2. Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Riley
I stretched out in my bed after a long evening spent reconnecting with my family. My skin felt warm and sticky from most of our time being spent outside on the large porch in the humid Tennessee mountain air. Even with it being only early June the high for the day hit ninety.
My phone had been vibrating with notifications from the apps Emery had signed me up for through the evening. While she was setting everything up, she had also taken the liberty to swipe - or whatever it was one did on there - to give me a few matches. Most of them were men with fishing or hunting pictures on their profiles. I had matched with a couple women as well, but they were both locals. Risking meeting someone on vacation was already more than I was willing. Risking meeting a local I may run into during future vacations sounded even worse. Aside from those two everyone mentioned in their profile that they were on vacation making me suspect Emery had used that as her criteria for matching with them. I scrolled to the about me section on all three and changed them to say “my sister is making me do this.”
There were a handful of messages from the fishing/hunting guys. They were all a variation of asking “what’s up babe,” or “how long are you in town?”
“Anything good?” Emery asked from across the room.
I jumped and dropped my phone on my face. Pain shot through my nose making me grimace as I rubbed my nose. “I thought you were asleep.”
“You know I need at least an hour for the melatonin to start kicking in and another hour of my sleep music to actually get to sleep.”
“Well, nothing good. Congrats you made a bunch of randos with thrill for killing fish and deer message me calling me babe and asking me what’s up.” I moved my phone to my nightstand and plugged in the charging cord.
“Give them a chance. It could be a lot worse.” I knew she frequented the apps back home to some extent since she would often share information with me about who she was meeting with in case anything happened. She had been using me for made up emergencies a lot lately. I tried not to think about all the things that could be worse. I knew what kind of horrors could be waiting on these apps.
“I wish you would let this go so we can just enjoy this time together as a family,” I told her.
“Tell you what, give it until this time tomorrow night. If you still don’t think it’s worth it, you can delete everything.” I heard her rustling around and then the room was lit up by the flashlight on her phone. Her noise canceling headphones were around her neck and a pink sleep mask was pushed up to her forehead. “Please, do this for me and actually try.”
I put my hand up trying to block out some of the light burning my eyes. “Why are you so desperate for me to find someone?” I bit back a retort about how if she needed me out of her house that bad all she had to do was tell me.
“Because maybe if you find someone, I’ll finally get my chance. I’m sick of all the toxic losers I keep attracting.” She tugged the sleep mask down to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. “Break your curse so I can break mine,” she said before slamming her headphones back on top of her head.
I bit my tongue and rubbed my eyes. Emery never shared a lot about her dating life with me. I always thought she was happy with the casual dating life. She never seemed to see the same person for longer than a month or two after her engagement ended nearly three years ago. I had no idea there may be more to it. We were best friends, and while we had both kept secrets from each other in the past, I thought we were to the point of sharing things like that.
I opened the nightstand and pulled out the notepad branded with the cabin rental company. I tossed it onto her bed to get her attention knowing she wouldn’t be able to hear me over the headphones. The notepad bounced off the edge of her mattress and landed on the floor with the pages fanned out.
“What!” She snapped.
“I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk about it. What else are big sisters for?”
Emery stayed quiet long enough to make me wonder if she was ignoring me or just hadn’t heard me over her headphones. “Maybe another time,” she said a few minutes later.