4. Chapter 4
Briggs
“Briggsy,” my mom says, looking up from her phone where she’s been searching images of Presley James for proof. If it is her, the entire island will know by tonight—she’ll make sure of that. “Can you run down to the bakery and get me an iced coffee?”
“Sure,” I say, having just had the thought that some fresh air would do me good. Somehow Marianne has always been able to read my mind, generally when I don’t want her to. She knew right away when things had gone south with the start-up in Fort Lauderdale. I’m not sure how she does it.
“Oh, and let’s be daring today . . . How about one of those cookie-croissant thingies,” she says, smiling brightly before her eyes move back to her phone, a finger moving up her screen as she scrolls .
“Sounds good,” I say.
The bell above the door rings as I exit the establishment that my mother has aptly named The Book Isle and walk down the street toward the bakery, taking my fogged-up glasses off my face and hanging them on the collar of my shirt. Freaking humidity.
I pass the pet store, a tourist shop, the candy store, and the bank before turning the corner toward the bakery. I look to my left and see the top of someone’s head bobbing up and down across the square—curly hair under a massive visor. I can’t see who she’s talking to, as the fountain’s blocking whoever it is, but I recognize that hat. It belongs to an older lady, newer to the island, I think. I can’t remember her name, but she was in the bookshop last week and was quick to offer a lot of unsolicited advice. Don’t you think that chair would look better over there? You really should get some sort of air freshener in here—it smells like books. There was more, but I sort of tuned her out, especially after the book-smell comment. I’m pretty sure that’s a universally loved scent.
Best of luck to whomever she’s talking to. Or perhaps she’s talking to herself, offering unwanted opinions.
The small downtown area is pretty serene today, not a lot of people out and about. I forget how quiet it is on the island during the summer months. It’s more touristy in the late fall and especially during the winter when people are dying to get out of cold weather. Spring can be pretty busy too, and then around the end of May it all sort of dies .
I’m assuming it’s because people think that, like most of Florida, it gets unbearably hot and humid here. But what they don’t know is Sunset Harbor gets a lovely sea breeze from both sides, which keeps the island kind of perfect during the summer. Still hot and humid, but nothing like you’d find on the mainland. It’s probably a best-kept secret around here, and for the most part we hope to keep it that way. It’s nice to take a break from all the tourism we get during the rest of the year.
I open the door to the quaint bakery that is decorated like you’d expect for a shop that sells a variety of pastries and coffee on an island—various shades of blue on the walls and framed pictures of seagulls and watercolor paintings of seashells.
My senses are immediately filled with the smell of baking bread mixed with coffee and other sugary confectioneries. Is there a person in the world that hates this smell? I doubt it.
“Briggs.” A bright-eyed woman named Amparo smiles when she sees me. She’s standing behind a large metal table, rolling out some dough. She reaches up and swipes her brow with the back of her gloved hand, leaving a small trail of flour. There’s also some on her T-shirt and some sprinkled in that nearly black hair of hers, which is pulled up into a bun atop her head.
“Hey there,” I say, giving her a gentle smile .
“What can I get for you?” she asks with a slight Mexican accent, walking up to the bakery case which is full of different kinds of breads and pastries.
“Can I get a couple of iced coffees, and one of these croissant-cookie things?” I ask, pointing to the top shelf of the glass-covered case.
She nods, removing her plastic gloves. “Just give me a minute,” she says.
I take a seat at one of the small round tables and pull out my phone to see a missed text from Jack. My shoulders slouch of their own accord. Anytime I get a text from Jack—one of the friends I started AssistGen with—I feel something dark in the pit of my stomach. I’m using the term friend loosely; I have no idea where I stand with Jack. And based on the argument we had before I left town, I’m thinking it’s not a good place.
Jack: Let’s get on a call tomorrow
I let out a breath, my cheeks puffing out with my dramatic exhale. I’ve been mostly avoiding Jack since I got back to Sunset Harbor. The way I see it, there’s not much for us to talk about. Not unless he’s figured out a way to get some funding. And hopefully he’s not trying to get ahold of me to tell me that we owe more money, because that would not bode well for my current circumstances, working only for room and board at my mom’s bookshop .
I stare at my phone screen for a bit before clicking out of my messaging app and setting it down on the table. Every time I get a text from Jack, I feel a pang of hatred for my phone. I wish I lived in a time when people weren’t so accessible.
“Here you are,” Amparo says from behind the counter, two cups of iced coffee and a white paper bag folded over at the top in front of her.
“Thank you,” I say as I walk up to her. I pay for everything and then tuck the bag under my arm, and with a drink in each hand, I give her a little head bob and a smile before turning toward the door. Just as I go to use my hip to open it, someone else enters. It’s the opinionated lady.
She scrunches her nose.
“Can I help you?” Amparo asks, a smile on her warm, welcoming face.
