“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.