She lets out a sort of frustrated-sounding breath. She’s still got the sunglasses on, but I imagine there’s a lot of irritated eye rolling and probably some brow pinching going on right now. Or maybe I’m projecting Scout onto her.
“I have a shirt, back at my place. You can borrow it, or you can just have it,” I tell her.
Her lips pull downward.
“Sorry.” I shake my head. “I’m not a weirdo. And my place, it’s not far. The bookshop you were just in, the one just over there. I live above it, and I can get you a shirt. A clean one. Well, I think I have a clean one.” What the hell am I even saying? What is it about this woman that gives me verbal diarrhea?
“Um,” she says, sounding flustered. She’s still holding the shirt away from her stomach, her lips pinched. I notice it’s dripping down her legs now. Perhaps I should offer her an entire new outfit. Not that I have shorts that will fit her. As it stands, she will be swimming in any of my T-shirts.
“Okay . . . yeah, that would be great,” she says.
“Really?” I say, with a sort of golden-retriever energy I didn’t know I possessed. I honestly didn’t think she’d agree.
“I’d appreciate it,” she says. “I’m staying at the resort, and I walked here because that was my only option.”
“You could have ridden a bike,” I offer.
“Well, I didn’t, so . . .” She stops talking and looks down at her soaked shirt.
“Right. Follow me,” I say. I abandon my phone at the bakery because I can get it later and I don’t want her to continue suffering with not one, but two cups of cold coffee I managed to drench her in. With an awkward little hand gesture in the direction of the bookshop, which is just around the corner of the square, we head that way together.
We don’t say much as we walk, and as we approach the door to the shop, I realize something.
“Hold on,” I say. “Actually, let’s go around back instead of through the bookshop.”
“Why?” she asks.
“There could be people in the shop, and I—” I stop talking and gesture toward her shirt.
“Oh, yeah, thank you . . . for . . . thinking of that.”
I don’t want to tell her that the real reason she shouldn’t go in the shop is because my mother is in there, and wet, coffee-soaked shirt or not, she might fangirl and ask to take a picture or something. I don’t know what my mom is capable of in this scenario. I’m sure we’ve had celebrities visit the island—we’ve even had some that used to live here—but none of this caliber.
I mean, if she is, in fact, Presley James. I’m still holding out hope that she’s not. Although the fact that she won’t remove those sunglasses leads me to believe it could be her. It just seems like a famous-person thing to do, not taking them off. Trying to hide from prying eyes. Not that I have a ton of experience with fame.
I lead her past the bookshop, around the post office, and to the back side of the row of buildings where the shop is situated. The back door is unlocked, and I open it as she follows me in and up the set of narrow, creaky stairs to the entrance of my current place of residence.
I open the painted blue door, but I freeze at the threshold. I didn’t really think this through, did I? She’s going to have so many questions.
I turn around quickly, shutting the door behind me, my hand still on the knob.
“Is there a problem?” she asks, her brown eyes searching my face.
Yes, I can finally see her eyes because she’s pushed her sunglasses up on her head. And now I can admit she is 100 percent Presley James. Presley James, who I made a fool of myself in front of at the bookshop, dumped two cups of iced coffee on, and am now about to show the apartment I’m currently living in.
This is just . . . great.
When Keith died, my mom decided that she would eventually sell the house after Scout moves out and live out her days above the bookshop. She’s been working on it ever since, making it into the bedroom she never had as a child.
I think I’d choose death right now. This might sound dramatic and definitely like something Scout would say, but I believe I’d rather die than have Presley James see this apartment.
“You know what, I’ll just bring you a shirt,” I say with a head bob toward the door. I feel good about this. It’s a solid plan. Good job, Briggs. Way to think on your toes. Relief rushes through my body.
“Oh,” she says. “Um, sure. But . . . I was kind of hoping to use the bathroom so I could maybe wipe off some of the stickiness.” She gives me a sort of sheepish-looking grin.
I give her one back because it’s my fault she’s in this predicament right now. We’re so close on this tiny landing that I can feel her body heat, and it’s giving me enough nervous energy to power this entire island. There’s no air-conditioning in the stairway, and it’s starting to feel stuffy.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, the relief sucking out of me in an instant, as if it were done by one of those high-powered vacuums you find at a car wash. “I should . . . uh . . . warn you about the apartment.”
“Okay,” she says skeptically.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, except it may be a little messy—I wasn’t expecting company and all that. But—” I stop and run a hand through my hair and remember my glasses are still hanging from my collar. “It’s my mom’s, as is the bookshop downstairs. All of this—living here and working here—is temporary for me.”
“No worries,” she says.
“It’s just that it’s, um . . . well, you know what? I’ll let you see for yourself.”
I open the door and walk in, Presley just behind me. She takes in a breath when she sees it.
“Oh . . . wow,” she says.
“Yeah,” I respond, looking around the space as she does, taking it all in like I’m seeing it through her eyes. There’s a small entry space and then directly in front is the galley-style kitchen. Off to the left is a nice-size living room, where there’s a pair of my boxers I pray she doesn’t notice haphazardly just hanging from the arm of the gray couch.
“It’s so . . . pink,” she says.
“Well, I mean, the walls are pink, but the, uh, cabinets are purple, so that’s something,” I say, a hand directed toward the kitchen like I’m her tour guide. “It’s princess themed.”
She nods. “I gathered that, with the castle on the wall over there, and the pink frilly curtains on the windows.”
