmth filling her chest.
From the outside, the Cup probably looked like a petite Real Housewife of Coronado running an elaborate beach barbecue through a megaphone.
From the inside, it was the single best weekend of the year—three full days of sun, sand, friendly competition, and all of her favorite people in the same place at the same time.
And this year she had a secret tucked in her back pocket that kept making her smile at nothing.
She was intentionally not smiling at Maddy. She had been actively trying not to look at Maddy at all.
As if on cue, her eyes found Maddy. She couldn’t help it. If Maddy Sterling was anywhere in the same vicinity, Aspen’s eyes would always find her.
Maddy was over by the grill, holding a plate of tacos, nodding along to something Maisie was saying to her and Hank Howell.
Aspen couldn’t hear the words. She didn’t need to.
She’d been on the receiving end of enough Maisie monologues to recognize the body language of a child correcting an adult on a point of fact and absolutely refusing to let it go.
“—it is not a fish,” Maisie was saying as Aspen drifted close enough to catch it, pointing at the platter. “Dolphins are mammals. They breathe air. You cannot put a dolphin in a taco.”
“Nobody,” said Hank, holding tongs and looking deeply betrayed by this conversation, “put a dolphin in a taco.”
Maisie crossed her arms. “You said this is dolphin.”
Hank looked at the fish and back at Maisie. “Mahi-mahi is a dolphinfish—”
“Why didn’t you just say mahi-mahi! Nobody calls mahi-mahi dolphin. It’s confusing.” Maisie concluded, crossing her arms.
Maddy’s mouth was doing the thing where she was trying very hard not to laugh and losing. And Aspen was trying very hard not to stare at Maddy’s mouth and think of all the other things that mouth could do.
“She’s not wrong,” Maddy said, to Hank, deadpan. “You made it sound like you’re grilling up Flipper.”
Hank shot her a look. “Don’t encourage her.” Hank looked over his shoulder and called out. “Olly! Come take your grill back. Your granddaughter scares me.”
Aspen bit down on her own grin and kept walking, because if she stood there one more second watching Maddy team up with her niece, her face was going to be a dead giveaway about the aforementioned secret that Maddy wanted to keep under wraps.
* * *
Bunny called everyone together for the team draw at a quarter to three from the top of her speaking platform.
“Gather, gather, my darlings! It’s time to learn your fates!” She had the megaphone, even though the entire crowd was standing ten feet away from her and could hear her fine. In her other hand, she held the battered purple St. Claire fedora.
“Team one,” Bunny boomed, plucking a slip and not bothering to read it. “Aspen! Maisie! Noa! And…drum roll please…my precious baby girl, Maddy!”
Maisie shrieked and high-fived Noa. Aspen glanced at Maddy and was relieved, both to see that Maddy looked a lot more pleased to be on her team this time than she had during game night two and a half weeks ago, and that her and Maddy being on the same team meant three days of a community-sanctioned excuse to be lashed together.
She was also excited about the rest of their team.
Maisie, who Aspen would walk into traffic for.
And Noa, who was a solid competitor and who Aspen knew that Maddy very much wanted to rebuild a friendship with.
Their reunion had gotten off to a solid start, and now being teammates would give them plenty of opportunities to continue to re-bond.
And not to make it all about herself, but every relationship Maddy repaired and rebuilt in Coronado was another tally in the column for reasons to come back.
Bunny carried on dealing fates. Team two—Jake, Chloe, Olly, and Marion, and Jake and Marion on the same team meant they would either dominate or detonate.
Team three—Lena, her daughters, and Grace, three women built like powerhouses and a yogi to keep them balanced.
Team four—the entire Reyes clan minus Noa.
Team five—the entire Howell clan minus Jake.
And team six—the Peepin’ G’s competing as the only trio who had already announced they’d be sitting out anything that required bending at the knee.
“Now, you have exactly one hour to choose your team name and make your team flag for the opening ceremony!” Bunny swept the megaphone toward the craft tables. “Go forth, my darlings! Go! Show us your team spirit!”
Bunny had cleared the folding tables they had used for the BBQ and stocked them with blank fabric flags, glue guns, paint and paint brushes, and a tackle box of craft supplies that she guessed had been accumulating since the nineties.
Maisie immediately appointed herself creative director and dubbed their team THE SHARKS.
“Okay. Okay okay okay.” Maisie was already loading a glue gun. “It needs to be a shark, obviously. Great whites have, like, three hundred teeth in rows, so we need to do the rows—”
“We are not drawing three hundred teeth, Mais.” Aspen said.
