Page 9 of One Happy Summer

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 sunglasseson 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 completelysoaked 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’sdripping 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.

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