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The call to Emily finally connects, and it rings and rings while Tess takes a seat next to me, and Birdie sets down a full-to-the-brim glass of red wine in front of each of us.
“I would have been here earlier, but Bodhi made me read him a bedtime story before I left,” Tess huffs in mock-annoyance as she carefully brings the wine glass up to her mouth so she doesn’t spill it and takes a sip.
There’s a small tilt to the corner of her mouth against the lip of her wine glass, letting us know it doesn’t annoy her in the least that Bodhi Armbruster, Palmer’s old caddie and the first serious relationship Tess has ever had, is obsessed with reading romance novels and has brought Tess over to what she calls “the dark side.” The two of them read together every night in bed. With his shaggy blonde surfer hair and bohemian lifestyle, living out of vans and on people’s couches most of his life and never cashing the checks Palmer paid him to be his caddie because money just didn’t mean anything to him, we were all surprised when Bodhi found his way into Tess Powell’s heart. She’s a hard-ass who organizes her life down to the second, would prefer chewing off her own arm than ask anyone for help, is diligent about saving money and having a plan, and would much rather light the male gender on fire than have anything to do with them. But no one was more shocked than Tess when she fell in love with the jobless, homeless, easy-going man when he lived on her couch after coming back to the island with Palmer.
It’s adorable, especially since Tess has been saying since our first Sip and Bitch when we were twelve and called it Sip and Fuss, because we were classy young ladies, that she would never settle down, have kids, or get married. The settling down has definitely happened. Any minute now, she’ll be eating her own words about the other two; I just know it.
“Can you explain now why you sent us an emergency text that Sip and Bitch needed to move to your place instead of at our purple picnic table at the Dip and Twist?” Tess asks.
I end the FaceTime call when Emily doesn’t answer, tossing my phone onto the counter with a sigh as I stare at my wine glass. The red liquid starts to spill over the top and drip down the side when Tess accidentally bumps her knee against the underside of the counter as she crosses her legs.
“The Dip and Twist has now been contaminated. We can never have Sip and Bitch there again.”
Bending forward after my dramatic statement, I wrap my mouth around the lip of the wine glass and start slurping as much wine in as I can until the level gets below my mouth and I can’t successfully do it hands-free anymore.
“Jesus, you want a trough for that? What the hell happened tonight?” Birdie asks when I don’t even take my mouth off the glass; I just grab the stem and bring it with me as I sit up, tip the glass back, and drink half of it before I speak again.
“Shepherd Oliver is here on Summersweet Island, and he came to the Dip and Twist to see me,” I blurt out quickly when I pull the glass down from my mouth, my heart starting to pound in my chest when I don’t even have to close my eyes to picture him standing there a few feet away from me.
Looking at that boy always made my heart flutter and tied my tongue in knots whenever I tried to speak to him. He was the gorgeous, popular, outgoing jock constantly surrounded by people, and I was the shy, quiet girl with only a small handful of really close friends, with no time for extracurricular activities, because someday, the Dip and Twist would be mine, and I spent all my free time learning about the family business.
After a year of feeling like I knew him better than anyone else in the world and just having to be satisfied with pictures of him on the internet, in magazines, or all the times I saw him playing on TV, it felt like a dream when I turned around and he was here. I forgot all the tears I cried over him, because he was standing right in front of me. Close enough to touch. Close enough that I could slide my arms around his waist and see if he still smelled like the woodsy cologne he always wore with a faint hint of leather from living with a baseball glove on his hand. And close enough to see both of his dimples when he said something sarcastic to me, and to drink in the sight of his six-foot four-inch frame that he added a shit-ton of delicious muscles to in recent years. Instead of having to imagine how absolutely hot, innocent, and adorable he looks while reading his words on a screen.
