Page 2 of One Happy Summer

I lean my head back against the chair and sigh, although it comes out as more of a hiccup. I’ve only got to make it through the summer. That’s my goal. Three months of hiding away on an island should be enough time for everyone to forget about my big faux pas or at least move on to something else. That’s my hope, or really, my need, because that’s when I start a big project—possibly the biggest of my career. So I need everyone to move on, for all the gossip sites to focus on something else by then so I don’t get dropped from the movie. And it’s a possibility, considering I’ve already been dropped from another project in the fallout. My agent, who has no idea I’m on a plane right now, guesses there might be more fallout to come. But they can’t cancel my contracts if they can’t find me, right? This is my plan, as faulty as it is. My entire career hinges on this idea.

Three months. I can do this.

Briggs

They say never putall your eggs in one basket.

Well, I’m here to tell you that they—whoevertheyare—are right.

“What can I help you find, Carl?” I ask the only handyman on the island of Sunset Harbor as he peruses the shelves of the bookshop, his brow pulled downward as he concentrates, sweat glistening on his forehead.

It’s too early in the morning to be dealing with this. He was knocking on the glass door of the shop before I came downstairs to open.

“I need a book about refrigerator repair, particularly for the Samsung brand,” he says, not bothering to look in my direction.

I push my glasses up my nose and will my eyes not to move to the ceiling, like they are straining to do, wondering if it’s possible for a man who’s been a permanent fixtureon the small island where this bookshop has been for many years to think he could find that kind of book here.

“Sorry, Carl, this is mainly a fiction bookshop,” I tell him. The Book Isle, my mom’s third child, opened its doors nearly thirteen years ago, not long after I turned fifteen.

“Yes, well, doesn’t hurt to ask,” Carl says. “You ought to consider carrying some nonfiction books.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that on to my mom,” I say.

“It’s good business practice,” he says with a confident nod.

“I’m sure refrigerator-repair guides will fly off the shelves.”

He nods in agreement, clearly missing the sarcasm.

I’ll pass it on for sure, but mostly as a joke. Marianne McMannus, an avid reader of fiction, bought the store for the sole purpose of housing the books she loves. Which means this quaint bookshop, with the soft lighting, the framed prints of vintage book covers on the walls, and the plush chairs placed thoughtfully around the space, carries mainly romance books, even though that hardly turns a profit. Of course, there’s a smattering of other books, especially the classics. My mom is a big fan—my sister, Scout, and I were both named after characters from her favorite books. I didn’t get a literary first name, but I did get a middle one. I rarely tell people what it is because I hate it. Most of my closest friends don’t even know. Not that I have many of those these days. If they were right about not putting all your eggs in one basket, then they—again, not sure whotheyare—were even more right about not going into business with friends. It’s just a bad idea. I know that now.

Carl lets out a large breath, his round belly moving up and down with the effort. “Well, I guess I better figure out how I’m going to fix this dang ice machine for the Vanderduesens.”

“You could maybe . . . check YouTube?” I say, giving him a little shrug of my shoulders.

He reaches up and scratches the side of his neck, just under his jaw, his eyes squinting. “Yeah, I guess. Do you think they have something like that on there?”

“I do,” I say.

Carl turns his face toward me, his gaze curious. “Say, Briggs, what are you doing back here anyway? I thought you started some big, important company in Miami.”

“It was Fort Lauderdale, actually,” I say, not sure why I bothered to correct him. I adjust my glasses, a tic I seem to get when I feel suddenly anxious.

He pulls his eyebrows together. “What’re you doing back here?”

Oh yes. The million-dollar question. It was the basket that held all my eggs, and when they broke, I had only one option, which was to come back to Sunset Harbor, my figurative tail between my legs. That was the first part of May, and here I am, one month later, still without a clue about what to do next.

I take a deep breath, feeling a sort of ache in the pit of my stomach, a pain that’s been showing up every now and then since I came back. A reminder of how lost I’ve been feeling lately.

“It . . . didn’t work out,” I tell Carl.

It was a combination of things that caused the inevitable demise of the start-up I’d been working to get off the ground with friends from college. But the main one was money. We just simply ran out of it.

I’m not sure why it rankles to admit this to the island handyman; it’s not like I was some small-town star, the boy expected to go places. I’ve mostly lived under the radar since moving here in the seventh grade when my mom married Keith McMannus, who’d been a Sunset Harbor staple for pretty much his entire life.

But maybe that’s why. Because I wasn’t someone people talked about growing up, and now I feel like they will be for all the wrong reasons: Briggs Dalton is a failure.

“Well,” he says, reaching out and patting my arm. “I’m sure your mom is happy to have you back.”

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