by Tara Sivec
I can’t believe it either. But I am here, and I’m not going anywhere. It’s time for me to finally do something about it, and hell no, no one will stop me!
Right when I open my mouth to rain sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns down upon Wren, her mouth quickly snaps shut, her wide, shocked eyes narrow on me with fire in them, and her arms that hung limply down at her sides after she dropped the ice cream cross aggressively in front of her as one of her white Converse starts tapping against the tile.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Wren finally addresses me, definitely not using that sweet, delicate voice. It’s sarcastic and filled with an edge that quite frankly scares me a little, considering there are sharp objects within reach.
I take a subconscious step backward even though five seconds ago I could barely stop myself from launching at her and pinning her up against the freezer.
“This is just great. Perfect! Shepherd Oliver, another pile of human garbage I have to deal with.” Wren sighs in annoyance.
Okay, so maybe one person is going to stop me.
Well, fuck.
CHAPTER 4
Wren
“We are having major league fun!”
“Measure me.”
My body jolts, and I look up from the empty wine glass in my hand and the bottle of wine with the cork still firmly in place sitting on the white marble top of my small breakfast bar counter that juts out from the main counter against the wall. The sound of my son’s voice makes me realize I didn’t even hear the front door slam shut when he got home just now. Glancing at the clock above my kitchen sink, I realize I’ve been standing here just like this, staring at nothing and not pouring the drink I so desperately needed since I got home from work, for the last fifteen minutes.
Who am I kidding? I needed a drink a half hour ago when I heard that voice while I was grabbing more vanilla to put in the front cooler and knew it wasn’t coming from the TV.
“Awww, I missed you too, and I had a great evening. Thanks for asking.” I smirk at my son, setting the wine glass down, since my brain has currently forgotten what I’m supposed to do with it. I need to act as normal as possible in front of my kid, even though I want to scream at the top of my lungs right now.
He’s here… on the island. Why in the hell is he here?
Owen, who is in no way ever phased by my sarcasm, cocks his head at me, a wavy brown lock of hair falling down into one eye, the same pale shade of blue as my own, when I embellish a little on that last part, since there was nothing great about the end of my night at all.
I can’t believe he’s really here.
“Yeah, yeah, I missed you, even though I just saw you at practice a few hours ago when you dropped off snacks.” Owen waves me away with his hand, the deep timbre of his voice still shocking to my ears. One day, I had a boy with the pitch of a toddler when he bid me goodnight, and I woke up the next morning to a man telling me we were out of milk and he couldn’t find any clean socks.
Like most nights I work, my sister, my mom, or Murphy will grab Owen after baseball practice and let him hang out at their house until I get off. He’s almost fifteen and can absolutely stay home alone whenever he wants, but my son prefers being spoiled rotten at someone else’s place. And at least when he’s with one of them, they can make sure he does his homework and eats something that isn’t from the Hot Pocket or Ramen family. Sometimes they’ll drop him off when I get home, and other times Owen will just walk, depending whose cottage he’s at and who lives closer. Aunt Birdie’s cottage is usually a walking night, since it’s the next street over and he can cut through yards.
“You’ve been at your aunt’s house since then, and I’ve been at work. I’m still allowed to miss you,” I remind him as he grabs a banana from the basket on the counter between us and starts peeling it, while I lean over and swipe that piece of hair out of his eyes.
As a brand-new freshman in high school, sometimes he lets me, and sometimes he swats my hand away and rolls his eyes at me. Thankfully, tonight is a “letting me” night, and I try to let the soft, silky feel of his hair through my fingers as I get it out of the way of his eyes calm my nerves and get rid of the anxious butterflies in my stomach.
Seriously… why is he here on the island?
“Which is exactly why you need to measure me,” Owen says, pulling me back out of my wandering thoughts. He takes a big bite out of the banana, his next words muffled as he speaks while he chews, all the manners I taught him when he was a toddler instantly disappearing as soon as puberty hit. “You know every time I go to Aunt Birdie’s house, I come back taller. Measure me.”
