Swing and a Mishap

by Tara Sivec

  “Try saying that without grimacing next time,” Emily helpfully suggests before continuing. “And I know I haven’t talked to Birdie as much as you lately, but I feel like I can confidently say she will recount her proposal to you at least twenty times and you can bet your sweet ass she made a binder on the flight home, and probably one for you as well, so buckle up. And hey, it’s okay to be a little sad. We’re thirty-four and still single with no dating prospects in sight.”

  “At least you have a hot quarterback to lust after.”

  “Look but don’t touch. You know the rules I signed when I became a California Vipers Cheerleader. Football players are off-limits to cheerleaders. Which really makes absolutely no sense when you think about it. Football players and cheerleaders were literally made for each other, and we’re consenting adults.”

  Emily has always been the type of person to act first and think later. As a dancer and gymnast all her life and a cheerleader in high school and college, Emily decided on her thirtieth birthday to attempt one of her bucket list items: Fly to California and try out to be a professional cheerleader for one of the nation’s most popular and well-known football organizations. The California Vipers Cheerleaders are an American staple, and everyone here and all over the world has heard of them. Their sexy, skimpy uniforms are iconic, and replicas are sold for adult costume parties at every costume store around. Their yearly calendar for charity sales breaks new records every year it’s released. And not only do they dance at every nationally televised professional football game for the Vipers, they’re hired to travel around the world to perform at some of the most publicized events there are, like the Grammys and overseas to perform for the troops who are deployed.

  The three months of grueling tryouts Emily went through ended in her making the team and shocking the hell out of her, when I knew without a doubt she’d do it. I also knew when she left and said she’d only cheer with them for one year before coming back home that she’d probably change her mind when she got out there and saw everything the world had to offer. She was too talented and too amazing to stay here on Summersweet Island and not follow her dreams for as long as she wanted. At least we talk all the time, and I get to see her when she comes home for Christmas to visit her parents every year, and those visits are something I spend months and months planning and looking forward to. I also get to see her on TV, which is the coolest thing ever.

  “Can we go back to discussing the reason for you making vodka soup before noon? Please tell me that text you sent me was a joke and Kevin isn’t really planning on coming out to Summersweet Island,” Emily pleads, pulling her foot up to the chair she’s sitting on and resting her chin on her knee.

  “Well, he says he’s coming, but you know how that goes. He makes a lot of promises he can’t keep. I guess he heard Owen’s baseball coach quit and the freshman team is coach-less right now. He’s very concerned about his son’s progress and wants to speak to the athletic director about why it’s taking so long to hire a replacement.” I nod with a look of complete seriousness on my face, which makes Emily snort.

  “Does he even know what position Owen plays?”

  “Still thinks he’s a pitcher,” I say with an eye roll. “Because according to Kevin Stratford, the pitcher is really the only player anyone cares about and who gets the biggest paycheck in the majors. He’s such a piece of shit. Why did I have a one-night stand with a piece of shit?”

  “Uh, because the boy you had a crush on in high school and never had the balls to tell got drafted to play ball clear across the country for Washington that night, we paid Julie Mayer to buy us a bottle of tequila, because we were only twenty, and you proceeded to be sad and shitfaced, then slept with a pretty frat boy who said all sorts of sweet and wonderful things to you, who we had no idea was actually a pile of human garbage from North Carolina under that sun-kissed tourist skin.” She inhales dramatically after all that.

  Resting my arms on the kitchen table, I drop my head forward and let it thunk against the wood top, not really sure at this point if I’m agitated because I had to hear once again how stupid I was fifteen years ago, or because just the mention of the boy I had a crush on in high school, and for far too long after, makes my insides feel like they just shriveled up and died. Again. Because they already did that once a year ago after he made himself such an important part of my life and then disappeared without a word.

  A muffled honking sound from out in the driveway of my cottage has me pulling my head up from the table to look at the time on my phone, knowing the noise is most likely Birdie finally home from Hawaii.

