Page 89 of The Game We Played

She rolls her eyes. “Letting me? This is community service.”

Community service? What did she do? And why didn’t I hear about it?

Sophia and her friends, who own theFive Fathoms Brewing Companytogether, are some of the biggest troublemakers on the island. For a while there, I considered naming the gossip column after them –Five Fathoms Unfiltered.But then they all fell in love and ruined perfectly good material.

“What did you do?”

She grunts. “It wasn’t a big deal. We accidentally did an autopsy on the mermaid atMermaid Mini Golf.”

“How do you accidentally perform an autopsy on a plastic mermaid?”

She waves a hand in dismissal. “Moonshine and bets, and asshole fiancés and husbands were involved.”

I giggle. “I need the full story.”

Tanner raises his hand. “Me too.”

Sophia’s eyes widen. “Aren’t you Tanner Long?”

He bows. “In the flesh.”

Sophia’s husband, Flynn, hurries toward us. “No flirting with famous NFL players.”

Tanner puffs out his chest. “It’s me. I’m the famous NFL player.”

I slap his chest. “Can you be serious for one minute? Cleaning up the beaches is important.”

He wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t you worry, gorgeous. I can clean beaches, flirt with you, and show off for my fans at the same time.”

I push his arm off. Does everything have to be this easy for him? I’ll need to soak in a hot bath after a long day of bending over picking up trash. He’ll probably go for a ten-mile run to ‘loosen up his muscles’.

“You have your hands full with him.” Sophia laughs as she hands me a roll of trash bags, two sets of gloves, and two trash grabbers. “You and Tanner have the northern part of the beach.”

“Alrighty. Let’s do this.”

I walk toward our area of the beach with Tanner trailing behind me. He waves at everyone as if he’s the main attraction in a parade.

“Come on, homecoming king, we have work to do.” I hand him a trash bag.

“I bet I can pick up trash faster than you.”

“This isn’t a contest.”

“Everything’s a contest.”

He scrambles around the beach picking up the big, obvious trash as fast as he can. He misses the microplastics and glass shards.

I follow him and pick up all the stuff he misses. Which is a lot. I should have known better than to bring him with me today. He’s not taking this seriously.

Of course, he doesn’t understand. Why would he? This isn’t his home. And he’s probably never cleaned anything important in his life.

“Tada!” He does a pirouette before bowing and offering me his trash bag. “I’m done. I win.”

“Are you kidding me?” I explode.

“What?”

“What?” I inhale a deep breath in an effort to control my temper. It doesn’t work. “There is no winning. This isn’t a contest. We’re cleaning a beach. And you’re doing a crappy job.”