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“I just don’t get why you haven’t admitted you’re in love with him. Now, and always. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Birdie, this is why the two of you spent fifteen years being miserable. Because you didn’t communicate and say how you felt.”
“Stop telling me something I already know and beat myself up about every damn day!” I argue, smacking another box of golf balls onto the shelf. “Every time he looks at me, and touches me, and kisses me, and makes sure I remember to eat, and makes me so fucking happy… I can’t breathe when I think about him leaving and maybe not coming back. Every damn minute I’m with him, I open my mouth to blurt it all out, and I always stop myself. Because I’ve been in love with him for fifteen years, and I know he cares about me and wants me and he talks loosely about a future with me, but is it fifteen-years’-worth of wanting and longing? Is it that deep and as mind-numbing as it is for me? Because I don’t know! Because like you said, he’s not saying anything either, and I’m back to where I was in the beginning all over again, where I don’t know where I stand with this man, and I fucking hate it. And I don’t understand why I’m so insecure when it comes to him! I’m better than this and I’m stronger than this. I’ve spent all these years making sure he fits in here on this island and in our world, but he never asks me to fit in with his. He never asks me to go with him, Tess, and I feel like a loser he’s ashamed to take out into the real world, because I’m just a nobody from Nowhere, Summersweet Island!
Tess’s arms are around me, and I don’t even realize I’m crying until I feel her squeeze me from behind.
“I’m sorry. I can’t suck it up right now.” I sniffle as the tears run down my cheeks, and she rests her chin on my shoulder and laughs softly, the smell of her bubblegum lotion making me feel safe and loved.
“Cry it out, babe. And I’m sorry for pushing you. You are not a loser nobody, and I will punch you in the goddamn neck if you ever say that again,” she warns me, making me laugh through my tears as she lowers her voice to almost a whisper. “I don’t know why he never asks you to go, sweetie. Maybe he just doesn’t think you want to, because this is your home, and you love it here, and talk all the time about how you never want to leave. And in the past, he never asked, because he had no fucking idea you were into him. And now? I don’t know. Maybe he just knows he’s only going to be gone for a few days and then he’s going to come right back home to you, because he’s just as in love with you as you are with him.”
My tears fall a little faster at Tess’s unusual show of sweetness.
“Maybe.” I shrug, not feeling that word at all.
“I get it. Believe me, I do. You’re scared to tell him how much he means to you, because you’re not sure if he’s there yet, and even though we claim to be strong, independent women, when it comes to the men we love, sometimes we’re not. We make dumb decisions, and we second-guess everything, and we forget just how badass we are, because love makes us stupid.” She sighs, squeezing her arms around me tighter. “You have fifteen years of insecurities thinking you weren’t enough for him to want and fall in love with to get out of your pretty little head, and that doesn’t happen overnight, no matter how good the dickin’ is.”
Just like always, Tess manages to make me laugh when I feel more miserable than I have in my entire life. I’ve gotten plenty of that “dickin’” over the last week, and good is far too inferior of a word to use for what Palmer can do with that thing. And with his mouth. And his fingers.
Oh God, if he doesn’t come back to me, I’ll let Tess burn this entire island to the ground.
“For shit’s sake suck it up already.”
Tess and I both turn our heads to the doorway as Murphy leans into the small room and thrusts a bag of Pepperidge Farm’s Strawberry Thumbprint cookies at me. I have just enough time to grab the bag with Tess’s arms still around me before he’s huffing and walking away.
“What do you want to do?” Tess asks after a few quiet minutes of me sniffling in her arms and shoveling cookies into my mouth.
“I don’t know.” I shrug, swiping at the tears and pulling away after she gives me one last tight squeeze to turn around and face her in the small storage closet. “I just know I don’t want to pour my heart out to him right now or put any more added pressure on him and mess with his head. He needs to get through the next few days without worrying about me freaking out back here because I’m stupid and scared.”