  “Hello, Summersweet Island residents! I’m engaged!”

  I laugh in spite of my current misery when I hear my sister shout from the driveway to anyone currently in their cottages on my street, knowing she’s probably been screaming that since the minute she stepped off the ferry.

  “Sounds like Birdie’s home.” Emily laughs as Birdie continues to announce her happy news over and over so loudly outside that even she heard it through the phone. “I have practice tonight, but we should be done by nine. If you girls have Sip and Bitch later, I’m in. Tell Birdie to send me a picture of that rock.”

  “Will do. Love you, Emmy.”

  I blow her kisses, and she does the same.

  “Love you too, Wrenny. For fuck’s sake, take a shower and do something other than a messy bun to your new gorgeous dark hair before you go to work later. You never know when a hot, single guy who isn’t a pile of human garbage will stop by for a scoop.”

  Rolling my eyes at her when she winks at me, I blow her one last kiss before ending the call and getting up from the table just as my front door flies open so hard it hits the opposite wall.

  “I’m engaged, bitch!”

  My younger sister by four years stands in the doorway, her long blonde hair hanging loose around her shoulders, her blue eyes shining bright with happiness, the most beautiful bronze tan on her skin from ten days in Hawaii, and a giant rock on her finger that sparkles when the sun shining through my open front door hits it. Wearing a pair of dark skinny jeans, nude open-toed heels, and a floral turquoise boho top with spaghetti straps, she looks stunning and positively glowing with love and happiness.

  My hair used to be the same shade of golden-blonde with caramel highlights until a few months ago when I took Owen over to the mainland so he could have dinner with Kevin and he told me I looked old. I borrowed some of Emily’s act first, think later mojo, took a ferry over to a salon on the mainland a few days later, and came back with a shocking shade of dark chestnut. Even with different hair colors, Birdie and I could still pass for twins most days, standing at the same height of five foot five inches, with the same slender build and the same pale-blue eyes.

  My eyes have never shone with happiness like hers, and my body has never vibrated with excitement like hers though.

  Shoving all my jealousy and sadness aside, my sister and I both scream at the top of our lungs before running across my open-floorplan cottage and meeting in the middle of my living room in a screaming, crying, jumping up and down hug.

  “You’re engaged!” I shout, squeezing my arms around her waist tighter as we keep bouncing around in a hug circle.

  “I’m engaged!” Birdie cries back when we stop jumping and pull apart enough to swipe at our tears, and I can grab her left hand, yanking it closer to my face.

  “Holy shit, it’s huge,” I whisper in awe, twisting and turning her hand to get a better look at the four-carat, princess-cut diamond framed by round diamonds that branch out into three rows of additional sparkly diamonds to make up the white gold band around her finger.

  “That’s what she said,” Birdie replies with a laugh through her remaining happy tears, just like I knew she would. “Seriously. That’s what I said over, and over, and over in Hawaii. I honestly don’t even know how I can walk right now. It’s like every time Palmer looked down and saw his ring on my finger, his cock grew three sizes that day. And then th
e true meaning of sex came through, and Palmer found the strength of ten cocks, plus two!”

  All I can do is shake my head at my sister’s distortion of a quote from The Grinch, feeling a little bit of my own green monster trying to rear its ugly head after so many months of having to hear all about how great my future brother-in-law is in bed.

  Gross. And also, uuugh I miss sex… even if it was shitty sex. At least it was sex.

  “All right, enough about me,” Birdie suddenly says, pulling her hand out of mine, grabbing onto my arm, and tugging me over to my couch. She pushes me down onto the cushions then perches her butt on the edge of my coffee table, facing me with our knees touching. “Let’s talk about you and all the exciting things that happened while I was gone.”

  Her smile is even bigger than when she burst through my door, and she’s bouncing up and down on top of my coffee table while she stares at me.

  “Um, don’t you want to tell me all about how Palmer proposed?” I ask in confusion.

