Page 2 of Tizzy's Little Thanksgiving

Grabbing another bag off the spool, he knelt down and started scooping apples into it.

“You aren’t getting banned from the store, and no one is going to jail,” he told her with confidence. “Look, still no employees. You can just buy the apples and no one will be the wiser.”

“I can’t!” Tizzy wailed. “I don’t have enough money!”

“What?” Worry gnawed his gut. Tizzy was a nurse. It wasn’t the highest paying job out there, but it wasn’t the worst. Surely she could afford a few dozen apples. If she couldn’t, something was seriously wrong.

“No, I mean I don’t bring my wallet with me when I skate, but I always have an emergency fiver tucked into my bra in case I need to give it to a homeless person.”

He blinked at the absurdity that, honestly, was so typically Tizzy. If he didn’t think fast, she was going to start spiraling again and nobody wanted that.

“I’ll buy the apples,” he said smoothly. “See, problem solved. Now, the only problem you have is what to do with dozens of banged up apples.”

“I’ll make applesauce,” Tizzy replied with a sniffle. “Oh thank you, Eddie! You are saving my life! Thank goodness you were here! I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here. I’d probably be in the back of a cop car headed to the pokey right now. I don’t care what Georgie said about jumpsuits. I know I would just curl up into a big orange ball and die in jail.”

His mind was spinning. Applesauce, cops, pokey, and what was this about Georgie, jumpsuits, and dying? Tizzy couldn’t be serious, he thought and yet he knew she was. Sometimes he wondered how someone as excitable and dramatic as Tizzy ever made it in nursing, a field that required the opposite, but not only was she a nurse, she was supposedly a great one. He didn’t get it. Reaching up to pull two more bags from the spool, he handed one to her and kept one for himself. “Just start grabbing apples.”

She complied, rambling the whole time at two thousand miles a minute. “If you can just wait here after you pay for them, I’ll skate back to my apartment and get my wallet and then bring you the cash. Oh wait, that wouldn’t work. I mean it would, but it seems silly. Maybe you could drive me to my apartment so I could get my wallet. Oh no, that’s probably too much trouble. I could just bring the money by your office.”

He finished bagging up apples and threw them into his cart, beginning his stride to the register. He had a whole grocery list he still needed to shop for, but that was going to have to wait for another day.

“I guess I could mail it, though, who really mails cash these days? That’s probably not a great idea.”

Tizzy was following alongside him, gliding through the store on those ridiculous skates, talking all the while.

Finally, he’d had enough. He couldn’t even hear himself think. “Teresa!” he scolded sharply, grabbing her by the shoulders so she was forced to stop moving, hopefully inspired to stop talking, and had no choice but to look at him. “You don’t need to pay me back. Stop worrying about it.”

He could tell from her face that she wasn’t about to stop worrying even for a second.

“Oh no, Eddie. I have to pay you back somehow. If not with money, then some other way. Maybe I could make you some applesauce!” Her eyes twinkled with mischief.

Eddie shook his head. “Do you even know how to make applesauce?”

“Well, no,” Tizzy admitted, “but it can’t be that hard, can it?”

Eddie heaved a sigh. He could just picture the amount of chaos Tizzy could create trying to whip him up a batch of applesauce as a thank you. And he didn’t even like applesauce, really. He preferred to eat the fruit in its natural state. “Let me buy you dinner. That’s how you can make it up to me.”

“What?” Tizzy faltered, clearly taken aback by his suggestion. Her nose scrunched up, and her eyebrows furrowed and then she smiled, and he thought for a minute she was surely going to say yes, but instead, she giggled and smacked his chest. “Eddie! That doesn’t even make sense! Let you spend money on me in order to pay you back for spending money to keep me out of jail?”

There she went again with the jail thing. Never mind that it would never happen, that’s what they would always come back to unless he could get her off of the apple fiasco and on to something else. Besides, dinner with Tizzy wouldn’t be a hardship. As exhausting and dramatic and over-the-top as she was, she was also intelligent, loyal, funny, and kind. Not to mention drop-dead gorgeous with long curly locks, an hourglass figure that was a little curvy in all the right places, and an ass that wouldn’t quit. He definitely had the hots for her. And as much as he’d spent years fighting it, because she was his kid sister’s best friend, he figured that ship of obligation had sailed when Georgie had not only broken into his apartment for his best friend Lucas’ address but had followed him across the country to get a job at the same kink resort where he worked. Fighting his attraction to Tizzy was no longer something he felt inclined to do. After all, turnabout was fair play.

“Come have dinner with me,” he said again.

Tizzy frowned. “Okay,” she conceded. “But I’m still gonna make you some applesauce.”

Tizzy

Was it a date?When he said dinner, she was thinking like… Taco Bell but while the place Eddie had taken her wasn’t fancy, it had real menus, and it wasn’t a dive either.

And Eddie, of course, was a gentleman, opening car doors, and buckling her in… swoon-worthy stuff only she couldn’t swoon, as much as she wanted to. Because it was Eddie, and even though she’d crushed on him for as long as she could remember, she was sure he was only being so nice because he saw her as his little sister’s hopeless, goofy best friend.

Maybe. Probably. The way he was currently looking at her had her not so sure, but even if it wasn’t the case, Eddie was off limits.

Georgie had made that clear in not so many words.

Tizzy sighed and looked for the waitress. Without the apple fiasco to talk about, they’d fallen into an awkward silence. Tizzy hated silence. And small talk. If Eddie didn’t say something soon, she was likely to start babbling again about god knows what and make a complete ass of herself.

“How’s work?” Eddie asked.

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