by Tara Sivec
I knew exactly what she did wrong before she even connected with the ball, but it didn’t matter to me, because watching Birdie drive a ball is always a thing of beauty and should never be interrupted, even if she hits it like shit and it goes nowhere. Going by the muttered curses coming out of her and the divots she’s leaving in the grass when she smacks her club into the ground repeatedly a few times, Birdie knows what she did wrong too, and suddenly I forget about how unfunny my life is and my cheeks hurt from smiling so hard.
“Goddamn piece of shit asshole bullshit! My shoulders were perfect… fucking golf.”
Birdie is one of the many people I know who loves golf as much as she hates it. But she’s the only one who can keep me at half-mast and make me want to throw my head back and laugh while she has a tantrum because the ball didn’t do what it was supposed to do, and she knows exactly why it didn’t.
“You got under the ball, because you dipped your right shoulder.”
“I know I dipped my damn shoulder. I don’t need you to tell me—”
She’s so busy being annoyed that someone gave her a golf tip that it’s not until she fully turns around to face me that she realizes who just gave her that golf tip.
“Hey, Birdie,” I whisper, the only way I can say her name out loud without tripping over it or choking on my emotions like a loser.
Her pale-blue eyes widen, and her gorgeous pink lips part with a surprised gasp, and once again I feel like I’m going up the hill of a roller coaster. In the past, whenever I’d get to the island, I always had to brace myself as soon as Birdie got one good look at me. She’d come running from whatever distance it was and launch herself into my arms with her arms and legs wrapped around me like an octopus, telling me I had to stop staying away so long, even if it had only been a week. It’s been two and a half years since I’ve stood this close to her, and she’s definitely not running toward me. She’s slowly taking a few steps back, bringing her driver up and out between us as she goes, pointing the toe of the club at my chest. The shock on her face is replaced with a serious level of pissed off I haven’t seen from her since her sister Wren tattled on us the night we convinced a caddie to give us a case of beer when we were seventeen. Wren led their mom right to us, where we were chugging the beer behind the saltwater taffy store after hours.
Oh shit.
No need to brace myself for a Birdie-launch hug. My original instinct of shielding my face was definitely spot-on. So much for having a tiny sliver of hope for exactly one-point-two seconds when she turned around that enough time had gone by for her to have forgiven me and be happy to see me.
“Well hey there, Putz, you absolute piece of dog shit. Long time no see.”
CHAPTER 4
Birdie
“Asking fore a friend.”
“Holy shit, Putz is on the island!” Tess shouts at the top of her lungs as soon as I come around the front corner of the Dip and Twist to the covered picnic table area.
My feet stutter to a stop a few tables away, and I huff.
“How in the hell do you already know that?” I mutter, forcing my feet to move again, even though just thinking about Putz makes me want to curl up into a ball on the ground and never move again. “I just found out fifteen minutes ago and came right here.”
I finish my complaint as soon as I get to our purple picnic table located in the far back corner next to the small building. Tess and my older-by-four-years sister Wren slide apart so I can squeeze in between them with our butts resting on the tabletop and our feet perched on the bench beneath us. It’s almost ten at night and pitch-dark outside all around the ice cream stand downtown, but thankfully the bright florescent lights with a yellowish tint under the table area can be seen from space.
“Adam was out on the driving range in the range picker collecting the last of the golf balls before closing and saw you two talking,” Tess tells me as Wren gently bumps her shoulder against mine in a silently greeting. “Adam called Cal at Summersweet Grocery, who called Steve at the pharmacy, who saw Wren when she stopped in to pick up Owen’s allergy medication right before they closed, who immediately called me.”
When she finishes, I slowly turn my head to glare at my sister.
“Et tu, Brute?”
Wren grimaces and shrugs guiltily, shoving a wayward lock of dark-brown hair back up into her messy bun. No matter how hard I try, I can never be mad at her. Wren pretty much only wears her hair in a messy bun, because it’s quick and easy. As a single mom to a fourteen-year-old boy who also helps run the Dip and Twist with our mom full time so she can eventually take it over, I get why she needs quick and easy, but I miss the Wren who could let her hair down every once in a while, literally, and have fun.
Wren suffered the same fate as our mom by falling for a tourist’s charm at the age of twenty who made a bunch of promises he couldn’t keep. Where our sperm donor left and never came back when I was two days old and Wren was four, my sister’s momentary lapse in judgement keeps popping back up into her life every so often like a bad case of herpes. Wren’s hair is long and naturally wavy like mine, and up until six months ago, it was the same shade of golden-blonde with caramel highlights as mine and our mom’s. She colored it a shocking shade of chestnut six months ago, the last time sperm donor decided to grace the island with his presence and had the audacity to tell her she was looking old.
Clearly, we hate sperm donor and hope he chokes on a dick, although the new hair color has livened Wren up just a tiny bit more recently.
“Sip and Bitch!” Tess shouts as Wren starts to reach behind us to the small, hard plastic red-and-white cooler she was in charge of bringing tonight.
“It’s too early. There are still customers,” I remind her, even though I take the cold bottle of beer Wren thrusts into my hands and twist off the top as she reaches around me to hand one to Tess.