He points the half-eaten banana at me like a gun, trying to give me a stern look, and I chuckle at him when the banana peel flops around his knuckles.
With my same heart-shaped face, same upturned button nose that looks a little pointy in profile, same dimple only in our right cheek, same eyes, same full lips with a deep cupid’s bow, thick, wavy hair, and small, short stature, I’m thankful every day that looking at my son is like looking in the mirror and I don’t have to stare at Kevin all day every day for the rest of my life. It’s bad enough I’ll have to deal with him, sporadic as it might be. The only part of his father Owen got was his brown hair, the same color as dark chocolate, which Owen keeps a little longer and shaggier, claiming it looks “cooler” that way when he wears his baseball cap and the ends curl up under the edge of it.
He’s my mini-me and my twin, even more so now that I’m no longer blonde. He’s the calm to my storm, and the reason I wake up every morning and bust my ass. Just one look at him makes me realize I’ve done at least one thing right in my life.
But sadly, Owen Alexander Oliver got my height. Or lack thereof. The poor boy has been waiting years to finally hit five feet, and now that he made it there a few months ago, I am constantly forced to check on the status of his growth. He’s had enough of the nickname “Smalls” on his baseball teams, but I’m afraid that one might be there to stay, since he’s had it so long, even if by some miracle he’s taller than anyone in the Bennett family. Five foot five is our absolute limit. We don’t grow them any taller than that.
“Come on, Mom, measure me. I got taller; I can feel it.”
“You did not grow since the last time I measured you. Which was three days ago. You were only at Aunt Birdie’s for a few hours,” I remind him as he tosses me his empty banana peel over the counter. I easily catch it and drop it into the trashcan shoved into the open nook under the breakfast counter right in front of where I’m standing.
“You know every time I go to Aunt Birdie’s I grow.”
Every. Damn. Time. It’s become a joke between all of us at this point.
Humoring him, since I know he won’t stop badgering me and go to bed when it’s ten thirty on a school night, I grab the measuring tape out of the drawer to my right, and we both walk over to the archway opening that leads from the kitchen into the living room. Toeing his tennis shoes off and kicking them out of the way, he backs up against the wall of the archway and stands tall, right next to almost fifteen years of dates, ages, and lines drawn on the white-painted wood in various colors and mediums, marking Owen’s height through the years.
Bending down to stick the metal lip of the measuring tape under the back of his heel, I quickly stand back up, sliding the tape measure open against the wall next to him as I go. Locking it in place and pressing the case against the wall, I lean to the side and grab one of Owen’s school folders from the small coffee nook counter next to the archway. Pressing the folder down on top of his head next to the tape measure, I use his “super scientific” method of making sure I get an accurate measurement, staring at the line markings on the tape. Blinking a few times and then staring again, I look at my most recent measurement of exactly five feet written with a purple pen the other day, on top of all the other five-foot measurements the last few months. Then I look a few lines up on the tape measure where the folder is currently resting on top of Owen
’s head. With a few more blinks and a lean to the side so I can look down at my son’s feet and make sure he isn’t cheating by lifting up, I glance back at the folder I’m holding steady and shake my head.
“Son of a Baby Ruth… you have got to be kidding me,” I mutter, which makes Owen’s face light up while he lets out a whooping shout. “You are now five feet and a half inch. How did you grow a half an inch in three days? Is that even possible? What the hell does Aunt Birdie feed you?”
Owen laughs as I grab a pencil from a cup on the coffee counter and notate today’s measurement on the wall before unlocking the tape measure. It zips back up inside itself, and I hand Owen the folder to put away while I put the tape back in the drawer.
“They don’t feed me. They starve me while Uncle Palmer beats me with his golf clubs and Aunt Birdie hooks my brain up to electrodes and makes me watch fetish porn,” he replies easily, shoving his folder in his backpack resting on one of the bar stools and then hefting it up by one strap over his shoulder.
“Good God, Owen—”
“Did someone say fetish porn?” Birdie shouts when this time I do hear my front door slam shut. I glare at my sister as she breezes into my living room with another bottle of wine in her hand, still beautiful and glowing with happiness, while I smell like rotten milk and have chocolate sauce in my hair and a coating of stickiness over my body that will require at least a twenty-minute hot shower to remove after a shift at the Dip and Twist.
