He looks up with wide eyes, startled to see me. But that’s quickly ousted by relief.
Nothing but peace on his face. Shoulders dropping, brow easing.
“ThankGod,” he mumbles, head lolling backward for a moment. Then he yanks thick gloves off his hands and starts to come toward me as a machine cools near his knees. “Is everything okay? What’s going on? Why didn’t you text me? I’ve been dying over here.”
“I’m okay,” I say quickly.
He stops and holds both gloves in one hand. His eyes crinkle as he squints at me. “Are you wearing the same clothes as yesterday? Where did you stay last night?”
I don’t answer him. I can’t get any words out. Because for a moment, it feels as if I’m not one whole person but a fractured being. There’s Wary Josie who’s trying to decide if Adrian could have been telling the truth, and there’s also a childlike Josie who would never in a million years even consider that Lucky could betray us. Trusting Josie melts at the sight of him. Trusting Josie feels joy seeing his grease-smudged face—my face … my boy?—and wants to run to him and fling her arms around his neck.
Trusting Josie is remembering all the things he whispered in the dark when we were tangled together in the dock house back on the island.
Before everything in my life fell apart.
He knows something’s amiss. I see the change ripple through him as if he’s a dog whose hackles are raising in defense. “Josie? What’s wrong?” he asks in a low, measured voice.
Glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one’s listening, I scan both the boatyard and the blue harbor for a moment, gathering my courage, and then turn back to him and ask, “Did you send the photo?”
He wasn’t expecting that. “Did I … what now?”
“The photo,” I say, feeling impatient. “Did you send it to Adrian?”
“Huh?” His face squinches up, and he shakes his head tightly. “Feels like I’m missing something. Gonna need more information … ?”
I can’t tell if he’s been intentionally obtuse or if he’s confused; either way, it’s frustrating. All this time, I just assumed he’d never lie to me, because it was Lucky. It’s so strange to stand here and try to judge whether he’s telling the truth—as if we’re on some kind of game show, and my ability to pick up on tiny clues is the key to my winning a million dollars or losing my sanity and happiness. It’s too much pressure, and I’m not good at it.
“Please don’t play dumb,” I tell him. “I think I’ve earned that much, at least. Some respect?”
His brows knit together. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“Talking about the nude photo of my mother. You know, the one my father took of my mom in college?”
“Hard to forget it,” he says impatiently.
“All this time, I’ve never been able to figure out where Adrian got it. He finally enlightened me.”
Lucky goes very still. “He told you where he got the photo from?”
“Adrian said he got the photo fromyou.”
His face puckers. Jaw clicks to one side. He pushes the welding helmet off the back of his head and tosses it across the work bay where it lands on the concrete floor with a loud bang. “Adrian Summers … the drunken dirtbag who threw a crowbar into my family’s offices, who could have killed my cat—” he says, pointing toward a black shape that lounges in the rafters of the bay, tail hanging low. “Who harassed your cousin and injured her in a car accident, and who told everyone your Photo Funder site was a secret trove of softcore pictures.ThatAdrian.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What do you have to say to that?”
He squints at me as if I’ve asked him what’s at the bottom of the ocean or why the sky doesn’t fall down.
Then I realize something I’d forgotten since the night I threw the rock at the Summers & Co department store window. “You thought that photo was of me.”
His eyes narrow. “Um … ?”
“When Adrian was flashing the photo around at the party, you thought it was a picture of me like everyone else did. You called him an asshole for showing it around. And then in the hospital after Evie’s wreck, when you and Adrian were snapping at each other, and he brought up the fact that you called him an asshole, you cut him off and told us all to stop arguing or the nurse would come in and kick us out.”
“So?”