“There is one customer,” Tess says, leaning forward to clink her bottle against mine and then Wren’s. “Ed is sitting in his golf cart in the parking lot on the other side of the building, taking ninety-seven hours to finish his butterscotch milkshake just like he does every single night. “Sip. And. Bitch.”
With a sigh, I bring my bottle of beer up to my mouth, not realizing how much I desperately needed a drink until the cold barley and hops hit my tongue. I chug half the bottle before I bring it back down to find Tess and Wren staring at me expectantly.
“I don’t know what to tell you. Nothing happened. He showed up when I was doing my I hate people therapy at the end of my shift. I was too shocked that he was standing right in front of me—after not seeing him in almost three years and after not speaking to him for two years—to do much of anything. I bolted out of there and came right here.”
I shrug and look down at the table, tracing the tip of my finger through a carving in the purple-painted wood. My great-grandfather built these picnic tables, and each one is painted a different bright color. Everyone on Summersweet Island knows the purple table is our table, and has always been our table, and not just because this is where Tess, Wren, and myself have held every single Sip and Bitch night since we were twelve and discovered how frustrating boys are. Back then, we called it Sip and Fuss, because we were twelve and classy young ladies. It wasn’t until we were older that we switched from drinking slushes from the ice cream stand and complaining about boys, to adding vodka to the slushes and complaining about men.
And everyone on the island also knows this is our table and no one is allowed to sit here after 9:00 p.m. just in case a Sip and Bitch urge grabs ahold of us, because we carved our names into the top of the purple table in the far back corner. And not just our initials or our first names. Our full first, middle, and last names. And they take up the entire top of the wooden picnic table, because we’re assholes, and I have no idea why my mom never grounded us for that.
“I call bullshit.” Tess shakes her head. “There is no way you saw Putz Campbell after what he did to you and you didn’t unleash a holy hellfire
on him that lasted a minimum of ninety minutes.”
I wanted to. God, did I want to. I wanted to chuck my driver to the side, grab my 9-iron out of my bag, and imbed it into his skull when I turned around and realized the unwanted golf advice came from him.
You know, after I was stunned stupid for a few seconds, couldn’t believe he was actually standing in front of me, close enough to touch after all this time, and I wanted to cry at how good he looked. Even wearing that ridiculous golf shirt. I wanted to close the distance between us and launch myself into his arms just like every single time he’d been standing in front of me before, but I couldn’t. And that killed me. And then it pissed me off. Instead of jumping into his arms so I could see if he still smelled like that rich boy cologne he always wore that did some serious things to me, I backed up and wielded my club at him like a weapon.
“I did introduce him to his new nickname and called him an absolute piece of dog shit. But it didn’t make me feel as good as I thought it would,” I admit, taking sip of beer, since I just did some bitching.
“Are you high?” Tess scoffs. “It should have made you feel amazing to tell him off. He was one of your best friends since you were fifteen, and then he blocked you on social media and got a new cell phone number, but not before accusing you of being a stalker.”
And just like that, the rest of the beer in my bottle is gone and nice and delicious in my tummy. I’m digging a new one out of the cooler and halfway through that one when Wren speaks quietly.
“I still think there’s a logical explanation.”
Tess and I both scoff at the same time. Wren has always had a soft spot for Palmer, although she’s learned over the years to keep that soft spot to herself.
I only ever knew long-distance when it came to my friendship with Palmer. When we met, he went to school on the mainland, and depending on his school schedule, his golf team schedule, and traveling for whatever tournaments his dad signed him up for, he could be here on the island once a week, three times a week, or not for a couple months. It was always a crap shoot on when I got to see him during the school year, but summer… the summer months were always my favorite.
His dad made him focus on nothing but golf training then, and he would rent a cottage for the summer so they could be here full time. And his dad was rarely here, always going out of town to do something to boost Palmer’s career, and then I got to corrupt him in the best possible ways and get him to loosen up. After he graduated, Palmer always stayed here on the island in between tournaments, but those times were few and far between, and they would only last for a few weeks at most, but any time he was on this island were the best times of my life.
But he ruined that. I was always his biggest fan, even when he went pro and nine months could go by between his visits to the island. We still had the magic of technology and talked or texted or video-chatted almost every day. I always shared every accomplishment he made everywhere I could on social media. I was a proud best friend who sometimes—all the time—had inappropriate thoughts and dreams and fantasies about that best friend and what would happen if he ever stayed in one place long enough. And then he called me a stalker after too many shares of a freaking badass long-distance putt he made at The Bedford Classic and never spoke to me again.
Until today.
“Hey, Birdie.”
I never knew two quietly whispered words could hurt so much, piss me off so much, and make me so wet all at the same time.
“What’s he here for?” Wren asks, taking a small sip of her beer.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s he want?”
I look at Tess and shrug. “I don’t know.”
“How long is he here for?” Wren questions.
“I don’t know!” Both of their mouths snap closed when I shout. “Once I got over the shock and called him a piece of dog shit, I didn’t give him time to say anything else. I booked it to my golf cart and raced over here.”
“Please tell me you shoulder-checked him,” Tess begs.
