24. Chapter 24
Briggs
“Oh, you look so pretty, Mom,” Scout says when my mom walks into the bookstore from the back entrance.
“Thank you, Scout,” she says, doing a little spin in a summer dress with a red floral print.
“You do look great, Mom,” I say, standing next to the register.
“But ew,” Scout says from the other side of the counter. “You’re going on a date with Carl.” She scrunches up her face like she just drank straight lemon juice.
My mom rolls her eyes. “Nothing will come of it, but it’s kind of fun to be noticed.”
I refrain from reminding her that those were the same words she said to me when she went on her first date with Keith. But I don’t want to freak out Scout. Plus, I don’t think anything will actually come of her and Carl—I’ve seen them together, and Carl cannot hold his own with the likes of Marianne McMannus. Keith, on the other hand, was a great match for my mom, and even my eleven-year-old self could see that.
“Where’s he taking you?” I ask.
“The restaurant at the Belacourt Resort,” she says, holding up a pinkie finger like she’s fancy.
“Gross,” Scout says, not impressed.
“I expect you home at ten thirty,” I say, making a joke. But honestly, she really does need to be back by then. There are not a lot of lights on this island. What if she falls into a ditch?
Wow. I’m going to nail parenthood.
Not that I’m going to be a dad anytime soon. But parenthood makes me think of marriage, which makes me think of Presley. I don’t know why, but that’s where my brain goes. Maybe it’s because how I feel about her is how I hope I’ll feel someday about whomever I marry: Happy to see her, always wanting to be around her, thinking of her every waking moment, and dreaming of her when I go to sleep.
Trying to get over Presley has been hard. Especially when Scout keeps shoving pictures of her in my face. Mostly paparazzi shots of her walking down a street, sunglasses on, her hands in the pocket of a hoodie.
I keep telling myself it all worked out how it was supposed to with Presley, that it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe if I say it enough, someday I’ll believe it .
I started working yesterday, which has been a much-needed distraction. I met with Jack first, and the two others we were previously working with are on board as well, but won’t be joining us until next month. So, we discussed our plan of attack, and then I spent the rest of the day coding some of the features for the software, fixing bugs that were never fixed the first time around, and testing the program to make sure it runs smoothly. It felt incredible to be working again. To be doing something I enjoy.
“Okay, Carl will be here any minute,” my mom says, coming out from behind the counter to the main area of the shop. “How do I look?”
“Mom,” Scout says, her voice annoyed. “We already said you look pretty.”
“I know, but tell me again.” She fans herself with her hand. “Ahhh, I’m nervous.”
“For Carl?” Scout asks, sounding appalled.
“Just to be doing this again,” my mom says, looking from Scout to me. “I never thought I’d be dating again.”
She gives Scout a sad smile, and Scout gives her one back, a moment of grief moving through the room like it often does, popping up in an instant.
My mom clears her throat. “What will we even talk about?”
“I bet he could go on and on about refrigerator-repair manuals,” I say, offering a bit of levity to the moment .
“Stop,” she says, but she’s laughing. She turns to my sister. “Scout, you be home by nine, okay?”
“Nine?” Scout protests. “I’m fourteen, not ten. Everyone at the party will make fun of me.”
“Fine,” our mom says. “Nine thirty.”
“That’s not much better.”
“Or you could not go to the party at all,” Mom says, a stern look on her face that both Scout and I know well.
“Fine,” says Scout. “I’ll be home by nine thirty.”
The bells on the door ring as it opens, and as a family, we all turn our heads toward it, expecting to see Carl, but instead we see . . .
“Presley,” my mom says, greeting her with a sort of wobbly smile—like she’s not sure if she should be smiling, but also doesn’t want to be impolite.
“Hi,” Presley says, giving us all a little wave. She’s wearing a pink summer dress, a small purse over her shoulder. No hoodie covering her head, just sunglasses, which she slides up to rest on top of her head.
She looks amazing and I’m staring. I blink my eyes and look away, but they move right back to her.
“What brings you back to the island?” my mom asks her.
“I’m just here for today. Right now . . . this evening,” she stammers. “It took me longer to get here than I thought it would, and I have to take the ferry back tonight. I just came to talk to Briggs,” she says, before giving me a closed-mouth smile full of so much meaning.
“Well, okay,” my mom says, looking around for something. When she spots her purse on the counter, she grabs it and puts the strap over her shoulder. “Come on, Scout, let’s give Briggs and Presley some space.” She walks toward the door, waving at us before she opens it.
Scout has her arms folded as she follows my mom out the door, but as she passes by Presley, she gives her a dip of her head and says, “Parsley,” before walking out the door after my mom.
