First and Tension

by Tara Sivec

  I open my mouth to ask her what her dreams are, but I’m interrupted by a loud shout coming from my sliding glass door.

  “Bitch, I’m bored! Just admit defeat already!”

  Scrambling up from the chair when I look back and see the guy I’m just now remembering Emily was here with, I look back and forth between the two of them with wide eyes, wondering if I stole this guy’s date and he’s going to be pissed. Until he shouts again.

  “You know I have to be home by three, or I turn into a faerie!”

  “That joke is old and worn out! You have to be home by three, or Joe will call the cops!” Emily shouts back with a shake of her head as she pushes herself up from her chair and we’re standing toe-to-toe. “His husband thinks we get into too much trouble when we’re together, and now he has a curfew.”

  I laugh and then quickly sober when I realize our night is ending. She’s scooping up those sexy boots from the ground that she pulled off and tossed to the side during cornhole and quickly backing away from me. And I don’t even know her full name!

  “Can I at least get your last name before you walk away, leaving my pride at my game-playing abilities slashed and bleeding all over my backyard?”

  “I’m sure your pride will be just fine the next time you throw a touchdown pass,” she replies cheekily. “It’s Emily. Just… Just Emily.”

  Sliding my hands into my front pockets, I come to the conclusion it’s probably for the best I don’t know everything about her; otherwise, she’d probably become a bigger obsession for me than football. And sadly, that just can’t happen for me right now, as much as I want it to.

  “All right then, Just-Just Emily. Maybe the next time I need to be brought down a few pegs, I’ll track you down,” I shout across the yard to her, hoping that didn’t sound creepy as fuck as she moves farther and farther away from me, taking her smile, her laughter, and all the fun she brought to my life with her.

  “Don’t worry. I know who you are. Maybe I’ll track you down.”

  She gives me a small wave before she turns, joining her friend at my open sliding glass door and disappearing inside my house.

  I hope you do track me down someday, Just-Just Emily. Someday when my life isn’t so crazy.

  CHAPTER 4

  Emily

  “Buckle up, fuckers!”

  “I know you two gossiping girls have already explained this to me several times, but I’m gonna need you to do it once more, just to make sure I’m not in the goddamn Twilight Zone,” I speak to the two people standing in front of me in a smooth, calm voice, but they still cower in fear.

  They both also take a few nervous steps back until they bump into the check-in counter of the Sandbar Cottages rental office and have nowhere else to go.

  I have had the week from absolute hell that has been spent trying to figure out which one of my friends betrayed me, since none of them would fess up to it until recently. On top of changing my email address, getting a new cell phone number, and logging out of all my social media accounts, refusing to look at them again. But not before I was told I’m a fat, ugly, talentless shrew with bad hair, who ruined Quinn Bagley’s life and quite possibly his career. Not to mention what I’ve had to deal with from my parents, who have only forgiven me for my “betrayal of Ryan” because the only man they love more than Ryan Hutton is their favorite quarterback. Who they are just positively delighted plays for the home team now and is dating their youngest daughter.

  My life could not possibly get any worse right now. But I have kept my cool like always, and I haven’t hurt anyone yet. That should give me bonus points somewhere.

  Thank God for a good police department and tight security on Summersweet; otherwise, I probably would have had to move as well. Although, at this point, if one more person on this island stops to talk to me about the rumors, I’m going to move to the moon.

  “Please don’t hurt us!”

  “You’re super scary when you’re mad. You still smile and act nice, and I don’t like it!”

  “I’m not going to hurt you; I just want to talk,” I reply with a smile that, judging by the wide-eyed looks on everyone’s face, might be a little bit frightening.

  “Sweetie, don’t be upset with Shepherd and Palmer. They were just trying to help in their own sweet, stupid way,” Wren says in a soft voice, leaning down from where she’s sitting on top of the check-in counter to wrap her arms around her fiancé’s shoulders.