“Don’t ask the questions if you can’t handle the truth, Mom.” Owen shrugs, taking another banana from the basket on the counter, giving my sister a high-five as they pass each other in the living room, and then turning the corner to disappear into his room.
I’m not an idiot. I know I can’t shield my son from everything. He has a smart phone, he has access to the internet, and he has other teenage friends, some the same age and some older now that he’s in high school and playing on the freshman baseball team. He’s going to hear things, and he’s going to see things unless I want to keep him in his room in a bubble for the rest of his life. I’ve just always taught him to be responsible, respectful, to never give out personal information to anyone, if someone asks him for a picture of his feet it is a big deal and it is creepy as hell, dick pics live forever, and don’t be a bully online or anywhere. He knows he can talk to me about anything, and he does. Sometimes, he overshares. Okay, all the time, he overshares. I’d much rather he overshare than lock himself in his room and lock me out of his life. I’m his mother and his father, and I never want him to feel uncomfortable talking about anything with me. Even if I have to grin and pretend like I don’t want to vomit when the word “porn” comes out of my baby boy’s mouth.
“I never should have let you, Tess, and Emily have a hand in raising my son,” I tell Birdie when she gets to my kitchen island and sets her wine bottle down on the counter next to my fridge. “Why is he talking about fetish porn when he gets home from an evening at your house?”
“He actually taught us a thing or two over dinner tonight,” Birdie informs me as she pulls a magnetic corkscrew off the side of my fridge with a crab on it that says Dockside Eddy’s. “Did you know Climacophilia is when you get turned on by someone falling down the stairs? Palmer was laughing so hard I think he peed his pants a little. I tried to get Owen to push him down our back deck stairs to see if it sparked anything, but Palmer wasn’t up for it. He was drunk but not that drunk.”
While Birdie uncorks her bottle of wine and then pulls two more wine glasses down from the cabinet above her, I walk around the breakfast bar to take a seat at one of my wooden turquoise stools, grabbing my phone and pulling up Emily’s contact information then clicking on the FaceTime button.
“Sorry I’m late! You didn’t start Sip and Bitch without me, did you?” Tess asks, walking through my front door with her own bottle of wine while I wait forever for our crappy island Wi-Fi to connect the call to Emily.
I don’t even blink when I see Tess’s short, poker-straight bob with blunt bangs across her forehead is no longer a vibrant shade of fire-engine-red and is now bright purple. Tess changes her hair color as often as I buy a new Hawks jersey or T-shirt.
Oh… my… God, he saw me wearing one of his shirts! This night just can’t get any worse.
The call to Emily finally connects, and it rings and rings while Tess takes a seat next to me, and Birdie sets down a full-to-the-brim glass of red wine in front of each of us.
“I would have been here earlier, but Bodhi made me read him a bedtime story before I left,” Tess huffs in mock-annoyance as she carefully brings the wine glass up to her mouth so she doesn’t spill it and takes a sip.
There’s a small tilt to the corner of her mouth against the lip of her wine glass, letting us know it doesn’t annoy her in the least that Bodhi Armbruster, Palmer’s old caddie and the first serious relationship Tess has ever had, is obsessed with reading romance novels and has brought Tess over to what she calls “the dark side.” The two of them read together every night in bed. With his shaggy blonde surfer hair and bohemian lifestyle, living out of vans and on people’s couches most of his life and never cashing the checks Palmer paid him to be his caddie because money just didn’t mean anything to him, we were all surprised when Bodhi found his way into Tess Powell’s heart. She’s a hard-ass who organizes her life down to the second, would prefer chewing off her own arm than ask anyone for help, is diligent about saving money and having a plan, and would much rather light the male gender on fire than have anything to do with them. But no one was more shocked than Tess when she fell in love with the jobless, homeless, easy-going man when he lived on her couch after coming back to the island with Palmer.
