It’s not a glamorous life, but it’s mine.
The crazy part is, while Presley was here and I was busy every day, it felt like it went by in a flash, but these last few days have felt like an eternity.
I feel a little bit like Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill, walking around in a bit of a fog after Julia Roberts’s character left, “Ain’t No Sunshine” playing on repeat in my head. Only there’s plenty of sunshine on this island. What I wouldn’t give for a gloomy and rainy day to match my mood.
I’ll just keep going through the motions like I have been, having superficial conversations with people who come into the bookshop, putting on my best fake smile. My mom knows I’m faking it, and she’s called me out on it a time or two, or three. I tell her what I tell myself: It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. And I will. I just need some time. Until then, I might be walking around like a fake-smiling zombie.
At least I know it wasn’t my mom or Scout who took those pictures. I never doubted them, but just in case—in case there was a tiny, minuscule chance—I asked them, and they denied it fully. And I believe them. But I guess the biggest piece of evidence is, there hasn’t been a mysterious influx of cash appearing out of nowhere.
I didn’t tell them that Presley blamed them, mostly to protect their feelings about her. I don’t know why I want to salvage their opinion of her, but I do. It would hurt them. Well, my mom would be hurt—Scout would want to exact revenge. As it stands, she’s already referring to her as Parsley, which makes me laugh every time. I think it’s best to keep all that from them. All they know is that things didn’t work out between Presley and me and she went back to LA. I think Scout was mostly upset she never got the promised Declan Stone autograph.
I wish I could find out who was behind the photographs. Not to throw it in Presley’s face, but . . . Okay, I would probably throw it in her face a little. But I’d like an answer, for my own peace of mind. It won’t fix anything; I’d just like to know.
“There you go, Carl,” I say, handing him a bag of refrigerator-repair manuals. They finally arrived after being delayed twice. Honestly, he could have ordered them off Amazon and they would have gotten here faster than they did from our suppliers, even if two-day shipping isn’t a thing on the island. But I appreciate the business.
He makes to leave but then turns back to me. “Did you ever find out if your mom is seeing anyone?” he asks me.
I shake my head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh” is all he says.
“You know, Carl, you could ask her yourself.”
His cheeks turn a dark shade of red. “Oh no, I don’t think I could do that.”
“Why not?”
“What if she rejects me?”
I don’t know much about Carl, just that he’s never been married and has lived on the island for most of his life.
“What if she does?” I ask him. “Better to try and fail than not try at all.”
He nods, his head moving up and down slowly as he appears to be taking in my words.
Maybe I’ve missed my calling, and I could be some sort of matchmaker for older men. I could help them navigate the dating scene.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll do that,” he says plainly, before exiting the shop.
Well, that was the shortest career I’ve ever had.
I do need a career, though. And I’ve started working on it. During the slow times at the shop, I’ve been fixing up my résumé and looking at what jobs are out there. I’ve seen some decent possibilities.
I still need to call Jack and find out why he’s trying to get ahold of me. Even if it is to tell me we owe a bunch of money I don’t have. I can’t keep putting it off. I pull out my phone from the back pocket of my jeans, and search up his name in my contacts, but then I realize it’s almost time to close, and it’s a holiday. The call can wait one more day.
I don’t put the phone back, instead I scroll further down my contacts until I get to one: Presley Shermerhorn. I stop there and stare at it, my thumb just under her name. I put her real name in there because it made her more real to me. And it was real . . . wasn’t it? My feelings for her were real. Even though every day that goes by I wonder if I just got caught up in it, in some kind of summer romance. Maybe it was just one sided, but even as I tell myself this, I know it wasn’t.
What Presley and I had was a real, tangible thing. And now it’s over.
Tucking my phone back in my pocket, I walk over to the door of the bookshop and lock it, turning over the open sign, and then I begin working through the task list to shut the place down.
“Briggs!” Scout screams my name and waves, her voice carrying over the crowd and the local band, Mo and the Kokomos, playing a Beach Boys’ song. She’s always had a loud set of pipes, since the day she was born.
I walk over to her, trying for a genuine smile instead of my well-practiced zombie one, and most likely failing.
I realized something as I walked over here . . . I don’t want to be here. It’s true I knew that before heading over, but now it’s setting in that I really, really don’t want to be here. Everyone is smiling and dancing and having a great time, and I feel like I have a permanent rain cloud over my head. All I really feel like doing is kicking something.
But Scout doesn’t seem to care, or probably doesn’t even notice my hesitation, because she grabs me by the arm and drags me over to her friends, a group of girls dancing together.
“My brother’s here,” she says to them, a big smile on her face, and her friends all look at me at the same time and then start screaming and asking me questions, talking over themselves.
“What’s Presley James like?”
“Are you going to marry her?”
“Did you break her and Declan Stone up?”
“When is she coming back to the island?”
I turn to Scout, who’s smiling and watching, loving every minute of this queen bee moment she’s having. I give her a look, a nonverbal plea to help me out, but she doesn’t do anything to stop the chaos.
This is the first time I’ve had to field questions. No one else on the island has asked me—not one single person who’s come into the bookshop. Either word hasn’t spread to everyone yet or everyone still believes my mom. If that’s true, she might want to consider running for mayor. She could gaslight this whole community into doing her bidding.
It’s also possible she’s told people not to talk to me about it, spreading it around the island that I’m heartbroken. I hope that’s not the case. Even if it is, it definitely didn’t spread to this group of teens currently bombarding me with questions.
“Girls,” I say, holding up my hands to get them to stop. They all end their questioning at once. I let out a breath.
