Page 71 of One Happy Summer

“What’s Presley James like?”

“Are you going to marry her?”

“Did you break her and Declan Stone up?”

“When is she coming back to the island?”

I turn to Scout, who’s smiling and watching, loving every minute of this queen bee moment she’s having. I give her a look, a nonverbal plea to help me out, but she doesn’t do anything to stop the chaos.

This is the first time I’ve had to field questions. No one else on the island has asked me—not one single person who’s come into the bookshop. Either word hasn’t spread to everyone yet or everyone still believes my mom. If that’s true, she might want to consider running for mayor. She could gaslight this whole community into doing her bidding.

It’s also possible she’s told people not to talk to me about it, spreading it around the island that I’m heartbroken. I hope that’snot the case. Even if it is, it definitely didn’t spread to this group of teens currently bombarding me with questions.

“Girls,” I say, holding up my hands to get them to stop. They all end their questioning at once. I let out a breath.

“To protect Presley’s privacy—”

They all moan at once, cutting me off, their shoulders falling at nearly the same time. Do they practice this?

I turn to Scout, giving her a questioning glare. What can I even say right now?

I clear my throat. “I’ll say this: I had a great time with Presley while she was here, and . . .” I pause, racking my brain for more to say, because right now I feel like I’m writing some generic online review. “And I wish her well.”

There. It was boring, but it’s the truth.

“But like, was she your girlfriend?” a girl with strawberry-blonde hair asks me.

“No, she wasn’t. We were just friends,” I reply, realizing belatedly that my bland answer wouldn’t be enough, because it never works on Scout. She always has too many follow-up questions.

“But did you love her?” another girl with nearly-black hair chimes in.

“I . . . well,” I hesitate, adopting a casual stance. “I don’t . . . think so.” This is a lie. There were definitely love feelings happening. At least for me there were.

“Did you ever hold her hand?” a girl with curly red hair and freckles asks eagerly.

“I did,” I confirm, and they sigh in unison. Is there some kind of manual for fourteen-year-olds that gets them all on the same page with this stuff?

“Did your heart feel like it was gonna burst out of your chest when she was around?” the girl with the nearly-black hair asks.

“Well, I—”

“Did you get sweaty palms and butterflies in your stomach?” the strawberry-blonde girl cuts me off.

“I think I probably—”

“Dude, you’ve got it bad,” declares the girl with the dark hair.

I’m not even sure what just happened. I’ve barely answered their questions and they’ve already diagnosed me.

“So, what went wrong?” asks the strawberry-blonde girl.

“It was a lot of things. She’s famous, and I’m not. And we live very different lives.” What am I doing? Why am I even telling them this?

“Those are just details,” the girl with the black hair says.

“They’re kind of big details, though,” I say.

“Just apologize and tell her you’re sorry,” the redhead says.

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