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And all four of us women let out a collective sigh of relief that everything appeared to be going smoothly.
“Okay, it seems like they have it under control,” Georgia commented, and I nodded.
“Yep. All is well.”
“That’s probably because Kline and Wes are down there preventing my husband from doing something stupid like—” Cassie started to say, but she stopped mid-sentence when she noted that Thatch and Jude were getting into a small canoe at the end of the dock. “Wait…what are they doing? Where are they going?”
“No, no, no!” my uncle Brad started shouting and waving his arms in the air as he ran toward the two big men in the canoe.
But they were too quick with the paddles and started rowing out into the middle of the lake.
Kline, Wes, and Brad stood at the edge of the dock, gesturing manically with their hands in the air, but Jude and Thatch were on a fucking mission and refused to turn around.
“They’re not, like, going to shoot fireworks from that canoe, right?” Georgia questioned, and Cassie turned to meet her eyes.
“What do you think, G? Do you think my husband is thinking smart right now, or do you think that big motherfluffer is going out into the middle of the lake to shoot fireworks off a fucking canoe and blow himself up?”
“Oh no.” Georgia’s hand moved to her mouth, and she looked back toward the lake in terror.
“I wish I could say that my brother Jude is a voice of reason, but, uh…”
I paused, and Cassie shut her eyes for a brief moment and finished my thought. “But he’s too much like Thatch.”
“Yeah.” I grimaced. “Pretty much.”
The music from Remy’s Jeep was still blaring, but all of the guys were on the edge of the dock now, trying to get Jude and Thatch to come back.
Which they didn’t.
Instead, they came to a stop in the middle of the lake and started setting something up in the center of the canoe.
And then, they really fucking did it.
They lit a shit-ton of fireworks in the center of the boat, and just as those damn things started to go off, Jude and Thatch cheered at the top of their lungs and dove off the canoe and into the water.
“Da-da! Boom!” Ace cheered, completely oblivious to the crazy shit his father had just attempted. “Da-da! Boom! Boom!”
The sky lit up in a blaze of glory—beautiful golds and pinks and greens.
But the canoealsowent up in its own blaze of glory. Flames higher than I thought were possible to occur on a fucking lake started to burn from the canoe like a Viking funeral on steroids.
Of course, there was no stopping the ongoing fireworks display after that, and it kept going off with jolting, thunderous bangs. All the while, each spark added fuel to the canoe fire until the damn things just exploded.
Literally.Exploded.On the lake.
“Da-da! Booooooooo-m! Da-da! Boooooom!”
“And people wonder why I threaten murder on Thatch sometimes,” Cassie muttered as she watched her husband and Jude climb out of the water and onto the dock. Once they were standing, they were smiling and laughing and high-fiving each other. “It’s because of him doing stupid shit like this.”
“Well,” my aunt Paula chimed in on a soft laugh, her patience apparently knowing no bounds. “At least that canoe was the only casualty.”
“I don’t think Thatch and Jude should be allowed to hang out with each other anymore,” Georgia stated. “I know they’re grown men and all, but I think, in the name of the safety of humanity, we need to stop that friendship before it goes any further. I mean, if explosive canoes are at the beginning, what happens when they’ve been buds for, like, ten years?”
Holy hell.I grimaced, and I definitely couldn’t deny that Georgia had a point.
Especially when, ten minutes later, the Greenwood Fire Department showed up at my aunt and uncle’s lake house because someone on the other side of the lake had called in an explosion.
And for the next hour after that, we had to watch the guys and a bunch of firefighters head out onto the water and extinguish the still-flaming canoe.
