“Will you shut up? You aren’t an idiot, because you didn’t miss any signs or whatever the hell you’ve been going on about for the last however many hours,” I mutter, bringing the straw of my own slush up to my mouth as my arms dangle down from the edge of the top of the purple picnic table, where I’m currently sprawled on my stomach. “Whatever happened back at SIG doesn’t mean Putz has liked me all these years, that’s ridiculous, oh my God, piss off!”
My voice gets so high-pitched there at the end I think I feel my ears start bleeding, and I take another big gulp of my half-melted blue raspberry slush, hoping it will make my heart stop trying to beat its way out of my chest. I’m back to calling him Putz now, because it puts up another layer of protection between that man and my heart, just like calling him Campbell to his face did from the day I met him.
“Can you speak up? I don’t have my hearing aids in.”
“For shit’s sake, Ed, shut up and drink your butterscotch milkshake and mind your business!” Tess shouts, pointing her white Styrofoam cup with a plastic lid at the older man sitting at the red picnic table a few rows down from us.
Ed decided right around the time Wren started singing Lil John’s contribution to the song “Shots” by LMFAO at the top of her lungs that he didn’t want to take all night drinking his milkshake in his golf cart in the parking lot. He’d much rather have a front-row seat to whatever crazy was happening under the awning on the other side of the Dip and Twist.
That crazy being how we forgot all about our rule to never mix hard liquor with slushes on Sip and Bitch night, because these are trying times, son!
“These are trying times, son!” I shout, my inside thoughts becoming outside thoughts as I watch the cup of blue ice and vodka in my hand swing back and forth down below me.
After Palmer walked away from me in the bar and left me to pick up my own brain splattered all over the room when it exploded, we all stood in stunned silence and waited out the storm. When the sun came back out, Murphy left to check on any damage there might be to the course with fallen branches and leaves, while Tess, Wren, and myself piled into Wren’s golf cart and hightailed it into town, making a quick stop at the liquor store along the way. The sun has set, the bottle of vodka is damn near gone, and there’s nothing left of the storm but a few drops of lingering water that fall from the roof every so often into the puddles on the sidewalk below.
And the damage and debris left behind inside me after what Palmer said before he walked out of SIG.
“Yeah, well, it turns out I wasn’t fucking okay with it.”
Remembering the feel of his warm breath caressing my ear, his strong jaw pressed against my cheek, and the smell of hot, wet man surrounding me makes my skin break out in goose bumps all over again, just like it did the first time. And it confuses the hell out of me all over again, just like it did the first time, wondering why he got all up in my personal space like that, and ran his nose against my jaw like that, and said what he said like that. All this vodka sloshing around in my brain and the stupid crap coming out of Tess and Wren’s mouths isn’t helping me make sense of anything either.
“You aren’t a bad friend, I’m not a bad sister, and it’s not our fault we didn’t see what was right in front of us,” Wren says from… somewhere.
Rolling over on top of the picnic table and sitting up, hugging my slush to my chest and willing my head to stop spinning, I look around and find Wren lying on her back on the cement in the middle of all the picnic tables, staring up at the awning above us.
“Good God, woman, you need to get out of the house more,” I mutter, shaking my head and taking a loud, slurping sip of my slush. “Get up off the dirty ground, you dirty-ass.”
Wren rolls over onto her stomach with a giggle and pushes herself up, dusting off the back of her shorts as her messy bun flops to the side of her head even messier than before, with brunette strands falling down into her face. She then stumbles over to our table, aggressively shoving Tess aside to make room for her on the bench.
Even through all the turmoil and vodka wreaking havoc on me right now, I can’t help but smile, laugh, and at least feel good about seeing my older sister have a little fun. She’s always been the mother of our small group, even before she became a mother herself, but at least she knew how to unwind every so often. Since her loser of an ex continues to suck the soul and fun right out of her every time he shows up here, and her ride-or-die best friend moved away years ago, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard my sister giggle, and I like it. Even if she’s giggling because of all the vodka she’s inhaled over my misery.