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With another confirmation from Ed that they’ve got everything handled, I head out of the Dip and Twist and get in my golf cart to drive down to the beach by the ferry dock.
Every year to officially close out the summer tourist season, the island puts on the Summersweet Island Festival down on the main public beach. There are carnival rides, food vendors, and games, and at the end of the night, everyone sits along the beach to watch the boat parade. Any island resident who owns a boat can be in the parade as long as they’ve registered with the festival committee. Everyone who participates in the parade goes above and beyond to decorate their boats with Christmas lights, disco lights, entire themes complete with people in costumes, music blasting from boat speakers, fog machines, and choreographed dance routines. People go all out, the boats are judged by a committee, and someone goes home with the grand prize of a year’s supply of taffy from Chew on This.
Obviously, Shepherd was the first person in line on registration day to enter the boat parade. All the businesses on the island set up a booth for the festival, and once Shepherd and I finish setting up the one for the Dip and Twist, we’ll be heading over to his boat to get it ready. With what else? A Field of Dreams theme. He ordered an obscene amount of cornstalks to attach all along the railing of the boat, bright spotlights that will shine down from the sails, a giant movie projector screen will be set up along the back side of the boat playing the movie, and he even rented authentic, 1910 White Sox uniforms for the entire freshman baseball team to wear while they ride on his boat for the parade. It’s absolutely crazy and so absolutely Shepherd.
Pushing the Dip and Twist break-in out of my mind, I zip down to the ferry dock and my man. I always have fun every year at the Summersweet Island Festival, but I have a feeling this year will top all the rest. Once Shepherd and I finish setting up the Dip and Twist booth and then decorate his boat, we have the rest of the day to have fun, since I scheduled a bunch of teenagers to take the shifts at our booth and, for the first time ever, did not schedule one for myself. And also for the first time ever, Birdie, Tess, and I all have dates, and we’re going on the best triple date ever.
Without even knowing it, Shepherd is going to make another dream of mine come true, even if it’s something as simple as having someone hold my hand while we walk around all day enjoying the festival.“If you sit back down at the table and finish your lunch, I promise I’ll let you have the rest of this candy apple.”
“You never should have let him enter that cotton candy eating contest,” I tell Tess, trailing off as we all sit at a picnic table, watching Bodhi alternate between giggling and screaming as he runs around our table in circles.
“I didn’t think he’d actually eat fifteen fucking bags of cotton candy with a candy apple chaser,” she mutters. “On top of the elephant ears, funnel cakes, deep fried Oreos, churros, and two apple fritters. Fuck it. This needs to end.”
“You want me to—”
Tess holds her hand up to Shepherd as he starts to get up from his spot next to me straddling the picnic table bench.
“I got it.” She sighs. “This is why I’m never having children. I’m already raising a man child.”
Thrusting the half-eaten candy apple at me from across the picnic table, I have just enough time to grab the stick before Tess bolts up and off the bench like a sprinter out of the gate.
“Oooh, shit!” Shepherd, Birdie, Palmer, and I all wince and shout at the same time when Tess takes Bodhi out like a linebacker, wrapping her arms around his body as she dove at him.
“He might actually need X-rays on that shoulder,” Shepherd mutters, standing up and resting his hands on top of the table to lean over and get a better look at Tess lying flat on top of Bodhi in the sand next to the freshly squeezed lemonade stand.
Between gasps and heaves after getting the wind knocked out of him, Bodhi reaches up and around Tess’s body to smack her ass.
“He’s fine.” Birdie snorts. “Let’s go ride the merry-go-round.”“You must be as dope as weed, ’cause right now, you’re all I need!”
Tess just snorts at the shout from behind us and rolls her eyes.
“Hey, come on. Don’t walk away. Come over here and give me some sugar!”
“Go on, Tess. Go give the man some sugar.” Birdie laughs.
“He already had some of my sugar, thank you very much,” Tess replies, picking up the pace, suddenly in a much bigger rush to find the gyro stand.