  “They are being punished for their betrayal; don’t you worry,” Birdie assures me with a firm nod, her ass perched on the opposite end of the counter from her sister, leaning forward to wrap protective arms around her own fiancé. Like either one of them could possibly protect their idiot men from me if I decide to do them bodily harm.

  But I won’t, because I’m nice, and nice people don’t stab their friends with the letter opener sitting on the counter just to the right of Palmer’s elbow.

  “It’s just… the girls were so sad and upset on your behalf,” Palmer tries to explain to me.

  “We don’t like it when they’re sad and upset,” Shepherd adds, making Wren get hearts in her eyes and go all soft on me in my moment of female solidarity need.

  “Yeah, we don’t get laid nearly enough when they’re sad and upset.” Bodhi chuckles from the other side of the room, where he’s lying on his back on the guest couch, tossing a tennis ball up toward the ceiling over and over.

  Tess quickly snatches the ball out of the air from her spot on the arm of the couch above his head and then whips it down at Bodhi’s stomach as hard as she can.

  “At least someone is on my side,” I mutter, as Bodhi groans, clutching his stomach and writhing in pain.

  I get that they have their men now, and they are going to share secrets with the most important person in their lives now, and I’m okay with that. We’re all family. What I don’t get is why these morons decided to take what they heard and freaking run with it!

  “We’re all on your side, and the guys are very sorry for what they did,” Birdie tells me.

  “Oh, don’t stick up for them.” I roll my eyes in annoyance before taking a deep breath to find my Zen again, pasting a diplomatic smile on my face when I look around at the three men. “I thought when you guys finally came clean and admitted what was happening was all your fault that maybe you just casually mentioned it to one of your agents on accident or let it slip to your PR person, and then a shitty game of telephone spread from there. I would have still been a little cross with you, but mistakes happen. Completely forgivable.”

  Shaking my head at all of them, that fiery pit of rage deep in my stomach I’ve been pushing down for the last week starts to boil and bubble, but still, I push it back as best as I can. I don’t lose my cool unless I’m at my breaking point. It’s always been my job to keep everyone organized and under control, and I’m not about to be the one who falls apart. Especially since the one and only time I ever did, I got fired from my dream job.

  I’ve got this. I’m a pro at smiling through a loss. It was literally my job. Except now, I have to smile through losing my dignity. Everything is fine. Just fine.

  “But oh, no.” I laugh humorlessly, trailing off with a humming sigh. “It wasn’t just a simple mistake that could have happened to anyone, was it, gentlemen?”

  All three of them shake their heads with guilty looks on their faces.

  “What was it you did again, exactly? Just want to make sure I have all the details correct.”

  Don’t freak out and scream at them. Don’t freak out and scream at them. Cheerleaders always keep their composure, even in the face of defeat. Just wave goodbye to your pride. It’s lost forever now.

  “We used a troll account on social media and posted that stuff about Quinn having a secret girlfriend in a reply to the Sharks’s formal announcement about his move,” Shepherd mumbles quickly and quietly with his head down.

  “And?” I prompt, crossing my arms in front of me and grinding my teeth so hard
I start to get a headache.

  “And when the general public and all the digging they were doing was taking forever, we might have supplied them with your name,” Palmer adds guiltily, giving me the same damn grimace face that seems to be permanently glued to his good buddy Shepherd’s face.

  “I’d just like to point out to the jury that none of us had anything to do with that grainy cell phone shot from the back of you puking in the bushes. No one even knows you were puking anyway; it just looks like he’s railing you from behind.”

  “Nope. We shared that one too,” Shepherd speaks to Bodhi out of the corner of his mouth with his head still down, staring at his feet.

  “Oh yeah.” Bodhi chuckles.

  Hands on hips, smile on lips, calm the hell down, you bitch!

  I couldn’t even make this shit up if I tried. All this chaos happening in my life right now is because my friends decided to fall in love with a bunch of idiotic yet sweetly adorable men who will do anything to make their women, and their women’s best friend, happy. Even if that means coming up with the absolute dumbest way to try to get Quinn Bagley to come out to Summersweet Island, thinking as soon as he saw me again, he’d fall madly in love with me.

