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“Just tell us what the—”
“I didn’t quit being a Vipers cheerleader and decide it was time for me to come home. I got fired and had to come home!” I finally shout to get them to stop nagging me and to finally get it off my chest. “That job paid for shit, but it paid more than my waitressing and dog-walking jobs I also had to take in order to be able to afford to live there, sooo…. You know, just one of the many things I begged management to make better for the girls and then got fired over, because I guess fair treatment for female athletes is frowned upon.”
“Oh, Em…,” Wren whispers, immediately scooting closer and wrapping her arm around my shoulders.
“I’m trying to be happy. I am,” I tell them, looking down at my now-empty cup as I start picking at some of the Styrofoam around the lip of it. “It’s just… I didn’t make the decision to come back; it was made for me. And I’m so sorry I lied to you guys. I don’t know… I guess having the choice taken out of my hands just makes it harder to accept, because I wasn’t ready to be done with that part of my life yet. And I don’t want you to think I don’t adore being here with you guys, because I do. I want Summersweet to be my home; I just don’t want it to be my everything. I want to be able to leave and experience other places, then have a home to come back to, where I can let my hair down and be myself. And I hate that I’m hurting your feelings by admitting this, when you guys love everything about being here all the time, and I hate that it would break my parents’ hearts if they knew. My life is just a mess, and you guys all have your shit together and men who adore you, and I’m just sad, and alone, and so. Fucking. Bored.”
Everyone sits quietly, processing everything I just admitted, while I sniffle and swipe at my stupid tears as I slip down off the picnic table. No one says a word as I walk over to the pick-up window, grabbing three more boozy slushes that Laura, Wren and Birdie’s mom, just made for us and left on the counter while she’s closing up inside. I hold my breath and wait for them to start yelling at me as I hand out the slushes, avoiding Tess’s angry, snapping teeth when I give her another water.
“Is that it?” Wren finally asks, making me choke on the big gulp of tequila slush I just took.
Once I finish coughing and take another giant sip of my slush to ease the pain in my throat and the shock to my brain, I finally remember how to speak.
“Huh?” I ask oh-so eloquently.
“Well, aside from the firing part, which I’m assuming will require a plane ride to California to kick someone’s ass, we already know all of that about you, Emily,” Wren says with a smile and a shrug as Birdie and Tess nod in agreement. “We’ve known ever since the day we met you that you were destined for something much bigger and better than this island. We know Summersweet is just a stopping place before you move on to something more exciting. Watching you completely own it out there the last four years just proved it.”
“We’re just happy to have you here, for however long you stay, and we’ll always be here waiting for you to come back,” Birdie adds.
“You’ve spent your entire life cheering all of us on,” Tess reminds me, making me sniffle back more tears. “Do you know how fucking awesome it is to be able to cheer you on every time you do something cool that we’re insanely jealous of? Dude, you were on an episode of Hell’s Kitchen one time when the show requested a few Vipers cheerleaders at dinner service, and that’s on the low-end of cool things you’ve done. You’re living the life all of us wish we could have, but we don’t have the balls to, and we’re just sitting around, excited to see what you’re going to do next.”
Flopping my ass on the bench seat next to Wren and Tess’s legs, I thunk my head down on the table in front of me, feeling like an idiot that I wasn’t just honest with them from the very beginning.
“I love you guys. I hate to break it to you, but I’m not going to do anything exciting next, except change jizz-stained sheets in the cottages while I wait to die alone,” I complain, with my face still pressed into the table.
“Awww, cheer up! You still have Ryan,” Tess jokes, making all of us groan and me lift my head to snarl at her. “And besides, you don’t change the jizz-stained sheets; you organize the schedule for someone else to change them. Six degrees of jizz separation and all that.”
