Page 62 of One Happy Summer

“Nice try.”

“Thwarted again,” she says, and I chuckle.

“How do you expect to keep me?” I ask, very interested in her answer.

“I don’t know,” she says. “It feels like there’s almost too much to navigate to make it work. But . . . I’d like to try if you would.”

I lean in and kiss her lips. It’s a quick kiss, but it’s my answer. I would like to try this with Presley. I have no idea what that will look like, what it all even means. But right now, with her snuggling up to me, and my heart fully taking a dive over that edge, I don’t need all the answers. Right now, I just need her.

Just as I’m starting to doze off with Presley in my arms, I hear her say, “Hey, Briggs, don’t sleepwalk into the ocean, okay?”

I chuckle and pull her even closer to me, and then we fall asleep under a starry sky.

Presley

I wake up toseagulls squawking, Briggs’s arms around me, and a familiar, yet annoying, clicking sound.

Blinking my eyes at the morning sun, I wonder what time it is. The clicking sound continues. Is it some sort of crab? The sound an alligator makes before an attack? The mating call of some sort of seabird?

“Briggs,” I say, shaking him, worried that we are possibly under attack by some kind of wild animal.

“Hmm?” he says, squinting his eyes against the rising sun.

My gosh, he’s adorable. I kind of felt dumb for asking him if I could keep him last night—it was on a whim, really. I hadn’t planned to do it. But I meant it. I want to see if we can make this work between us. I don’t know what it will be, but I want to try.

“Do you hear that?” I ask him.

“Hear what?” He wipes his eyes.

The clicking noise stops, and I rack my brain trying to figure out what it could be. It sounds so . . . familiar.

Then it hits me.

“A camera,” I say, panic quickly moving through my body.

“A what?”

“I heard a camera clicking. A shutter going off,” I say. I’ve gotten very used to the sound. I roll over onto my stomach, and peeking my head around, I try to find whoever it is that’s taking pictures. The clicking starts back up.

I spot a photographer, someone hiding behind a palm tree, or trying to, not even ten feet from us, a telescopic zoom lens pointed in our direction.

I swear under my breath. “Briggs, someone’s taking pictures of us,” I say, before finding the black sweatshirt I brought with me and quickly putting it on, tightening the hood around my face. I didn’t bring my sunglasses, because why would I bring them to sleep on the beach? But that was a rookie mistake. In LA, I have sunglasses with me no matter what time of day it is.

Briggs is shuffling around now, trying to find his shoes.

“What should we do?” he asks, the imprint of a pillow on his face.

“Let’s go back to my room at the resort,” I say.

He nods. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s just an idiot from this island.”

“Do you know anyone who happens to own a paparazzi-looking camera?”

“Not that I know of, but there are tons of bird watchers around here—maybe it’s one of them?”

“Regardless, they were taking pictures of us, whoever they are. I promise you, I know when I’m being photographed.”

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll just leave all this and I can come back later.”

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