“Yuck. You should consider some kind of air freshener in here,” the older lady says. “It smells like bread.”
Amparo lets out an uncomfortable-sounding chuckle, unsure if this woman is being serious or not.
I give her a nod, nonverbally telling her that I see and understand the crazy she’s about to experience before opening the door with my hip and walking out into the humid air.
It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight, and for a second I wish I had a pair of large-rimmed sunglasses on my face, ones like she-who-might-be-Presley-James was wearing.
Then I wish I hadn’t thought of her, as I get firsthand embarrassment over our interaction and my inability to act like a human.
My eyes adjust and I start my walk back to work, feeling the sun on my face and admiring the clear blue sky overhead. I wish I didn’t have to spend the day at the bookshop and could play in the water and wriggle my toes into the sand for a while, but unfortunately my bank account would dictate otherwise. How I’ll ever dig myself out of the mess I’m in is not something I like to think about, but it creeps into my head often, like a story I can’t seem to stop telling myself.
Maybe if Jack would stop texting me and reminding me. Stupid Jack. Stupid phone. Wait . . . my phone.
I curse under my breath when I realize that I’ve left my phone at the bakery. I spin around to head back to the store and end up running directly into someone.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” the woman screams because not only have I run into her, I’ve also spilled both cups of iced coffee all down her front.
And to make matters so, so much worse, it’s her: Possibly Presley James.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, averting my eyes from her shirt because I’ve just doused her with cold coffee and the shirt is completely soaked and it’s a bit . . . um . . . see-through. So much so that that I can see a perfect outline of her bra. Or, I could. If I were looking. Which I’m not.
“It’s so cold,” she says, holding a cross-body bag and also the plastic one full of books I sold her not that long ago in one hand, and attempting to pull the wet shirt away from her skin with the other. It makes a sort of squelching sound as she does.
“I’m just . . . so sorry,” I say, at a loss for what I can do for her. I have no napkins, or anything, on my person. I don’t even have a croissant-cookie thing to offer as penance because I dropped it on the ground in the shuffle.
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.”
I reach up and scratch my jaw, feeling quite awkward in this moment. But I’m just rolling with it at this point.
“The, uh, bathroom is fairy inspired, as in Tinker Bell,” I tell her.
“Perfect,” she says, her lips pulled up into a smile.
She seems to be taking this well, so I continue. “And the bedroom—which I’m just telling you for information, not because I’m planning on showing you,” I say, holding out my hands, palms facing toward her to show my innocence, “has a four-poster bed with draped pink ruffles.”
She sucks her lips into her mouth, I’m assuming because she’s trying not to laugh.
“You can laugh,” I tell her. “I get it. This is my mom’s childhood dream come to life, and . . . I get to live in it.”
Her inclination to laugh falls away. “Oh,” she says. “I kind of love that.”
I bobble my head side to side. “I mean, it’s great for my mom, but for me it’s . . . a little strange. ”
“I’m having a hard time picturing you sleeping in a frilly pink bed, to be honest,” she says, and I try not to read into the fact that she’s even picturing me at all.
“You know, it’s a very comfortable bed, actually.”
She lets out a lilting laugh. Melodious and light. I kind of like it . . . a lot.
“So, about that T-shirt,” she says.
I nod my head in little rapid movements. “Yes, sorry. I’ll go grab that for you. I’ll . . . be right back.”
I quickly walk through the living area while grabbing my boxers off the arm of the couch, hoping I was stealthy enough she didn’t notice. I really should keep this apartment clean for guests. In my defense, I haven’t had anyone up here since I moved back, save my mom and Scout.
I walk into the bedroom, which has a window with a view of the ocean, but right now it’s dark in here, since I never opened the light-blocking curtains this morning—they’re floral pink and match the drapery hanging from the bed, of course. I quickly go to my laundry basket and rifle through it, praying I find something usable. I throw each piece of clothing out in a sort of panicked rage and do a full-body sag of relief when, at the bottom, I find a clean white athletic tee. I grab it and exit the room, finding Presley waiting at the door when I open it.
“Here,” I say, holding out the shirt.
“Thanks.” She grabs it and gives me a soft smile .
I point at the closed door just behind her. “The bathroom is right there.”
“Great,” she says, turning to her left to grab the handle. “I’m excited to see the fairies.”
“I hope you enjoy them,” I say and give her my best pained look because that was a weird thing to say. “There are some clean washcloths under the sink.”
I briefly wonder if I should go in first, just to double-check that everything is okay in there. I may leave clothes around the place, but my mom taught me to always keep a clean bathroom, and I just cleaned it yesterday, thank goodness.
I hear the water turn on, and I stand there by the closed bathroom door for a bit before realizing I’m being unintentionally creepy right now. Like, what if she opens the door and finds me loitering here like some lost puppy? I should make myself scarce, and probably have a chat with myself about being cool.
If that’s even possible.