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My kitchen is suddenly filled with quiet moaning instead of cursing the ground Shepherd walks on as each woman double-fists a donut, sitting on my stools on the other side of my counter, while I shift nervously from foot to foot where I stand. Just like I hoped, Tess and Birdie’s faces immediately soften from their Shepherd rage like I fed them something magical. And these aren’t even the maple bacon donuts from the mainland that Birdie is obsessed with and Palmer always butters her up with. They’re just a tube of Pillsbury biscuit dough that I fried in oil and then sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. But I know the power these donuts wield, since I already ate an entire tube of deep-fried dough before they got here to calm my nerves. It was working up until now.
“Why are you smiling so much?” Tess suddenly asks around a mouthful of donut.
Reaching out, I snag one of the donut holes and pop it into my mouth so I’m not smiling anymore.
“And why are we the only ones doing all the bitching, when you’ve been the one out-bitching us the last couple of nights, and you’re the one who called this emergency Sip and Bitch?” Birdie questions, setting her half-eaten donut back on the plate and leaning forward to rest her elbows on the counter to study me closer. “Have you finally snapped? Maybe three Sip and Bitches in a row were too much.”
Clearing my throat and fidgeting my feet, I look down at one of the paper towels I ripped off the roll to use for napkins. I stare at my fingers as I start tearing the paper towel apart into tiny little pieces so I don’t have to see the looks on their faces when I speak.
“Well… it’s a little hard to bitch about the man now, after I went to his cottage last night, he kissed the holy shit out of me, and if I hadn’t pumped the brakes, I might have let him round all the bases and slide into home right up against the side of his house, and I can positively confirm that his dick is neither tiny nor limp, so who wants more champagne?” I blurt out all at once, grabbing the bottle and holding it in the air with a big, toothy smile on my face.
There’s a long enough bout of silence after my confession that I have plenty of time to relive each and every delicious moment of that kiss once more before all hell breaks loose around me. Birdie and Tess are shouting so loudly I almost want to cover my ears with my hands. Instead, while they rant and rave across the counter from me about how I’ve lost my goddamn mind for letting another man walk all over me, and how now they’re really going to light all his shit on fire for taking advantage of me, I calmly set the champagne down, turn, and walk away from the counter.
“If you would have shut up about Bodhi and the damn toilet seat, we wouldn’t have this problem right now!” Birdie shouts at Tess.
“It’s not my fault all that pretty Shepherd carries around turned her brain to mush! It’s happened to the best of us!” Tess fires back while I grab my phone from the arm of my couch where I left it when I said goodbye to Owen as he was walking out the door for school.
I pull up Instagram as I walk back over to them and quietly stick my arm between the two of their arguing faces, getting another few minutes of silence when Tess grabs the phone from me. I stand behind them with my arms crossed while Birdie and Tess lean shoulder-to-shoulder with their heads bent forward over the screen, reading the messages Shepherd sent me yesterday all within the span of a few hours while I was busy at work. Both of their shoulders are shaking with quiet sobs by the time they finish, turning around on their stools to face me with their tear-stained cheeks, sniffling noses, and quivering chins.
“It was always you,” Birdie says with a cracked whisper as another tear falls down her cheek.
The clock in my kitchen ticks the seconds away in my quiet cottage until I start fidgeting uncomfortably again with the way these two are staring at me so pitifully, and all hell breaks loose for the second time.
“I’m sorry! We are such assholes!”
“Speak for yourself. I’m a fucking delight. I’m still sorry for saying you lost your goddamn mind, but fuck you for making me cry while the sun’s up. That is against my religion!”
“He’s perfect! Marry him immediately and have all his babies!”
“Fuck marriage and kids and just fuck him!”
“He is the sweetest man in the entire world. Oh my God, I could just die!”
