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“After four years away, I just forgot how quiet and dead it is around here this time of year, right before everything opens back up for the summer. I only had one phone call today asking about cottage rental prices, and only two of our twenty-four cottages are currently inhabited. I’m just so used to being on the go all the time and busy. I’ll get my shit together soon, I promise,” I ramble, still staring at the ceiling, wishing I could just blurt out the truth and get it over with. “I was so bored today I spent two hours teaching myself the rap in ‘No Scrubs.’”
“No shit?” Wren mutters, resting her elbows on the other side of the counter.
I pop my head back up to look at her, finally pushing up from the chair to lean forward to rest my elbows on the counter with her.
“No shit. I don’t know who thought putting acquisition and Expedition together was a good idea, but let me tell you—”
“Emily, stop,” Wren cuts me off. “I wasn’t exactly praising you for your… thrilling achievement.”
I scoff at her nerve, but she doesn’t even give me a chance to insult her back before she continues.
“The intervention comment was probably over the top, but something has definitely been up with you ever since you’ve been back, and it’s not just boredom, so cut the shit. When you’re bored, you get up and move and make up dance routines to the last commercial jingle you heard, or you challenge my son to a basketball game of PIG, or you move to California on a dare, or you take over the world. You’re not quiet all the time, sitting around on your ass, staring at your phone or blankly out the window, looking like you’re seconds away from bursting into tears. Which is pretty much how your face always looks when you think no one is paying attention to you lately. You seemed to have forgotten after your years away that you’re my ride or die. I’m always paying attention to you.”
I will not burst into tears. I will not burst into tears….
Wren slides her arms across the counter until they bump into mine, grabbing my hands and giving them a squeeze before she continues.
“I haven’t said anything, because I just thought it was taking some time for you to readjust from living in the big city for so long, but this is more than that. You quit cheerleading to come back home, but you don’t seem very happy about that decision now that you’re here. Aren’t you happy being home?”
And there it is. The reason why I haven’t told anyone the truth. That look on Wren’s face right now that says she would be crushed if I told her I’m not as happy to be back here on this island as she is to have me back. Or the same look I know I’d see on my parents’ faces if I told them I would rather do anything else for a living than run Sandbar Cottages.
Feeling like this hurts my soul and makes me feel like the worst friend and daughter in the world that I just don’t know how to be completely happy here. I do love being home, and seeing Wren’s smiling face, and being a part of everyone’s lives again in real-time instead of over a phone call, or a text, or finding out something on social media because they forgot to call and tell me. Like the first time Wren’s son Owen hit a grand slam at one of his baseball games.
I’m happy when I’m with my friends and can be a part of their lives. It’s just the times when they have their men to go home to, or careers they’re excited to get back to, or kids to take care of… things I don’t have to occupy my time and make me forget that I’m not where I want to be, doing what I want to do.
“Of course I’m happy.” I smile at Wren. “I’m always happy when you kick down the door of my parents’ business and interrupt my workday with your sparkling personality.”
Technically, I’m not lying. I’m with my friend—ergo, I am happy.
Wren doesn’t return my smile. She just stares me down long enough that I start to fidget before she pulls her phone out of the front pocket of one of her many hoodies with the Dip and Twist logo on it—her family’s ice cream shop she runs with her mom. Another twinge of guilt hits me, wishing I could love my family business as much as Wren does.
“Shut down the computer, turn off the lights, and lock up. I’ll drive,” she orders as she taps at the screen of her phone and then brings it up to her ear before turning away from me to head back to the wide-open door she didn’t bother to close when she burst in here.