“Oh, I slammed into his shoulder so hard his future grandchildren will feel it.”
Tess and Wren both clink their bottles with mine, and we’re quiet for a few minutes while we drink our beers and listen to the sounds of my mom closing everything up inside the stand.
Just like your standard, old-school ice cream stand, the Dip and Twist building is around eight hundred square feet with a brick façade on the bottom half, and from the waist-high counter and up, it’s nothing but windows on all four sides. Those windows are covered in advertisements for all the cold treats Dip and Twist has to offer. There are only two windows not covered in colorful ice cream posters, and those are the ordering window in front of the building and the pick-up window here on the picnic table side.
I can see through the pick-up window that my mom is busy doing the last of her closing list, and I know she’ll be coming out here any minute. As much as I love my mom, and even though we’re close since she’s only fifty-four and very young at heart, she’s always been closer to my sister. Wren has always spilled everything in her life to our mom, where I like to have some privacy and secrets. And my mom has an even bigger soft spot for Palmer than Wren, and I definitely don’t need that kind of negativity in my life right now. My life is enough of a mess, what with Putz, my promotion, fucking Hawaii…
Oh shit! Hawaii!
“Um, so I have to tell you both something, and your first instinct will probably be to punch me in the throat and then vow to hate me forever, but I swear I was—”
“Oh, we know you didn’t go to Hawaii and you’ve been Netflixing and stuffing your face for the last two weeks,” Tess cuts me off, looking me up and down. “Clearly. You’re so pale. It’s depressing, and it hurts my eyes.”
As I smack her on the arm with my hand that isn’t holding my beer, she laughs and shakes her head at me.
“Murphy called me when he got off work earlier,” Wren informs me. “He said he didn’t trust you to come clean, and your homemade mac and cheese isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway, whatever that means.”
“That old fart,” I mutter, smacking my empty beer bottle down on top of the table. “I’m so sorry. I totally deserve it if you guys are pissed at me. I know I’m the worst friend and sister in the entire world to be right here on this island the entire time instead of one 5,000 miles away and not even tell you guys. I just needed time for it to sink in that I might never get to go to Hawaii when it was right there within my grasp.”
“Eh, life’s too short to be mad at you,” Tess tells me. “Besides, Murphy sent us pictures of what you looked like during your self-isolation pity party. You’ve suffered enough, my friend. But yeah, what in the hell happened?”
“My dream vacation was ruined; that’s what happened,” I complain. “The one I’ve been thinking about since I was a little girl, the only place I have ever wanted to leave Summersweet Island for, and my dream was finally going to come true, and then it turned into bullshit.”
“Oh no, did your flights get cancelled?” Wren asks with concern.
“Was there bad weather? Shit, I didn’t even look,” Tess mutters worriedly.
“Tell me Bradley didn’t book everything through a third party or something. People get scammed with those things all the time and never get their money back.” Wren shakes her head sympathetically.
“Bradley’s asshole is too tight to even allow one penny to be taken from him.” Tess snorts.
Before I let this go any further and let them think it’s just the vacation that got cancelled, I let out the deepest sigh ever.
“I didn’t go to Hawaii. I never said Bradley didn’t go.”
I give them a few seconds for their brains to catch up before I continue.
“I got a phone call from Bradley two hours before I was supposed to meet him at the airport to tell me he was taking someone else. A new intern at his hedge fund who makes the perfect espresso for him every afternoon, isn’t that nice? S
he’s talented with her mouth and her hands.”
Wren wordlessly gets another bottle of beer out of the cooler, twists the top off, and hands it to me. The silence lasts long enough to start being uncomfortable.
“No one has anything to say about the demise of my two-year relationship or the fact that my boyfriend was cheating on me and took his whore on my dream vacation?”
Tess raises one of her hands high above her head like she’s a reporter at a press conference, waiting to be called on.
“Yes, Ms. Bennett, question from one of your oldest and most sacred friends who you cannot tell a lie to. I have to say I find it quite curious you led with the devastation of losing your vacation and not with the devastation of losing your relationship.” She smirks, lowering her hand into her lap.
“That’s not a question,” I mutter in annoyance.
“Still quite fun to say out loud when I’ve been thinking it for a few minutes.” She smiles. “And good riddance. Bradley was a twat.”
“I don’t hate many people, but I hated him.” Wren nods.
“Seriously, you guys? Can I at least get some time to mourn him?”
“You’ve had two weeks, and you didn’t even need those.” Tess rolls her eyes. “You did not love Bradley. You were never going to love Bradley. You saw him maybe twelve times in the last two years and only had sex with him a handful of lackluster times. You spent the last two weeks being sad, because you didn’t get to go to Hawaii, and you told us Bradley cheated on you like it was an afterthought. You don’t care about Bradley. No offense, but we don’t care about Bradley, and we’d much rather talk about Putz and if he can still make you tingle in places that only tingle when you fire up your vibrator.”
Tess wags her eyebrows, Wren giggles, and I feel my cheeks get hot and know they’re turning pink when just thinking about the guy, now that I’ve seen him in the flesh again, makes me squirm on top of the table and rub my thighs together.
