Who We Could Be - Chelsea M. Cameron

One

Tessa

“I can’t believe you’re getting married in a month,” I said as I licked ice cream off my arm. Monty had wrapped my cone in a napkin, but that hadn’t stopped it from dripping on me. “Shit.” Now it was on my shorts. The white ice cream looked like cum.

“Oh my god, you’re hopeless,” Monty said, pulling a wet wipe out of her purse and attacking my face.

“Stop it, I can do it myself,” I said, trying to slap her hand away, but only succeeding in flinging the rest of my ice cream onto the grass. “Seriously?!” I was having bad luck with ice cream today.

“I’ll get you another one,” she said, but didn’t cease wiping me down. I glared at her the whole time, but I knew fighting would only make it worse. Plus, I didn’t want to walk around with a sticky face.

“There,” she said, sitting back and contemplating her own ice cream, which was in a bowl with the cone stuck on top. Less messy.

Monty didn’t like mess, which was bizarre considering that she’d been my best friend since we were five, and I have always been a walking disaster.

I made a growling sound at her to show my displeasure at being cleaned off like a small child, but she just laughed and used my shoulder to push herself off the picnic table and went to order another cone for me. I scrubbed the ice cream off my shorts with a napkin, and then pulled Monty’s ice cream closer and grabbed a spoon.

Monty came back and handed me the cone, but I wouldn’t look at her face.

“Really?” she said as I swallowed the last mouthful.

“It was melting. I had to save it,” I said, pointing at the empty bowl.

“Fine, then I’m eating this one.” She grabbed the bowl and threw my replacement cone in it, holding it away from me.

“No, that’s not fair!” I reached, but she was wily and slid away as families and groups of people at the other picnic tables stared at our shenanigans.

Monty held her hand out to stop me. “Cin, I literally bought this. It’s mine.” She knew she had me when she used that nickname. It had originated from the word “cinnamon,” a nod to the color of my hair and the fact that I had gotten the spice confused with the word synonym in first grade and she never wanted me to forget it.

“Fine,” I said, crossing my arms and sitting down.

“Are you going to pout for the rest of the day?” She sat down next to me. A few strands of her dark hair had escaped the messy braid that lay on her shoulder.

“Maybe. I’m thinking about it,” I said.

Monty sighed and held the spoon out to me. “You can have a few bites.”

I looked at the spoon.

“Do I need to qualify what amount counts as a bite, or can you just be an adult for five seconds?” she asked, eyes narrowing from underneath an enormous hat. I was the one who should probably be wearing a hat like that, with my paler skin and freckles, but it looked better on her anyway. I wasn’t a hat person.

“No, I can be an adult.” I took three reasonable bites and handed the bowl back to her.

“Thank you.”

The diamond on her left hand caught my eye as she finished off the rest of the ice cream and nibbled on the cone.

“Are you ready? To be married and shit?” I asked. She hadn’t answered me earlier.

“I’m as ready as I can be, I suppose. How much can you really prepare?” she said, before getting up and throwing our trash away. That was probably all she was going to say on that subject.

I looked down at my own left hand, where a ring should be. Where a ring would be if I wouldn’t fuck up and lose Gus’s grandmother’s diamond ring that he’d slid onto my finger on New Year’s Eve of this year.

I’d asked him if it was okay if I didn’t wear it because I was so afraid of something happening to it. Right now it was safe and snug in my mother’s jewelry box. Gus said he didn’t care if I wore it, so that was good enough for me. Maybe he could get me a cheap band when we eventually got married. Whenever that would be. I had to get through Monty’s wedding in one piece first.

“You ready?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“Yeah.” I looked up from my ringless hand.

Monty