I heard Waverly laughing, so that’s good. I’ll have to apologize to Tillie Jean later.
Probably.
She’ll likely forgive me when she hears why I did it. And I’m going to owe her an explanation.
A very long explanation.
I regularly tell people I grew up in Copper Valley but sometimes visit distant relatives in Iowa so that I don’t have to answer questions that I don’t want to answer. Tillie Jean and a few of my other closest friends know more of the truth now, but not the full truth.
Colored lights rotate over the museum door as I hit the code to let myself into the building. I don’t look back to see if Nigel’s watching me.
The noise from the crowd tells me a whole glitter bomb party has erupted.
I hope Nigel gets glitter in his eye.
That would be poetic justice.
Not nice, Sloane.
Fuck off, conscience, and let me have this one.
I slip inside and find the foyer empty.
MaybeSteveneeded to use the bathroom.
Why he couldn’t use a bathroom among the very nice portable bathrooms that feel like real bathrooms sitting in trailers on either end of Blackbeard Avenue and just off the other end of the square too, I don’t know, but maybe that’s why he’s here.
I head into the front room, which is full of artifacts about the pirate who ditched sea life to hide his treasure inland, thus founding Shipwreck over two hundred years ago. The Rock family had been keeping all of this stuff for literal centuries, and it’s a source of pride and joy for me to have it all displayed now.
Even in the relative darkness, with the room lit only by the gentlest glow from the illuminated light switches and the red exit signs, being around this much history is instantly calming.
Let’s be real though—being inside a locked building all alone, away from Nigel, away from having all of my lies exposed in front of the most famous people in the world, is also adding to the calming effect.
Even if I’m getting nervous about what I have to say to the man I’m looking for inside here.
I concentrate on inhaling a long, slow breath as I pass the shadows of a glass case holding a replica of Thorny Rock’s pirate ship that one of Tillie Jean’s great-uncles built. I stroll past the darkened silhouette of a painting that Tillie Jean herself painted of Thorny Rock pulling his ship into port in Norfolk back in the day. My shoulders relax and drop as I pass by the stand and case that I know holds a map depicting locations of sea battles that Thorny Rock waged to acquire his famous—and famously missing—treasure.
The museum has three open display rooms, plus a fourth that we’re slowly building for an interactive experience and a storage room where we have experts in occasionally to help us with restoration and preservation efforts. With Cooper and Waverly’s wedding being basically the biggest news on the internet in the history of history, there’s been a lot of interest in Shipwreck itself because of their carefully leaked wedding plans.
Tourism has increased something like five hundred percent over where it was last year, andThorny Rock’s treasurehas trended at least a half dozen times as a top search on Google in the past few months.
Everyone in the world wants to know everything about not just Waverly Sweet’s wedding to baseball’s most popular player, but they also want to know how they can find a treasure in said baseball player’s hometown.
All the extra attention is exactly why the whole town is locked down for the actual wedding today.
Once I verify that Davis Remington, the real former boy band member whose name is not Steve, isn’t in any of the display rooms, I head toward the little nook holding the bathroom, fully aware that stalking a man outside the bathrooms is weird.
Stalking a man outside the bathrooms to ask him to play along with a little charade that we’re engaged is weirder.
But if that’s what it takes to get Nigel to go home, to believe that this is real, then that’s what I’ll do.
Davis and I played darts at the Grog one night when I was a little tipsy. I’m pretty sure I let him win. I think. That night’s a little hazy thanks to the tequila—okay,veryhazy—but surely the fact that we played a single game of darts once will count for something. He’s even nodded to me a few times since then, like he’s acknowledging that he remembers that I’m…fun.
Or something.
I’m halfway to the bathroom when I hear something in a different part of the museum though.
It’s a squeak.
