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Savannah
Savannah Higgins honked the horn of her Jeep again and shouted for Norah and Ginger to hurry the hell up. They were supposed to be on the road to the beach over an hour ago and at this rate, they wouldn’t make it to Georgia before sunset. She was hoping to get to at least watch the sun go down over the ocean tonight before settling into their summer rental, but her two best friends were dashing all her hopes of doing so.
“You’re the most impatient woman on the planet, you do know that, right?” Norah asked.
“And you two are the slowest women on the damn planet. Can you please hurry the hell up? We still need to pick up the keys to the house before the rental agency closes at nine tonight. At this rate, we’re going to miss them and have to sleep in my Jeep.”
“I call backseat,” Ginger grumbled as she loaded her two suitcases into the trunk. “And why does Norah get to bring three suitcases? I thought that we all agreed to two each.”
“Right, but then the two of you kept asking me to bring stuff for you to borrow—like my strappy heals and my hair straightener. You two practically filled that suitcase with all your requests, so don’t look at me like that,” Norah insisted. She hopped into the front passenger seat next to Savannah and flashed her smile. “Ready,” she announced.
“Well, hallelujah,” Savannah shouted. “Get your ass in the backseat, Ging, before I leave you here.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Ginger sassed, sliding in the backseat as Savannah ordered. She had always been the ringleader of their little motley crew. They had all been the best of friends since being tossed together in the first grade. Savannah was always the bossy one of the three. The girls liked to tease that she had the biggest mouth and could yell the loudest, and that was why they all blindly followed her, but she also knew that they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ginger ran a close second as the group’s mouthpiece and she was sure that if anything ever happened to her, Ging would happily take up the reins. And Norah had always been the brains of the operation as she was literally a rocket scientist.
After high school, they had all gone their separate ways to college but always met back at home to talk about their adventures and share their summers together. After they graduated from college, Ginger went off to New York to do her internship in fashion design and Savannah and Norah were sure that she’d never come home, but she had. After Ginger’s mother passed, leaving her house to her only daughter, she decided to move back home. Ginger still spent fashion week in New York and Paris, living the glamorous life, but they were both happy to have her home, for the most part.
While Ginger was off in New York for her internship, Norah had gone off to earn her master’s degree and ended up back at home working for NASA in Washington, DC It was a bit of a commute from the outskirts of Maryland, where their little town was located, but Norah made it work by taking the train to work most days. She had to stay in DC some nights, but they always ended up back at home for the weekends, just the three of them. Savannah felt lucky to still have them both in her life. She knew that most of their high school friends had lost touch with each other, but she knew that would never happen to the three of them.
As for her, she had ended up doing exactly what she had always planned. She got her degree in journalism and was working for the little local paper. Sure, she had dreams of working for one of the bigger DC papers and Norah and Ginger pushed her to do so, but that would mean leaving her ailing father and she just wasn’t ready to let anyone else take care of him yet. She made enough to pay the bills and still lived with him in the house that she grew up in. Savannah didn’t want to move her father out of his comfort zone when they found out that he had dementia. The doctors said that it was good for him to have familiar surroundings, and she planned on keeping things that way for as long as possible. For now, she was thankful for the live-in nurse that she was able to hire to help care for her dad while she spent the summer at the beach with her best friends. It was a trip that they had always wanted to take and none of them was getting any younger. They were just lucky enough to get off work for part of the summer and work from their beach rental the rest of the time. Plus, she could be back home in half a day if her father needed her.
“Why are you in such a hurry to get to the beach?” Ginger asked. “You seem a little more bossy than usual.”
She knew that admitting her reason why she wanted to get there early might have her two friends laughing at her if she told them, but she also knew that Ginger wouldn’t let her question go unanswered.
“You’ll think I’m being silly, but when my mom was alive, she and my grandmother would take me to the beach for a week every summer,” Savannah admitted.
“I remember that,” Norah said. “I thought that I was going to die without you. It felt like the longest week of my life every time you left to go to the beach each summer.”
“Aww, that’s sweet,” Savannah drawled. “Anyway, my grandmother always insisted that we get to the beach early enough to watch the sun go down over the ocean. I guess it’s silly—I mean, we can watch the same sunset tomorrow night, right?”
“No, it’s not silly,” Ginger said. “I’m sorry that we’re going to make you miss this one, but we promise to watch the sunset with you every night that we’re at the beach house this summer to make up for it.”
“Unless we get a hot date or something,” Norah countered.
“Whatever happened to our old ‘Chicks before dicks’ motto?” Ginger asked.
“We’re still doing that?” Norah asked, seeming a bit put off by her friend remembering that. “We haven’t stuck to that old mantra for some time. Remember when you stood me up for dinner—twice when Trevor asked you to come over for a booty call last month?” Norah asked.
“I thought that we also promised not to talk about my ex on this trip,” Ginger reminded. Ging had broken up with Trevor after going out with him for over four years. She finally got the nerve up to ask him where their relationship was going and when he shrugged and asked her to just let things happen as they happen, she dumped him. Ginger said that she just couldn’t sit around waiting for Trevor to get his shit together and make a commitment to her. Honestly, Savannah could have told her years ago that man wasn’t commitment material, but she vowed to never get involved in her friends’ relationships. She hated it when she’d badmouth Norah or Ginger’s boyfriends during a messy breakup only to find them back together a few days later. It always put distance between the three of them and she hated that. So, Savannah learned to keep her mouth shut and her negative opinions about their boyfriends to herself.
“Sorry,” Norah. “I didn’t mean to bring up ‘You know who,'” she said, putting finger quotes in the air.
“It’s fine,” Ginger said, “honestly, I’m not as upset about the breakup as I thought that I’d be. He seems to have moved on, so why shouldn’t I?”
“He moved on already?” Savannah asked.
“Yeah, he’s dating Hannah from down at the high school,” Ginger admitted.
“You mean, the secretary?” Norah asked.
“Yep,” Ginger said. “I didn’t like that bitch when we went to high school with her, and I don’t like her now. I heard a rumor that they had gone out a few times before I broke things off with Trevor.”
“Oh God, that’s awful,” Norah gasped.
“Not really—it just proved that I made the right decision. He’s a weasel and he’s found his mate in Hannah. I wish them only the best and I hope that she gives him lots of weasel babies.” Savannah barked out her laugh at the thought of Trevor and Hannah walking around town with a bunch of weasel babies.