The door shuts behind them, and Presley turns to me. “Did . . . she call me Parsley?”
I nod, just once. “She did. She’s . . . protective.”
Presley smiles, but then her face falls. “You told them what I said . . . about the pictures.” She says this as a statement, not a question.
“Would it bother you if I did?” I ask, confused.
She wraps her arms around herself, rubbing her upper arms with her hands. “No, I did say it, after all. It just doesn’t seem like something you’d tell them.”
I look away then. “Well, you’re right. I . . . didn’t tell them,” I admit, and then push my glasses up the bridge of my nose.
She gives me a rueful grin. “I’m glad you didn’t, because I was wrong,” she says.
“You were . . . wrong? ”
“Yes.” She nods. “I was incorrect in my assumptions.”
“How could you know that?” I ask her.
“It’s sort of a funny story, actually. I ran into a mutual friend of ours. Or, not really a friend.”
I pinch my brows together, not following.
“The woman—the strange, demanding one that we’d see around town. The one with the big hat.” Presley mimes a large hat on her head with both hands.
“I don’t . . . understand,” I say. What does that strange woman with the strong sense of smell have to do with the pictures?
“I know this is weird,” she says. “But as it turns out, she’s a paparazzo.”
“What?” I say, not believing her.
“Apparently she came to the island to check up on Noah Belacourt and then happened to run into me.”
“How . . . but . . . what?”
“I know,” she says. “I didn’t believe it either. But I saw her in LA, snapping pictures, and she admitted to it.”
I twist my lips to the side. “But how did she get the pictures of us in my mom’s backyard?”
Presley nods. “I had the same question. She said she’s been doing this awhile and it’s easy to make friends with people, so I’m guessing it was from a neighbor’s yard?”
“But she was never carrying a camera with her. ”
“She hides it and uses a remote. It’s a magic trick.”
“Whoa,” I say. “That’s . . . really weird.”
“It is. Anyway, her name is Deborah Voss, and I’ve filed a restraining order against her.”
I tilt my head. “That sounds like a smart plan.”
“So, she was the one who took the pictures, all of them except the ones of us on the beach that morning. She doesn’t know who that was. She made a pretty penny and plans to retire in Boca Raton.”
Presley smiles as she looks down, but then she looks up at me.
I chuckle. “That’s . . . wow.”
“I know.”
There’s silence in the room now, both of us looking anywhere but at each other. Presley hugs herself again, and I fiddle with my glasses.
“So, that’s what you came to tell me?”
She nods.
“You . . . could have just called,” I tell her. “You didn’t need to come all the way out here to tell me.”
“I’m working in Florida right now, actually. On Cosmic Fury .”
“Really? Where?”
“Ocala,” she says. “And we had the day off because of rain, so I thought I’d come tell you in person. ”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” I tell her, and I mean it. “It’s good to see you, Presley.”
It’s actually heart-achingly hard to see her, to be honest. I know I missed her, but I don’t think I realized how much until right now. How sort of painful it feels to be in the same room and not be able to touch her or wrap my arms around her. Or kiss her.
“I also was hoping that maybe—” She stops talking, a hand now fiddling with the strap of her purse.
“Yeah?” I ask, wanting her to keep going, dying to know what she has to say.
“I was hoping you’d forgive me?” Her eyes fill with tears.
“Of course,” I say. “Done.”
She laughs then, a sad-sounding one, and a single tear falls down her cheek and onto her chin.
“I appreciate it,” she says. “I also kind of hoped maybe we could see each other again, sometime?”
“Absolutely,” I tell her, honestly. “I’d love that.”
She takes a tentative step toward me. “I’m saying this all wrong. I don’t just want to see you once in a while. I would like to see you on a regular basis.”
“Oh,” I reply, realizing what she said, realizing what she’s really trying to tell me. I run a hand through my hair.
“I’ve missed you a lot,” she says. “More than I’ve ever missed anyone, actually. And had I not messed everything up so badly, my hope was that we would try this out. Try us out. And maybe see where it goes.”
“I saw pictures of you with Declan Stone,” I tell her.
“Yes,” she says.
“I thought you didn’t want to do that kind of stuff anymore.”
“I don’t,” she says. “That was to keep the paparazzi away from you.”
“Because you didn’t want them to see me?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t think you’d want it.”
“You’re probably right,” I say.
She takes another step toward me, and I stay still, standing by the counter.
“So, do you think maybe we could try?”
I stare at her for a beat before looking away, toward the bookshelves. I picture her standing there wearing her glasses, in that tank top and shorts all those days ago, smiling at my stupid jokes.
