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I won’t settle for anything less.
I check the time on my phone. The girls should be here any minute. It was decided without my input that Kate would be driving tonight so Ellie could get me drunk. I went with it because it was easier than arguing. Especially with Ellie. I never win.
I grab my cell phone and purse and make my way to the street to wait for them. It’s a warm, clear night and I have to admit, it feels good to be out of the house. I plan on drinking just enough that I forget Parker Bennett ever walked back into my life.
Seven
Olivia
We are seated at the last table available at the newest restaurant on the beach. It is packed with people sitting inside and outside at the most beautiful patio in Reed Point, covered in Edison lights and fire tables. Our table is indoors, on the edge of what will turn into a makeshift dance floor right in front of a long marble bar extending across the entire back wall.
I’m glad I agreed to a night out. I typically prefer a cozy night in with a glass of wine and some bad reality TV or a book, but this is nice for a change and definitely needed.
Ellie orders us a round of drinks to get the night started and I know I’m going to have to pace myself if I want to keep up with her.
“Kate, give us the goods. How did your whack-a-do speed dating lunch go today? I still can’t believe you did that. Was it full of crazy cat women and gamer nerds? Please tell me you took a shower before meeting us tonight,” Ellie teases, looking beautiful in a black strapless top and high-waisted skinny jeans, her hair in waves down her back.
“Leave me alone, you bully. Stop being so judgey. It wasn’t all bad. There were some nice guys there.”
“Like who?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at her.
“Well, there was a fireman, and an art teacher and this one guy who refused to tell me what he did for a living. He said the topic was ‘off limits.’”
“What the fuck, Kate, are you kidding me? He’s either a serial killer who wants to wear your skin as a jacket or he’s a stripper,” Ellie teases.
“Ooh let him be a stripper, did he have a hot body?” I add. “Oh wait, I got ahead of myself there. How would you know unless you took him to the washroom and undressed him and had dirty washroom sex? So… did you?”
“Really?” Kate rolls her eyes at me.
“Seriously Kate, did that not concern you at all? Talk about a red flag. Please tell me you filed a police report on that creep. How about the fire fighter? Did he talk about his hose and what he wanted to do to you with it?”
“Oh, for the love of God, Ellie. Could you be anymore cliché? He was a gentleman and never once talked about his hose, but there was this one guy who barely spoke English and he kept calling me Kitty. But it got really weird when he asked me to remove one shoe.”
“What? Why? Please tell me there’s more to this story.” I rub my hands together, eager to hear the rest.
“Oh my gosh, this is so embarrassing.” Kate covers her face with her hands. “It took me forever to figure it out.”
“Jesus, no Kate! Did he want to check your feet out before committing to a date with you?”
Kate erupts in a fit of laughter, barely able to get the words out. “He had a foot fetish, you guys! He wanted to do sex stuff to my feet!”
We all lose it at this point.
“Sex stuff? I can’t take it. What does that even mean? No wait, never mind, I don’t want to know,” I say as our waiter, with apparently impeccable timing, arrives with our drinks.
“Please tell us that you will never sign up for another one of these crazy town shit shows again. Stop the speed dating!” Ellie announces, clinking her glass to ours in cheers. We all take a sip.
“And then how would I entertain you?” Kate smirks, resting her chin on her hands, looking gorgeous.
Kate has always been the popular one, the girl with the social life and a line-up of guys who wanted to date her. She never studied because school just didn’t interest her. She was a C student who preferred to skip with her friends and head down to the park or the secluded area of the beach. She has always been carefree and rolls with the punches, a dreamer at heart. I have always been the polar opposite. I’m quieter with a type A personality; I prefer things put in their place. I’m happy with a good book in a quiet space. In high school, I kept to my group of friends who enjoyed theatre and dance. I auditioned every semester for the school play and always won the role I was working for. I rarely broke the rules, whereas my sister felt rules were made to be broken.
There was one exception.
Sneaking out to meet Parker became a regular occurrence when I was 17. He would wait for me under my bedroom window after my parents went to sleep. My room was at the front of the house and down a long hallway from my parents, which made it easy to slip out without them hearing me. The home I grew up in was big - not Bennett estate big, but still pretty impressive. It sat on a one-acre lot, with a kidney-shaped pool in the backyard and lush, perfectly manicured hedges for privacy. I loved living in that house. Until the day it was no longer ours.
Parker and I would stay out late into the night, talking for hours. I wanted to know everything there was to know about the boy who looked at me like I’d hung the stars. It was only a matter of time before we took things further. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other, our self-control was non-existent back then. We were love drunk teenagers.
One night in particular is etched in my mind forever. We had met as usual beneath my window and ran hand-in-hand to his pickup that was parked just down the street from my house. I think we both knew that night would be different, that it would change us both. It would change everything.
