Thesunwasoutin full-force the morning of the Save the Turtles Fundraiser Game Day. Eliana had stopped by Julia’s house to eat a really early breakfast with her family, and then they’d all driven over to The Palms to save the turtles together. Even Logan was there, holding hands with Julia in the very backseat of the SUV.
Eliana scrolled through her social media feed, stopping on Grandma Winnie’s adorable story of her and Grandpa Horace. She shared it to her feed along with about a hundred hearts. She wished she could have found a love like theirs first, instead of marrying Corbin. Maybe then she wouldn’t be so committed to staying single.
Her grandparents and parents had always been great examples of what it could be like to have a real partner in a relationship. It was probably the only reason she’d eventually seen how unhealthy her marriage to Corbin had been. She rubbed at her chest, wishing it still didn’t hurt—all the things he’d said to her, how awful he’d made her feel. How much time needed to pass before those memories were obliterated?
She didn’t want heavy feelings today—not on this momentous day of saving the turtles!—so she pivoted to a tried-and-true method of getting out of her own head. Teasing.
She turned to Logan and Julia with a finger raised in schoolteacher fashion as they pulled into the parking lot of The Palms. “You better not be kissing back there.” Her dad found a parking spot up front on his first circle of the lot—without having to take a reserved space. Of all the luck.
“We’ve been kissing the whole time,” Julia said, making loud smacking noises with her lips. “You’re such a good kisser, Logan.”
“If I was actually kissing you, you wouldn’t be able to breathe, much less speak,” he said with in a low tone. Julia giggled and whispered something too quiet for Eliana to hear, but it made Logan growl. And then they were actually kissing. She flopped around in her seat. Great. That plan backfired.
The tiniest bit of jealousy pinged in Eliana. A part of her wanted someone to say something like that to her. And mean it. Not that she was getting soft on relationships. But it wore on her to be constantly around a couple in love.
“I’m kissing too,” she said to ease the weight on her chest. She made kissy faces at Cameron. He laughed and gave Eliana a kiss on her cheek and then rested his head on her shoulder for a long hug. Okay, maybe teasing wasn’t the right distraction today. Maybe it was soaking in all the Cameron hugs she could get.
“Us too,” Mom said. Dad finished making sure he’d parked perfectly, and he and Mom gave each other a pretty hot and heavy kiss.
“Ew! Stop!” Julia and Eliana yelled. Eliana threw an old gum wrapper at them while Cameron laughed at all the commotion.
Their dad winked at them. “Should we go save the turtles?”
“Yes!” they all yelled and headed toward the beach, where they could hear loud rap music playing—one punctuated with a ton of curse words.
“This music choice is unexpected,” Logan said.
“Is it, though?” Julia shared a knowing smirk with him, and Eliana felt that twist in her stomach again. They clearly had an inside joke here. She had plenty of inside jokes with plenty of people—in fact, Cameron’s burp was now an inside joke for everyone who had seen the live-stream with it—but there was something intimate about the inside joke for two.
“Good morning!” Polly, wearing a zebra-print sun-shirt and a wide-brimmed hat, motioned for them to join her at the end of the table. “It’s a flat rate to come and play—and all the proceeds go to the turtles. We have beach volleyball, flag football, three-legged races, an obstacle course, corn hole, chicken fights—which is not actual chicken fighting, I’ve been informed—and a lightning round of games that take around a minute a piece. Sign up for the ones you’re interested in doing.”
Eliana jumped foot-to-foot with excitement. Here was the thing about her: she loved games. And she not only loved games—she loved winning. When she was in high school, she played every sport she could, and was always happiest when she was spiking a ball over the net or running down the court or leaping over hurdles.
But there weren’t many opportunities for adults who weren’t pro-level accomplished to play sports, so she’d started playing the kinds of games that didn’t take much skill—those ice breaker, put-your-chairs-in-a-circle games that people always groaned about, but then ended up participating in and laughing through and finding people to connect with.
When she decided to start her social media pages and videos, that was how it began: Let’s Play a Game. To her surprise, people loved it. Over time, and as she got to know so many people, she realized how many of their problems stemmed from romantic relationships. Believing you loved someone was complicated and messy, and almost no one seemed happy.
When she’d played two truths and a lie, and one of her truths was that she was happily single, almost everyone called that out as a lie (when the lie was, in fact, that she’d always dreamed of owning a dog. Pshaw. #Turtles4Life.)
From there, she’d started a new channel, this one called Happily Single, and that’s when her popularity really soared. She was able to quit her office job and devote all of her time to creating online content.
Sometimes she missed the simple days of coming up with fun games for her followers to play with her, but she loved reaching more people with a message she really believed in.
Sure, she occasionally—daily—got angry messages calling her all sorts of names for daring to suggest she was happyandsingle. So many people treated the words like oxymorons—like silent scream or deafening silence. Happily single.
Why it was so threatening to them, she’d never understand. Wasn’t it a good thing for people to be happy in whatever state they were in? Wasn’t it even better for people to take the necessary actions in their life to make themselves happy if they weren’t already?
If being in a relationship brought you joy, great. It sure hadn’t for her, and based on all those get-to-know-you comments, she wasn’t alone.
“You’re signing up for all of them?” Julia asked. “That’s going to be all day, and we only want to stay until lunch.”
“I’ll get a ride home.” Her plan was to close the place out and walk back to Asher’s bungalow tired enough to drop straight into bed.
His bed.
Because he still refused to let her go back to her old room. Which meant she was sleeping surrounded by his scent and with the knowledge that he’d also been in that bed … and she needed to be completely exhausted in order to actually fall asleep.
Grandma Winnie bustled over, Asher’s arm firmly in her grip. He gave Eliana one of his sideways grins that made her heart skip.
