My hedge clippers caught on a thick branch and I heaved to push them together and chop off the appendage.
“Fucking tree,” I said as I pulled the branch from between the dull clippers and threw it in the yard behind me.
A shadow fell on my back and I turned around, wielding the clippers in case it was Pierce. But when I saw one of my best friends in the world, Tabitha, her hands in the air as she stepped back, I lower them.
“What’s up? Who you planning to kill with those things?”
I looked behind her and scowled at Pierce’s mansion on the other side the road. “Today, just this tree.”
“Did the tree personally offend you?” Tabitha asked, staring at the lumpy green overgrown thing. The process was only half done, so the tree had more growth on one side rather than the other, but that’s why people called it a work in progress.
Plus what was she talking about? I did an amazing job pruning the thing so far. “This is called landscaping.”
Let’s see Pierce try and charge me two hundred dollars for landscaping after my work. I planned to do the whole yard myself. Heck, maybe I would send him a bill. And trust me, my services were pricy.
Tabitha tipped her head to the side. “Honestly, Katy, it looks more like murder.”
I walked to her other side, getting a different view of the shrub, and tilted my head in the same direction. I’d definitely taken more off on the left. There was a small bare patch if you looked hard enough. But no biggie. I’d take off more on the right and even it out. The bush had gotten overgrown, anyway.
“What are you doing here?” I didn’t want to discuss my haphazard landscaping with Tabitha. She had more important things to do, like plan a wedding in the early spring.
“Oh, I’m just out for a walk.”
My eyebrows practically flew into my hair line they raised so high. “Really?” My side of town had crap in it. Not a shop or anything. She’d only find large mansions and homes this far south. We were a short walk to the beach, but she passed that to reach my place.
Tabitha waved her hands in the air, distracting me. “I’m walking. Aren’t I?”
We both knew she had an ulterior motive, but Tabitha made me wait a solid thirty seconds before she continued.
“Fine,” she said with an overexaggerated eye roll. “Katy, I came to talk.”
I figured. Everyone wanted to talk. You scream at one billionaire before your grandmother’s funeral, and suddenly everyone thinks you have a problem and need to talk about it.
I snapped my scissors together twice. “Tabitha, I’m really busy.” Look how much tree I had left to trim. I didn’t have time to look at what I was doing with the tree and trying to even it. It might look like I agreed with Tabitha’s assessment that I murdered half of it. With her standing behind me I snipped off a small branch from one of the longer shootouts, pretending it was part of my master plan. “As I said, really busy,” I repeated snipping another branch when she didn’t answer right away.
Tabitha didn’t give up. “Yes, I can see that.”
I refused to speak to my mother and Pearl about this issue, but I really did not want to speak to Tabitha about Pierce. Tabitha knew too much.
Tabitha knew just about everything.
She couldn’t help me at this point, and I didn’t mean to spill the beans to my best friend. Some things a girl should always keep hidden, but she’d won me over with ice cream. The night before my grandmother’s funeral I told her almost everything about Pierce. She came over to make me feel better about losing my grandmother, but in the end, we only talked about Pierce.
I blabbed about our first time, the second, and the last. I skipped the gory details and one particular experience I couldn’t come up with a logical excuse for why I found myself on Pierce’s dick lying on the public beach late one night last summer. Once the words were out, they refused to stop. Along the way she learned the truth about Mari, Pierce’s fake fiancée and where I’d been during the high school reunion.
Everything.
I even told her about the frogs.
It felt good to get everything out at first. I’d hidden so much over the years. It took loads of energy to repress so many emotions. I needed a girlfriend to help process, but later I realized telling Tabitha didn’t solve any of my problems. It didn’t magically make Pierce go away. It only made her want to talk about things and discuss those emotions I worked hard to forget. To chat. To talk.
I did great at not talking about my feelings for Pierce for years and I didn’t plan to ruin my record.
“I think what you said to Pierce at the funeral hurt him. He obviously cares about you.”
“The only thing Pierce cares about is his paycheck. Making sure he gets my rent on time and trying to buy half of the town. He only came to Nanna’s funeral to look good to everyone else who came.” And I embarrassed not only Pierce but myself in front of the whole town.
Tabitha stood directly in front of me so if I wanted to cut any more of the tree, I’d have to go through her. Damn her. Why couldn’t it be Pierce who got in my way? I’d snip him in a heartbeat.