“Three hundred teeth,” Maisie repeated with certainty.
Aspen and Maddy got assigned the painting. Specifically, a shark outline that Maisie had sketched with alarming anatomical accuracy, and were told to fill it in from opposite sides of the table.
Aspen painted directly into the center seam on her very first stroke, just to see how close she could get to brushing Maddy’s hand without drawing attention to it.
Maddy’s brush came over to meet hers a beat later, the bristles bumping, gray paint on gray paint, and neither of them looked up, and Maddy said, perfectly even, “You’re in my lane, St. Claire.”
Aspen kept her eyes on the shark, fighting a smile. “There are no lanes. It’s a collaborative piece.”
Maddy dragged her brush along the seam, and the side of her pinky drew one slow line across the side of Aspen’s hand, light enough to pass for an accident, deliberate enough that Aspen felt it go all the way up her arm. She subtly met Aspen’s eyes and lowered her voice. “Respect the lane.”
Aspen knew Maddy wasn’t talking about the painting. She would respect Maddy’s boundaries. She would also toe the line as much as possible. She wanted anything Maddy was willing to give to her. Even a two second slide of her pinky along Aspen’s hand.
“Noa.” Maisie’s voice cut through her derailing train of thought. “We need a slogan.”
“You know I work in Hollywood, right?” Maddy said. “Coming up with catchy slogans is basically second nature to me.”
Maisie kept her eyes on her glue gun. “Yeah, but Noa knows more about sharks. And she’s funnier.”
Maddy’s mouth dropped open. “I’m funny.” She looked at each of them one-by-one, who had all strategically averted their eyes. “Unbelievable.” She shook her head and went back to painting.
Noa, who had been leaned back with an arm around Sadie and contributing precisely nothing, perked up. “Okay. Hear me out. The Sharks: Teeth aren’t just for smiling.”
She winked at Sadie, who had not stopped scrolling on her phone until that very moment.
“Meh.” Maisie shrugged. “You can do better.”
“Yeah, you’re right, too vague.” Noa tapped her finger against her chin. “The Sharks: We don’t suck. We bite.”
Aspen and Maddy slowly lifted their heads and locked eyes. Was she…
Noa wasn’t done. “Wait! The Sharks: We’ll eat you raw.” She grinned.
Yep, definitely making sexual innuendos.
Maisie’s glue gun dropped and her face lit up. “Ooh!”
“No.” Aspen and Maddy said in unison.
Noa’s grin grew. “Fine. How about, The Sharks: We’ll chum on your face.”
Maisie’s eyes went wide. “YES.”
“Absolutely not!” Aspen said. “We are not putting we’ll chum on your face on a flag a child is going to carry past her mother, grandfather, and the Peepin’ G’s.”
“You’re no fun.” Noa pouted. “Right babe?” Noa nudged Sadie.
“No fun. Booo.” Sadie said, completely monotone, without stopping her scroll.
“I’m so fun. I’m just not that kind of fun.” Aspen tapped her paint brush on the poster board. “How about something a bit more appropriate for my eight-year-old niece, like… fin it to win it or… big fin energy.
Maddy gestured at Aspen. “Big fin energy is cute. Oh, or what about something like The Sharks: We Own These Waters, and we can have our own little team chant where anytime one of us yells “who owns these waters” the rest of us yell back ‘The Sharks!’”
Maisie gasped. “Yeah! I wanna do the chant!”
“Yes! I love that.” Aspen pointed at her.
“I take back what I said before.” Maisie said, picking her glue gun back up. “You are better at this than Noa.”
“Hey!” Noa's head snapped up.
“Thank you. See.” Maddy gestured at Maisie. “Someone appreciates my talents.”
Aspen had to bite her lip to stop the comment that wanted to come out, because she definitely appreciated Maddy’s talents—they just had nothing to do with slogans. Based on the head shake Maddy gave her, Maddy knew exactly where Aspen’s mind had gone, and she mouthed behave.
* * *
By 3:45 p.m. the flags were dry and ready to be waved.
Each team had elected one flag-bearer who stood at the front of their team, waving their flag as they marched about twenty feet and planted it in one of the holders in front of the platform.
Maisie carried the Sharks’ flag, which was now a genuinely respectable great white, three hundred teeth not included, and she held it over her head with both arms.
Bunny called out through the microphone from her platform. “Teams! When I call your name, begin your march!”
“First up, we have the DAWGS!” Bunny announced.