  As if. The jerk hasn’t even reached out to see if I’m okay with this shitstorm! I mean, technically, it’s kind of my fault this shitstorm is even happening, but whatever! We are both injured parties here!

  “Don’t worry; Bodhi is officially grounded from reading romance novels for the foreseeable future so he doesn’t get any more romantic—yet unrealistic and would never happen in real life—ideas again,” Tess promises.

  “That idea came from a book that was based on a true story, woman! I said what I said. Don’t at me,” Bodhi complains, finally recovering from the gut shot enough to sit up in the middle of the couch.

  “In our defense,” Shepherd interrupts Bodhi’s pouting, “Bodhi is technically the one who initially set up the troll account,” Shepherd admits.

  “Oh sure, blame everything on me,” he mutters.

  “What in the hell do you even have a troll account for?” Tess questions her husband.

  “Uh, to troll Palmer, why the hell else?”

  “Oh shit!” Shepherd suddenly laughs. “Wasn’t livin4420 the troll account username that first released the video of Palmer throwing his pitching wedge into the water hazard while screaming at his dad at that tournament last year and set it to Buck Cherry’s ‘Crazy Bitch’?”

  “Yep.” Bodhi smirks, making Tess sigh, roll her eyes, and tell her belly in a soft voice that he or she is never allowed to ask their father for advice.

  “That was you? What the hell, Bodhi?” Palmer shouts, Birdie’s arms around his shoulders now being used to hold him back from launching across the room at his friend and golf caddie.

  “The username is living for four-twenty.” Bodhi shrugs, miming the act of smoking a joint with his finger and thumb pressed together by his lips. “Of course it was me, duh. That video went a long way toward making the love of your life forgive you. You’re welcome. Livin4420, out!”

  The two men start to argue with each other from across the room, and I quickly put my fingers in my mouth and blow out an ear-piercing whistle.

  “Can we please remember this is all about me and stop talking about your problems?” I remind them, trying to simmer down but finding it close to impossible when I start to list all the crap I’ve had to deal with this week because of them, ticking everything off on my fingers. “Alicia Furlan stopped me when I was jogging on the beach to tell me she always knew I was meant to be with a football player. She already has the athletic booster club organizing a steak fry and raffle for Quinn to be the guest speaker at. Katy Corbeil stopped me in the grocery store to tell me the only way to keep an athlete like Quinn Bagley happy is to cook a lot of good food for him. She then stole my grocery cart from me and filled it up with everything I’d need to make her stuffed cabbage rolls.”

  “Oooh, her stuffed cabbage rolls are really good. Did she actually give you the recipe? Every time I ask her, she tells me it’s a family secret and—”

  “Oh my God, Wren!” I cut her off. “Johanna Wright has the knitting club making us matching couples’ sweaters with Quinn’s jersey number on them. Everyone thinks this stuff is true, and no one will let me explain to them otherwise, including my parents!”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to tell you, but I got a few requests for some sparkly Quemily shirts the other day, and your mom ordered two larges,” Shepherd admits, referring to his side graphic design business he does out of his and Wren’s home.

  “What the hell is a Quemily?” Bodhi asks him, saving me from having to do it.

  “You know, a mash-up of two names together that people ship.”

  “That people ship where? Like on a boat? Oooh, they get to go on vacation?!”

  “My God.” Shepherd shakes his head at Bodhi, making me want to scream at the top of my lungs like I’m trying to get the attention of 60,000 fans on a Sunday afternoon. “You really need to spend more time with Owen. He keeps me up-to-date on all the swig teenage talk.”

  “It’s swag, babe,” Wren whispers, making Shepherd shoo her away with a whatever wave of his hand before she looks over at me and gives me another placating smile. “Those all sound like very nice things. Has it really been that bad?”

  “A woman threw her drink on me at Dockside Eddy’s for breaking Ryan’s heart!”