  Birdie waves her hand at me before dropping it down to rest on my knee. “It was on TV. You already saw all about how Palmer proposed. Tell me everything that happened while I was in Hawaii. Don’t leave out one detail.”

  Now, both of her hands are squeezing my knees, and I’m starting to wonder if she got too much sun in Hawaii and it melted a little of her brain.

  “Don’t you have a binder or something for me? I know you bought at least ten bridal magazines at the airport and dog-eared all the pages I need to look at,” I say, looking around her to see if maybe she dropped the magazines on the floor when we hugged.

  “There’s plenty of time for wedding planning. Tell me about you. I thought for sure it would have at least forced you to do something else with your hair,” Birdie mutters, looking at all the stray pieces of dark hair that have come loose from my more than messy bun at this point. “Or maybe put on something other than one of your son’s old baseball T-shirts.”

  I look down at the blue cotton Warhawk’s shirt that served as Owen’s uniform last travel season and shrug.

  “I don’t have a daughter I can share clothes with. I have a teenage son the same size as me, and I’m going to take full advantage of that. His shirts are comfortable,” I remind her. “And I don’t know what it you’re talking about, but nothing happened while you were gone. Nothing exciting ever happens on Summersweet Island, except for that time Palmer came back after not speaking to you for two years, and you almost lodged a driver in his skull.”

  “A 9-iron.”

  “What?”

  “I almost lodged a 9-iron in his skull,” Birdie corrects me. “A driver head is too thick and round and would never make it through all that tissue and bone.”

  Once again, I just stare at my sister and shake my head.

  “So, nothing at all happened while I was gone?” Birdie asks again, the happy, newly engaged sparkle in her eye starting to dim a little.

  Seriously, what the hell is happening right now? Why is my sister currently not on the 100th retelling of her proposal?

  “Uh, I worked, dealt with a couple of annoying tourists who wanted to complain about everything, had dinner with mom a few times…” I trail off, trying to think of what I did in the last ten days since Birdie left. Something… anything that will fulfill whatever this obsession she currently has and get her to move on. “Let’s see. Me and a couple of other parents on Owen’s team have been filling in as coaches until they find a replacement, so that’s been taking up a lot of my time. Chad and Nadine asked me to take Tyler to practice for them a few times because they wanted to have some date nights, and Katrina doesn’t have time to order the rally towels for the spaghetti dinner fundraiser, since she and Adam are going to that couple’s spa, so she asked me to handle it. Markell finally hit a bunt properly after I worked with him at practice the other night, so that was pretty cool. Ummm, oh! Melanie told me The Barge is going to start serving their pumpkin pancakes soon, so that’s exciting.”

  I smile and nod at Birdie, and she just stares at me, blinking and opening and closing her mouth a few times before she finally finds the words she wants.

  She definitely got too much sun.

  “You have got to stop saying yes to everyone who asks you for a favor,” Birdie complains with a shake of her head. “So you’re telling me that nothing of importance happened from the night of Owen’s game a few weeks ago, the one you couldn’t make it to because Lorraine Nardini called off because she had the flu and you had to take her shift, until right this minute when I walked in the door? Absolutely nothing?”

  “If you’re referring to sperm donor’s visit, it hasn’t happened yet. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t have called you in Hawaii if he showed up here?” I scoff. “Also, I wouldn’t put that in the exciting pile. That goes in the dear God in heaven, what have I done to deserve this bullshit pile.”

  “Obviously, I wasn’t talking about Killjoy Kevin. We’ll definitely be discussing that in detail at Sip and Bitch tonight. So you’ve got nothing, huh? Weird….” Birdie trails off.

  Leaning forward, I press my palm against my sister’s cheek and then against her forehead.

  “Seriously, sweetie. Are you okay? I’m going to have some words with your fiancé if he didn’t make sure you reapplied sunscreen all day. Did you forget to hydrate? I told you that Hawaiian sun is a lot stronger than—”

  She swats my hand away and huffs in annoyance, and I don’t think it’s because I’m mothering her like usual.

  Okay, maybe I know what’s going on here.

