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“As I was saying,” Wren continues, sitting up straight at the picnic table and folding her hands on top of it while I crisscross my legs, loudly slurp my slush, and stare down at her. “Tess, you aren’t a bad friend, and I’m not a bad sister just because we didn’t see that Palmer has had a thing for Birdie this entire time.”
I try to scoff at the ridiculousness of what Wren is saying, since I’ve been hearing it all damn night once we got to the Dip and Twist, but vodka and ice get caught in my throat and my fucking heart gets lodged up in there as well. I start coughing so hard Tess has to lean forward to pat me on the back.
“Yeah, well, it turns out I wasn’t fucking okay with it,” Palmers raspy, wounded voice echoes in my head, and I cough even harder while Wren keeps talking through my slow, painful death.
“We didn’t see what was right in front of our faces, because we weren’t looking at Palmer,” Wren explains, unclasping her hands to rest one of them on my bent knee and giving me a soft smile. “We were looking at Birdie. We were seeing Birdie, the one we adore. We saw her love, and we saw her pain, because she’s our person, not Palmer. We were only focused on her. We weren’t paying any attention to him or what was in his eyes or in his heart. Now that I’ve switched my focus and I saw the way he looked at her in the bar this afternoon….”
Wren trails off, her and Tess sharing a knowing look on the bench in front of me that makes me want to scream, especially while I watch my sister and my best friend fan themselves.
“I mean, holy hell, Birdie,” Tess says, shaking her head as she stares at me with wide eyes. “I almost got pregnant standing behind that bar just from the way he was looking at you.”
“Who’s pregnant?” Ed shouts from the red picnic table.
No one answers him, and I close my eyes and shake my head back and forth, refusing to go down this path again. I spent half my life analyzing every look, every smile, every touch, and every word out of Putz’s mouth, picking them apart and trying to find some kind of a sign that he might feel something more for me than friendship. I wasted years pining for my best friend, and I’m not doing that again, no matter what kind of crap Tess and Wren think they saw. It doesn’t matter that I finally have an explanation for why he stopped talking to me, and it’s just because he never liked Bradley and was annoyed I wasted my time with him. Not because of any kind of stupid feelings Tess and Wren are imagining were there all this time. Just because I can work on forgiving him now for being an idiot and leaving me for two years doesn’t mean I’m going to take a walk down Delusion Lane again and think he’d ever want something more than friendship from me.
“It’s also the date you made things social media official with Backpack Douchefuck.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out I wasn’t fucking okay with it.”
When stupid Putz’s stupid voice won’t leave my head, I shove my straw back in my mouth and suck up nothing but vodka that has sunk to the bottom of my foam cup to try and erase it from my mind.
“Birdie and Palmer sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S- oh shit!”
Wren’s off-key, drunk singing comes to an abrupt end when she falls off the end of the picnic table, since she felt the need to add a full body dance to her stupid song.
“I knew Tess was lying when she kept coming in to refill the slushes, saying the three of you were just really parched after the storm brought in all this humidity.” My mom comes up behind Wren, and I continue sucking vodka wordlessly as Tess laughs, watching Mom slide her hands under Wren’s armpits and haul her back up to her feet. Our mom has picked us up off the floor during numerous Sip and Bitches and has it down to a science. She really should be thanking us for all that extra upper body strength.
“Have a seat, Laura. We were just about to give your daughter some advice on putting Palmer’s wedge in her rough.” Tess snorts, patting the empty spot on the bench next to her that Wren vacated.
“Oh my God, Tess, you can’t talk about Palmer’s wedge like that. Birdie doesn’t like it when we bring up his dangly bits.” Wren giggles, and I aggressively wrap my lips around my straw and suck again, wondering why in the hell I was so happy about Wren unwinding.
