Roads To Love

Prologue

Four and a Half Years Ago

Around the garden in the center court of the Delaware Beaches High School, four best friends – Olivia Brooks, Elizabeth White, Lindsey Reed, and Melissa Bailey – set a piece of paper on a bench and held hands around the sheet. They had written them carefully on archival-quality paper that they’d picked up at the stationery store in town, and had picked up a very nice calligraphy pen to write it out on. They’d drawn straws to pick who got to write their little vow out, then they’d hashed out the exact wording before committing it to paper to be buried today, on the eve of their graduation. Together, they spoke out the words that they’d come up with as a group:

We the undersigned do hereby promise to continue the best friendship we started back in kindergarten. Having never failed each other yet, we will continue to be each other’s shoulders to cry on and the loudest cheering section for each of our successes. We swear to always be there for each other, just like the sisters we never actually had in our lives. If any of us ever is in need of the others, we will do everything we can to be there. No matter what circumstances, and no matter the physical distance between us, we will always have each other’s backs, and we will keep our vow to be each of our bridesmaids in turn one day in the future. We will always be able to turn to any of our sisters at any time of any day, and we will always remain the best of friends that anyone has ever seen.

Signed,

Liv Brooks
Liz White
Linds Reed
Lissy Bailey

The L Girls

After reading the letter they had written, the girls carefully dug up a spot in the corner of the garden and buried it, then placed some sand from Rehoboth Beach on top of it before replacing it with the dirt they’d moved. After wiping off their hands on a towel that the practical one, Liv, had brought, the ladies adjusted their gowns and put their mortarboard hats on. This miniature ceremony had taken them an extremely short amount of time, but it had felt like an eternity as they had recited their special words to each other. Now, they had to get going; they had a graduation ceremony to take part in.

When all four girls had their diplomas and had posed for the obligatory pictures for their families, the girls headed off to share dinner together at their favorite beachside diner. A lot of their classmates and friends were heading off to fancy dinners together, but the girls had planned this for as long as they could remember. This was their favorite place to hang out together, and the owners knew they’d be coming. Their families had understood, and to placate their wishes, they’d planned a giant dinner as one big family unit the next day to celebrate all together. It had been hard to talk some of them around, but eventually they had worn their parents down into realizing that this was the most important night for them, and that they couldn’t imagine spending it any other way than with just the four of them.

A drive down the main drag to celebrate their freedom later, the girls finally parked and headed into the diner. Dressed to the nines in their finest graduation wear, they took their usual booth and the owner came over with their regular orders already cooked and steaming hot. The staff had a surprise for them when they were finished with their main meals – they had a cake prepared and ready for their most loyal and favorite customers. Touched, the girls made sure to tip them well before they headed off to a bonfire on the beach that their classmates were throwing to finish off their celebrations. By the time the four best friends went their separate ways that evening, they knew that nothing would ever come between their friendships and that they would always be sisters, even if they didn’t share any DNA. Three of the girls had at least one brother, though Linds was an only child, but the bond that they had formed on that very first day of kindergarten was permanent and nobody had argued when they had insisted that they were sisters as the years passed by.

Each girl would be going her separate way for college to study different things – Liv was going to be taking communications classes in hopes of working for a newspaper, Liz was going to culinary school to hone the cooking skills she had been blessed with, Linds was going into tourism to run her own hotel or bed and breakfast one day, and Lissy wanted to major in English so that she could flesh out the little stories she had always come up with and turn them into real novels. The next four years would be the first time they were ever apart for more than just a week or two here and there, but they would always be just a phone call or text message away from each other.