I look back at her. “You’re amazing, Presley, and I loved spending time with you.”
“Loved?” she says, shaking her head.
In the movie Notting Hill , I was annoyed with Hugh Grant’s character when he turned Julia Roberts away. But now that I’m having my own version of that moment, Presley with me in a bookstore, telling me she wants to be with me, I sort of get it. It feels . . . hard. Like too many insurmountable things in our way. And like Hugh Grant, I, too, feel like my heart couldn’t take another round of breaking from Presley James.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” I finally reply, running a hand through my hair. “But . . . maybe it’s not a good idea.”
“Oh,” she says, her eyebrows moving up her forehead. She wasn’t expecting that answer from me.
“No, I mean—” I let out a breath. “The company I started, AssistGen, we have some investors and we’ve just started things back up. I’m going to be really busy with that for the foreseeable future, and you, well, you’ve got to get back to your big, career-making movie. Callis the warrior.”
“Ye-yeah,” she stumbles, her eyes brimming with tears again. “You’re right. But you know, Briggs, those are just details.”
“They’re kind of big ones,” I say. “You’re a big movie star, and I’m a software engineer.”
She takes another step toward me. “Don’t forget, though, I’m just a girl, standing in front a boy, asking him to love her.”
I cock my head to the side. “Did . . . did you just use the line from Notting Hill on me?”
“I’m sorry,” she says on a sob, more tears falling down her face. “I didn’t know what to say. I don’t like your answer, Briggs. I don’t want to accept it.”
“I don’t like it either,” I say. “But I think we have to.”
The next morning, it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop as I sit at the dining room table at my mom’s house, Scout and my mom sitting with me. I’ve just told them what Presley said yesterday evening after they left the shop, and how I turned her down. I still can’t believe I did. And I wish I had some settled feelings in my gut, like I made the right decision, but I don’t feel them at all.
I didn’t feel them after I told her it wouldn’t work, and I didn’t feel them when, before she left, she walked over to me and lifted up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek, and I definitely didn’t feel them when she walked out the door, the bells jingling as she did. Nor did I feel them as I tried to sleep last night and failed.
Which is why I came here this morning before the shop opened to have my mom and Scout confirm that I made the right choice.
“Briggs, you moron,” Scout says loudly, as if she couldn’t take the silence any longer. “You should have said yes.”
“You only want me to so you can meet Declan Stone,” I say.
“No,” she says. “He’s gross, remember? Well, I’d still meet him if I could. But you can’t say no to Presley James.”
“But I did say no,” I remind her, those feelings of unease swimming around again in my stomach.
“Well take it back,” she says. “That was a mistake.”
“Was it, though?” I ask my mom .
“Do you think it was?” she asks, doing that mom thing where you answer a question with a question.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You do know, you moron,” Scout says.
“Scout,” my mom chides.
Scout looks to my mom, holding a hand out toward me. “Well, he is. He’s clearly in love with her.”
“What do you know about love?” I ask. “You’re fourteen.” But then I think back to her group of friends asking me questions at the dance. Maybe she knows more than I think.
“Do you love her?” my mom asks.
I put a hand through my hair. “I think I do.”
“See?” Scout says. “And then he went and messed it all up.”
I stare at her and then my eyes move to my mom as my brain begins to process what I’ve done.
“I think Scout’s right. I messed it up,” I finally say.
My mom shakes her head. “Briggsy, you can fix this.”
“How?” I ask her.
“Don’t you have her number? Call her,” she says.
“Should I call her?”
“Yes,” they say in unison.
“Or,” Scout says, “you could find out where she’s filming her movie and go tell her yourself.”
“Oh yeah,” my mom says, pointing to Scout. “I like that plan. Do you know where she’s filming? ”
I rack my brain. “It’s in Florida,” I say.
“That’s perfect,” Scout says.
“Ocala,” I say, suddenly remembering.
“Where in Ocala, though?” my mom asks.
I fall back against my seat. “I have no idea. Maybe I should just call her.”
“No,” Scout says. “Leave it to me.”
A few hours later, after getting some work done because I couldn’t exactly skip out when we’re only a few days in, I’m on the ferry toward the mainland.
Scout found out the filming location by cross-referencing social media with permits that were pulled in Ocala. I did have a quick but stern conversation with her about stalking, but it’s thanks to her that I’m heading there today.
I have no idea how I’ll find Presley once I get there, or if I’ll even be able to get onto the set, but I’m going to try my best.
Scout was right about not calling her. I need to chase her, especially after having turned her down so terribly last night. She needs to see that I’m going to work at this, however I can.
Maybe she’s changed her mind since she left yesterday. Maybe I’m too late. But I have to try.