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“You’ve gotta stop staying away so long, Campbell,” Birdie whispers quietly, saying the words she always whispered in my ear when I got back to Summersweet and got my Birdie-launch hug, those words almost making me want to weep like a fucking baby when I hear them come out of her mouth.
All of a sudden, Birdie loosens her legs and arms from around me, and I have no choice but to do the same as she slowly and torturously slides down the front of my body, one of my arms still tight around her and the other still clutching her hair back at the nape of her neck until her feet are back in the sand. Her hands are resting on my chest as she looks up at me, our bodies are still pressed tightly together from the front of our thighs to our stomachs, and if I don’t move the hell away in about two seconds, Birdie is going to find out exactly how well I can find the hole.
A stray lock of her hair comes out of my grip and flutters across her face, and she takes a step back from me, my arms falling limply down by my sides while she reaches one hand up to hold her own hair back from her face before turning and quickly walking away.
If I didn’t still feel the weight of her body in my arms and pressed against me and the smell of her skin wasn’t still clinging to me, I’d almost think I imagined what just happened it happened so fast.
My heart starts slowing down the farther Birdie gets from me, and I watch her quickly scoop up her discarded flip-flips on her way back by them without stopping as I get ready to start slowly walking up toward the cottage yards to follow her.
“Almost thought you were gonna go another fifteen years acting like a sissy with that girl.”
I jump a little when I hear Murphy’s voice, not at all surprised he snuck up on me when I was busy staring at Birdie’s ass, and he’s now standing right next to me in the sand, watching Birdie get smaller and smaller down the beach. He smacks something against my chest, and I look down and realize it’s my hat that fell off when Birdie flew into my arms.
“Where the hell did you come from?” I ask, taking the hat from him, shaking the sand off, and then putting it on my head.
“I stopped in to get a late dinner, and Ed and I got busy talking at the bar while he was shutting down. Didn’t realize how late it, was since you know how he is, and he was waiting around to make sure Birdie got home okay before he closed,” Murphy replies, still looking off down the beach at her retreating form.
Ed Walton, or Eddy, the owner of Dockside Eddy’s, started going up to the Dip and Twist to get himself a milkshake every single night after Birdie and Wren’s dad flew the coop, because he didn’t like a single woman closing up a business alone at night when she had two little girls to go home to and there were so many strange tourists lurking around. Ed would sit there out in the parking lot taking all night to drink his butterscotch milkshake until Laura finished up, turned off the lights, and flipped over the Closed sign.
Under normal circumstances, I’d say it was a crush, but Ed has been happily married to his high-school sweetheart for forty years, and Karen would smother him in his sleep if he missed a nightly milkshake run and something happened to Laura Bennett. That’s just the way Summersweet Island is. Everyone looks out for each other. At this point, I think Ed goes up to the Dip and Twist every night more for his own amusement than for anyone’s security. He learned years ago that’s where Sip and Bitch takes place, and more often than not, he’ll see something much more entertaining and hilarious up there than he would watching TV at home or up at his bar.
“So, you didn’t like Bullshit Brad either, huh?” Murphy asks.
“Nope. Thought he was a dumbfuck the one and only time I met him, and he just continued to get dumbfuckier.”
I roll my eyes at my glowing use of the English language, but thankfully Murphy takes pity on me and doesn’t call me an idiot.
We both start slowly walking up the sand toward the cottages.
“He was a waste of her time. That yahoo only came to the island twice in two years, always making her go to him on the mainland, because he claimed it was boring here. He asked Laura why she didn’t try to find different work so she could afford to live in a nicer place and even asked her the same thing about Birdie when Birdie was out of the room one time. Laura never told her that. Didn’t want Birdie to know what a complete schmuck she was dating.” Murphy chuckles as we walk, shoving his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
