“We’re good.”
“Well, I’m glad we got that worked out,” he says.
“Yeah, me as well.”
I’ve stopped pacing now and am standing in the middle of my mom’s childhood-dream living room waiting for the ball to drop, for him to now tell me we owe a butt-load of money, and I’ll have to figure out how to come up with it. Maybe I will have to sell a kidney after all.
He takes a breath. “So, now for the real reason I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”
Ah yes, here it comes. My stomach drops to the floor.
“What’s that?” I ask him.
“It’s taken me a while, but I’ve gotten us some investors,” he says. “For the software.”
My stomach immediately pulls itself off the floor and is now doing a spinning, butterfly kind of thing.
“You . . . got investors?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s a good amount of money too, enough to get things off the ground. Pick up where we left off.”
“Are you . . . serious?” I ask, the pacing picking back up as I walk from the kitchen to the living room. Back and forth, adrenaline coursing through me.
“Totally serious,” he says. “So, what do you say, Dalton? Should we get the band back together?”
I’m feeling sky high when I make it down to the bookstore where my mom and Scout are working, my mind still reeling from the conversation with Jack.
It turns out that he never gave up on the project. He’s been working this whole time to try to fund the company, and he did it. We have enough to make it really work this time and to pay ourselves a decent salary for now. It seems almost too good to be true. My kidneys are happy I get to keep them.
This whole time, Jack was working, making things happen, even after all the things we said to one another before walking away from the business, and I was just . . . sulking on an island. Of course, there was the distraction of Presley there for a while, but the job thing and the nearly empty bank account were always in the back of my mind, looming there.
It makes me wonder what that says about me. I didn’t even think of what else I could have done when we used up the money. I just walked away. Do I give up too easily? Did I . . . do the same thing with Presley?
I guess it doesn’t matter now, not for the work thing at least, because thanks to Jack, I’ve got a job. I’m working again. We don’t have offices yet, so for now I’ll stay on the island and work from the apartment while we iron things out. But I’m getting paid, and I get to do something I love and hopefully finish what we started this time.
“Check this out,” Scout says, shoving her phone in my face the second I walk into the shop. She’s got a feather duster in her hand and not her hair this time.
I look down at the phone and see a picture of Presley kissing Declan Stone on the cheek. She looks beautiful in a black dress, and the way the camera captures her, it looks like a genuinely happy picture of two people in love. Even the caption above it says, “Back Together at Last.”
“Looks like Parsley has moved on already,” Scout says, giving rolling eyes and duck lips to the image on her phone. “How could she go back to gross Declan Stone?”
“Gross? Didn’t you beg her for his autograph?”
“Ew,” she says. “Don’t remind me. I’m over him.”
I’m not sure I believe her, nor do I think she’ll be taking his picture off her screen saver anytime soon.
“Maybe they’re together?” I feign nonchalance. “It doesn’t really matter.”
Does it hurt to see a picture of Presley with another guy? Not really. Not when it’s Declan Stone and I know there’s nothing going on there. It’s the picture of the game she told me she didn’t want to play anymore that bothers me the most. Was anything Presley said to me true? Does she go around telling every guy she spends time with that she wants to “keep” them?
“Well, I think she looks terrible in that dress,” Scout says.
I give her a side hug, which she squirms out of. “Thanks for having my back.”
“Enjoy it. It’ll probably be the last time.” She gives me a teasing grin.
“Last time for what?” my mom asks as she walks toward us. She’d been in the back of the store, organizing shelves for a shipment of books arriving later today.
I shake my head. “Nothing. But … I do have some news.”
“Oh?” my mom asks, her eyebrows moving up her forehead.
I tell her and Scout about my old job, and Scout gets bored about two seconds in and begins pretend sword fighting with the feather duster.
“Briggs, that’s amazing news,” my mom says, giving me a hug.
“So, I’ll be here for a bit longer, if that’s okay with you,” I ask her when she pulls away, already knowing what her answer will be.
“Of course,” she says. “I love having both my babies near me.”
“Mom, I’m not a baby,” Scout says, sounding irritated.
“It’s a figure of speech,” my mom says. “And you’ll always be my baby.”
“Whatever,” she says.
“So . . . ,” I start. “I won’t be able to work at the bookshop as much. I can still help, but I need to devote some time to working on AssistGen.”