  “Yeah.” Wren winces. “Ryan’s mom was kind of mean until you explained everything to her.”

  Of course, right when I was going to sit Ryan down and tell him how I felt—or actually didn’t feel—he won last-minute tickets to some big, professional bowling tournament, and he had to rush out of town for a week. Figuring, what’s one more week, since this conversation absolutely had to happen face-to-face, I never imagined my entire life would blow up for the whole world to read about. Going by the cryptic text he sent to me as soon as the shit hit the fan that just said, We’ll talk as soon as I get home, I’m assuming he saw the gossip magazine post mentioning him, and how much less of a man he must feel like, now that Quinn Bagley stole his woman.

  Why did I ever complain about my life on this island being so boring? Why!

  I didn’t explain everything to Ryan’s mom after she threw her vodka-soda on me, but I did tell her it was all a huge misunderstanding that would get cleared up as soon as Ryan got home. Which is supposed to be any minute now, and the reason why I made everyone come here. So they could own up to their parts in this nonsense and apologize to him for what I’m assuming was probably just as hellish of a week as I’ve had.

  You know, before I apologize to him for breaking his heart and not being honest with him as soon as I got home. Or four damn years ago.

  “God, I suck,” I mumble, blowing out a breath and running a hand through my hair.

  “You don’t suck,” Wren tells me. “Ryan is a big boy, and you have nothing to feel guilty about. He’ll be here any minute, and you’ll see that everything is going to be fine. You know he’s not a jerk who’s going to come in here screaming at you. He’s a nice guy who will forgive anything, because he cares about you. I told you he sent me a few texts checking on you this week. He doesn’t hate you.”

  Great way to make me feel worse.

  And what a wonderful reminder that, yes, I do still suck. Because my worry about Ryan, who I’ve known almost my entire life, pales in comparison to how much I’ve been worrying about Quinn, a man I only spent a handful of hours with five months ago. I’ve been alternating between being hurt that he hasn’t reached out to me now that he knows who I am and where I live, to being sick to my stomach with anxiety about everything he must be going through. It’s got to be ten times worse than my drama. Especially with the timing of everything and what team he decided to play for. Which is still such a freaky coincidence that my head wants to explode every time I think about it.

  In a moment of weakness the other night, I ev
en tried to message him to see if he was okay and to apologize from my new, super-secret and private social media account, but he had messaging turned off everywhere. He’s not an angry guy, which was clearly evident the night I spent with him, when he easily accepted my apology for insulting him in his own home and spent the rest of the night making me smile and laugh more than I had in a really long time. I just have to hope that fun, sweet, easygoing man who held my hair back when I puked and bought me a pizza when I was hangry knows this was all just one big misunderstanding and realizes I would never do something like this to him on purpose. He has to know I’m not a psycho asshole human being. He might not have known my last name, but the hours he spent with me should have proven to him exactly what kind of person I am. Quinn got the real me that night. The one who is always looking for something fun to do, can’t sit still, talkative and motivated, and who will do anything to make someone smile. The real me who has been missing since I got back here.

  “Everything sucks, and now Ryan is going to hate me forever too, on top of everything else I have to deal with,” I grumble, my anger starting to boil over. “All because you three meddling men had to stick your noses where they didn’t belong!”

  “We’re really sorry, and we promise we’ll make it up to you,” Palmer says, trying to give me one of his killer smiles that makes Birdie’s underwear immediately fly off, but I’m immune to his charms. “We’ll do any chore you ask. Order us around; we are at your service for as long as you want, to make your life easier. Scream, yell, and get it all out. I promise you’ll feel better. We deserve it, so take all your anger out on us. But mostly Bodhi.”

  “Right on. I like it rough.”

  Bodhi’s response earns him a smack on the arm from Tess, while I wonder exactly how much more of this I can take before my head really does explode. I’m not a ragey person. I’m not a crazy hothead like the media so nicely portrayed me.

  After I’m assuming they spoke to my former boss, who lied like the devil she is about why I lost my temper with her.