Swing and a Mishap (Summersweet Island 2)

A muffled honking sound from out in the driveway of my cottage has me pulling my head up from the table to look at the time on my phone, knowing the noise is most likely Birdie finally home from Hawaii.

“Hello, Summersweet Island residents! I’m engaged!”

I laugh in spite of my current misery when I hear my sister shout from the driveway to anyone currently in their cottages on my street, knowing she’s probably been screaming that since the minute she stepped off the ferry.

“Sounds like Birdie’s home.” Emily laughs as Birdie continues to announce her happy news over and over so loudly outside that even she heard it through the phone. “I have practice tonight, but we should be done by nine. If you girls have Sip and Bitch later, I’m in. Tell Birdie to send me a picture of that rock.”

“Will do. Love you, Emmy.”

I blow her kisses, and she does the same.

“Love you too, Wrenny. For fuck’s sake, take a shower and do something other than a messy bun to your new gorgeous dark hair before you go to work later. You never know when a hot, single guy who isn’t a pile of human garbage will stop by for a scoop.”

Rolling my eyes at her when she winks at me, I blow her one last kiss before ending the call and getting up from the table just as my front door flies open so hard it hits the opposite wall.

“I’m engaged, bitch!”

My younger sister by four years stands in the doorway, her long blonde hair hanging loose around her shoulders, her blue eyes shining bright with happiness, the most beautiful bronze tan on her skin from ten days in Hawaii, and a giant rock on her finger that sparkles when the sun shining through my open front door hits it. Wearing a pair of dark skinny jeans, nude open-toed heels, and a floral turquoise boho top with spaghetti straps, she looks stunning and positively glowing with love and happiness.

My hair used to be the same shade of golden-blonde with caramel highlights until a few months ago when I took Owen over to the mainland so he could have dinner with Kevin and he told me I looked old. I borrowed some of Emily’s act first, think later mojo, took a ferry over to a salon on the mainland a few days later, and came back with a shocking shade of dark chestnut. Even with different hair colors, Birdie and I could still pass for twins most days, standing at the same height of five foot five inches, with the same slender build and the same pale-blue eyes.

My eyes have never shone with happiness like hers, and my body has never vibrated with excitement like hers though.

Shoving all my jealousy and sadness aside, my sister and I both scream at the top of our lungs before running across my open-floorplan cottage and meeting in the middle of my living room in a screaming, crying, jumping up and down hug.

“You’re engaged!” I shout, squeezing my arms around her waist tighter as we keep bouncing around in a hug circle.

“I’m engaged!” Birdie cries back when we stop jumping and pull apart enough to swipe at our tears, and I can grab her left hand, yanking it closer to my face.

“Holy shit, it’s huge,” I whisper in awe, twisting and turning her hand to get a better look at the four-carat, princess-cut diamond framed by round diamonds that branch out into three rows of additional sparkly diamonds to make up the white gold band around her finger.

“That’s what she said,” Birdie replies with a laugh through her remaining happy tears, just like I knew she would. “Seriously. That’s what I said over, and over, and over in Hawaii. I honestly don’t even know how I can walk right now. It’s like every time Palmer looked down and saw his ring on my finger, his cock grew three sizes that day. And then the true meaning of sex came through, and Palmer found the strength of ten cocks, plus two!”

All I can do is shake my head at my sister’s distortion of a quote from The Grinch, feeling a little bit of my own green monster trying to rear its ugly head after so many months of having to hear all about how great my future brother-in-law is in bed.

Gross. And also, uuugh I miss sex… even if it was shitty sex. At least it was sex.

“All right, enough about me,” Birdie suddenly says, pulling her hand out of mine, grabbing onto my arm, and tugging me over to my couch. She pushes me down onto the cushions then perches her butt on the edge of my coffee table, facing me with our knees touching. “Let’s talk about you and all the exciting things that happened while I was gone.”