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“I don’t understand why you still want to prank her. I thought after last weekend, you’d called some type of truce or something,” Cole says. He’s a people pleaser all the way to his core, and he just doesn’t understand anything that might rock the boat or cause someone to be unhappy with him.
“No, no truce was called. Besides, I can’t let her have the last laugh. What she did with the dating profile . . . you think I should just let it go after that?”
Even though she took down the profile, I’m still getting emails. There are a few random new ones, but mostly they are follow-ups from the originals who sent them. All with more pictures of more feet.
“Yes. I think you should let it go,” he says, and he would say that.
“Do you even know me?” I chuckle. After all these years, he should know better. I never back down from a challenge, and apparently, I don’t from a prank either. However, I admit it’s getting harder to come up with ideas. Some are funny, some are messy, and some are crossing the line, and I’m not interested in that.
“So you’re at the grocery store? What are you getting?”
“Fish,” I tell him as I stand in front of the seafood counter. While Horizons Valley is a great town, our grocery store is pretty basic. It’s filled with essentials, primarily for tourists and not luxuries like you’d find at Whole Foods.
He makes a strangled sound. “I’m afraid to ask, what will you do with a fish?”
“Not one fish, but two.” I eye the different fish behind the glass counter. Some are marinated filets, but then there are the whole fish, and excitement pierces through me.
This time, he lets out a deep sigh. “Okay, what are you going to do with two fish?”
“Hide one on the front porch and one on the back. This way, it’ll keep her guessing where else I might have hidden one.”
“Briggs. No,” he chastises.
“Yes! The smell will drive her crazy.”
“It will also drive wild animals crazy and bring them straight to her door. Did you forget that she did not do well with the raccoons or the deer? Why do you keep picking pranks that involve animals?”
It hasn’t occurred to me that I do, but okay.
“Cole, she lives on a mountain. If she can’t handle a couple of animals, then maybe she shouldn’t be here.” But just saying that causes an unknown ache to press on my chest, and I reach up to rub it. “It won’t be that strong to attract animals. Maybe Rocky and Bullwinkle but within a day or two, she’ll have found them and gotten rid of them. I don’t foresee the fish being there too long, just long enough to piss her off.”
“Why fish?”
“Because it’s a thing.”
“What thing?”
“Dead fish. Didn’t you watch Mafia movies as a kid?”
“No, not really. I was more into Marvel and graphic novels.”
Not surprising. Given his career choice, this makes sense.
I glance around to see if anyone I know stands near me, but there isn’t. However, plenty of people are walking by, so I lower my voice not to attract attention. “Well, the Mafia, when they weren’t happy with you, they would leave dead fish. It was a warning that if you didn’t stop what you were doing or leave town, you would ‘sleep with the fish’.”
“As in they would put your feet in concrete and throw you overboard?” he asks, suddenly catching on.
“Yes. You would be kidnapped, sometimes tortured, and most definitely weighted down and tossed overboard.”
“Huh. Dead fish. Learn something new every day. You think she watched Mafia movies and knows what this means?”
“I don’t know, but the smell alone will be funny enough.”
“Briggs.” His disappointed tone has returned, but I’m over hearing it.
“Gotta go,” I tell him and hang up as the guy behind the counter comes to stand in front of me.
I order two whole rainbow trout and can’t help the smirk that sits on my face as he wraps them both in white paper, weighs them, and slaps the price sticker on them. While I wouldn’t say these fish are large, they’re definitely not small and will stink up the area.