  “You missed absolutely nothing, Birdie,” I reassure her, leaning forward and rubbing the side of her arm. “I’ve told you a hundred times to travel with Palmer as much as you want. I love that for you. I swear to God. I know you think every time you leave you’re going to miss out on something here, but you truly aren’t. Like, ever.”

  My sister never really left Summersweet Island until Palmer came back to town. Just like myself, this small island is our home, we love it here, and we never want to live anywhere else. Where I’ve gotten to do a lot of traveling over the years due to Owen’s baseball, Birdie never really had the opportunity or cared to go anywhere. Now that she’s getting to travel more, she feels like she’s going to miss out on things here. She and Palmer travel maybe once a month, and it’s usually only for three days at the most. I’ve told her over and over she’s being ridiculous, but clearly it hasn’t sunk in to her beautiful, stubborn head yet.

  “I have finally come to terms with the fact that no one misses me when I leave,” she teases, knowing Tess and I both miss the hell out of her when she’s not here, and Summersweet Island Golf Course—or SIG, as the locals call it—practically falls apart without her. “I’m not talking about my stupid worries. I’m talking about a visit from—”

  Birdie’s cell phone rings from the back pocket of her skinny jeans, cutting off what she was going to say as she leans to the side and pulls it out. We both share a laugh as Buckcherry’s “Crazy Bitch” plays from her phone. She assigned that ringtone to Palmer because of a video that went viral of him having a very public meltdown on the golf course during a tournament that someone hilariously set to that song. Thankfully, Palmer has never been in the same room with Birdie when he’s called her phone, so he has no idea that’s his ringtone.

  The song cuts off as Birdie answers the call, the smile on her face turning into a frown of annoyance.

  “What do you mean Murphy made you do it? He’s in his seventies and you can outrun him.”

  I laugh as Birdie gets up from the coffee table with the phone pressed to her ear, miming the act of drinking to me as she rolls her eyes at whatever Palmer is saying to her on the other end. Murphy Swallow was our neighbor growing up, still lives in the cottage next to our mom, and he works at SIG with Birdie and Tess. He’s like a stand-in grandfather to us, if that grandfather was constantly sarcastic and threatened everyone around him because he hated people. For some reason, the miniscul
e soft side he keeps buried down deep has only ever been shown to my family. After all these years, we’re still not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

  “You know damn well Murphy wouldn’t really slit your throat if you didn’t do shots of whiskey with him to celebrate our engagement.” Birdie sighs, mouthing to me that she’ll stop by the Dip and Twist later for Sip and Bitch as she walks toward the door and puts her attention back on her fiancé who just drunk dialed her. “Yes, I’m coming to Dockside Eddy’s now to rescue you. Lock yourself in the bathroom and wait for me until I get there. I’ll call Murphy and tell him to stop making you drink. Yes, I’ll also tell him to stop telling everyone there you’re a pussy. Yes, I promise.”

  I’m still laughing as Birdie shuts my front door behind her, and I push myself up from the couch. I have just enough time for a shower before I need to run snacks and drinks up to Owen’s practice after school—because Bethany asked me to switch with her, since she and Derek decided to go on a last-minute vacation to Florida—before I head to work.

  Walking down the hall, into my bedroom, and right over to my closet, I stare at the stacks and stacks of folded T-shirts and sigh, blindly grabbing one from a shelf along with a pair of ratty yet comfortable jean shorts.

  Definitely going to dress to impress all those hot, single guys who will be coming for me tonight. Ha-ha, so funny. I’m definitely buying Birdie sunblock the next time I’m at the store.

  CHAPTER 3

  Shepherd

  “That’s a swing and a miss right there.”

  “Hey, Shep! I thought that was you. Good to see you again, man.”

  I happily smile and shake hands with Kent Freeman, a guy who was two years younger than me in high school and who now teaches social studies at our alma mater. I chat with him on the sidewalk in front of Starboard Sweets for a few minutes before continuing on down Summersweet Lane.