It’s adorable, especially since Tess has been saying since our first Sip and Bitch when we were twelve and called it Sip and Fuss, because we were classy young ladies, that she would never settle down, have kids, or get married. The settling down has definitely happened. Any minute now, she’ll be eating her own words about the other two; I just know it.
“Can you explain now why you sent us an emergency text that Sip and Bitch needed to move to your place instead of at our purple picnic table at the Dip and Twist?” Tess asks.
I end the FaceTime call when Emily doesn’t answer, tossing my phone onto the counter with a sigh as I stare at my wine glass. The red liquid starts to spill over the top and drip down the side when Tess accidentally bumps her knee against the underside of the counter as she crosses her legs.
“The Dip and Twist has now been contaminated. We can never have Sip and Bitch there again.”
Bending forward after my dramatic statement, I wrap my mouth around the lip of the wine glass and start slurping as much wine in as I can until the level gets below my mouth and I can’t successfully do it hands-free anymore.
“Jesus, you want a trough for that? What the hell happened tonight?” Birdie asks when I don’t even take my mouth off the glass; I just grab the stem and bring it with me as I sit up, tip the glass back, and drink half of it before I speak again.
“Shepherd Oliver is here on Summersweet Island, and he came to the Dip and Twist to see me,” I blurt out quickly when I pull the glass down from my mouth, my heart starting to pound in my chest when I don’t even have to close my eyes to picture him standing there a few feet away from me.
Looking at that boy always made my heart flutter and tied my tongue in knots whenever I tried to speak to him. He was the gorgeous, popular, outgoing jock constantly surrounded by people, and I was the shy, quiet girl with only a small handful of really close friends, with no time for extracurricular activities, because someday, the Dip and Twist would be mine, and I spent all my free time learning about the family business.
After a year of feeling like I knew him better than anyone else in the world and just having to be satisfied with pictures of him on the internet, in magazines, or all the times I saw him playing on TV, it felt like a dream when I turned around and he was here. I forgot all the
tears I cried over him, because he was standing right in front of me. Close enough to touch. Close enough that I could slide my arms around his waist and see if he still smelled like the woodsy cologne he always wore with a faint hint of leather from living with a baseball glove on his hand. And close enough to see both of his dimples when he said something sarcastic to me, and to drink in the sight of his six-foot four-inch frame that he added a shit-ton of delicious muscles to in recent years. Instead of having to imagine how absolutely hot, innocent, and adorable he looks while reading his words on a screen.
He’s still hot, but he’s definitely not innocent and adorable. He’s a jerk and he’s cruel, and I’m not about to be fooled by his dimples again.
“I knew it!” Birdie shouts, pointing her figure at me accusatorially. “You liar! I specifically asked you if anything exciting happened the last few weeks, and you said no!”
“Uh, that’s probably because it hadn’t happened yet when I talked to you earlier today, and I can’t see into the future. He came to the Dip and Twist like, forty-five minutes ago.”
“Oh,” Tess mutters, her eyes widening in shock. “So he didn’t come and see you a few weeks ago when he was here?”
“What!” I screech, quickly lowering my voice when I remember my son is probably trying to sleep not that far away. “What do you mean he was here a few weeks ago? Why am I just now finding out this information?”
“He stopped by at the tail end of that game of Owen’s you couldn’t make it to because you had to work. He swore us to secrecy, which was actually kind of weird, since you guys haven’t seen each other or talked since you were like, twenty, but whatever,” Birdie tells me as she refills my glass and tops off Tess’s, a heated flush coming over my skin, knowing my sister is going to borrow one of Tess’s lighters and set me on fire when I tell her everything. “And then I got busy getting ready for Hawaii, you never said anything, and I kind of forgot about it until I got back. I don’t know why he left last time without talking to you, when he specifically mentioned wanting to tell you he was here himself, but yay for you! No wonder you’re drinking to celebrate, although you’re being kind of dramatic about it. Your favorite baseball player in the whole world came and said hi. You must be freaking out. Did you ask him what David Beckham smells like? I know they’re friends. Was it everything you thought it would be? Did you have him sign your shirt? Turn around; let me see.”
