“I’d say probably the most embarrassing Briggs story,” my mom keeps going, “was the time he sleepwalked to the neighbor’s house, went in through their back door and ended up on their couch. They were so confused in the morning, and so was Briggs. He thought he’d been kidnapped.”
“What? It was very jarring,” I say, trying to defend myself over the laughter.
“Poor Briggsy,” Presley says, reaching over and tapping my hand with hers. I’d hold it there if my family wasn’t watching. I miss being able to do that, just hold her hand.
“But you haven’t heard the best part,” Scout says.
“Hey,” I say to Scout. “You weren’t even alive when this happened.”
My mom shakes her head. “No, I was pregnant with Scout, actually. But the best part is that Briggs was in his tighty-whities.”
Presley snorts out a laugh.
“So, imagine our neighbors—the Parkers, who still live next door—waking up to find a sleeping Briggs in his tighty-whities on their formal sitting-room couch.”
“Can we be done now?” I ask.
“No way, Briggs Wilbur Dalton,” Presley says.
My mom and sister both snicker at that.
“I wish I had named him that,” my mom says. “I do love Charlotte’s Web.”
The subject changes from roasting me to favorite childhood books, thankfully, and after another round of drinks, my mom and Scout head home. I stay behind for a bit, chatting with Presley, purposefully sitting across the table from her and not next to her with my hand draped across the back of her seat and fingers playing with the ends of her hair like I’d rather be.
I sort of wish I’d never kissed her, only for the sheer fact that we could be sitting close together right now, holding hands, or back at my place snuggling on my couch. But now that we’ve crossed that line, we can’t go back.
I don’t regret it, though. It was everything I thought kissing Presley James would be. And I’d like to do it again. But it’s for the best we don’t. Even though I catch myself staring at her lips sometimes. Like . . . right now, for instance.
“What are you looking at?” Presley asks, a knowing grin on her face.
Well . . . crap.
“Nothing,” I tell her. “Nothing whatsoever.”
She leans back in her chair, the half-drunk piña colada on the table in front of her, the condensation on the glass beading and trickling down, leaving winding trails on the surface.
“I think we learned something today,” she says.
“And that is?”
“I’m terrible at volleyball.”
I chuckle and she smiles. “You’re not so bad.”
“And you’re a terrible liar. Still, I’ll give it a six out of ten.”
“Really?” My brows move up my forehead. “I’d have expected less.”
“I’m feeling generous today,” she says. “I’ll rate it higher if you tell me your middle name.”
I give her a closed-mouth smile, shaking my head. She will never let this go, nor will she probably ever guess it. “I’m honestly surprised you haven’t hired private investigators.”
She sighs. “I’ve considered it. But then I’d have to go online, and I’m staying out of that realm.”
“Speaking of which, I looked up your name and the movie this morning, and no news.”
She nods, an appreciative expression on her face. “That’s good.”
I weave my fingers together and place them in my lap. “Will it be bad if you lose the role?”
“It won’t be good,” she says. “It will set a precedent. I’ll stand to lose other contracts.”
“How many do you have?”
“Right now, I have three. I had four, but I lost one. Because of . . . the incident,” she says, leaning in and nearly whispering the last word.
“And they all film when?”
She shrugs. “I only have Cosmic Fury this year. Another shoot starts in January, and the other possibly next summer.”
Next summer. Presley has her whole life mapped out—she already knows what she’ll be doing a year from now. And I don’t even know what I’ll be doing at the end of this summer. I should probably start looking for a job or figuring out my next step. But I sort of feel paralyzed by it. Like I’ll make another wrong move or bad choice. Still, my bank account is pretty much demanding it right now.
She sits up, looking like she’s about to leave. “Walk with me on the beach?”
“Sure,” I say, getting up from my seat.
We walk through the still-hot sand, though the sun is no longer glaring down on it, and onto the wet sand where the waves have been breaking, then farther until our feet touch the water. I tuck my hands into the pockets of the basketball shorts I’m wearing as we start walking along the shore.
