“You plan to move in with your dad.”
God, he’s nosy. “Maybe. If he’ll have me as his apprentice.”
Lucky makes a funny face. “If?Jesus, Josie. You’re his daughter.”
“So? Just because we share blood doesn’t mean I should get special treatment.”
“Suppose not,” Lucky says, but he doesn’t look convinced.
“I don’t want a handout,” I say, feeling like I have to explain myself. “I want to earn it and prove to him that I’m worth taking on after I finish high school next summer.”
“Like, how?”
“Like, by building up my portfolio. And … I was … hoping to get a photography internship at a magazine.”
“Magazine?” His brow lowers. “You mean …Coast Life?”
“You know it?”
“Only magazine in town. Started up a few years ago.”
Oh.
“Had no idea they offered an internship,” he says.
“Shadowing the photographer who’s shooting Regatta Week at the end of summer,” I confirm. “I think it’s the only photography internship in the area, so getting it would be a huge deal for me. My dad would really respect it,” I tell him, feeling a little despondent but unable to admit that I lost the internship already.Because I’m too young.
“Hey, Regatta Week is a big deal for everyone with status in Beauty. More money is blown in one pointless weekend than on entire wars, and nearly no one gets killed, so hey. Good luck with snagging that, if that’s the kind of thing your dad will respect.”
I think he’s looking down on the internship. Pretty sure.Al-l-lmostpositive.
“And I guess it confirms what I suspected,” he adds.
“What’s that?” I say.
“It’s just how it was before,” he says, eyes darkening. “Don’t get too attached to Josie Saint-Martin because she’s just passing through.”
Okay, fair …
But it also feels a little bit like a punch to the gut.
A shout snaps our attention to the French doors of the pool house. Someone’s fighting. Not the kind with fists and punching. The kind with name-calling and crying. Normally, that would be exactly the sort of drama I would try to avoid, but I recognize the tenor of one of the muffled voices beyond the paned doors, and my pulse goes wild.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
I push out of my seat, rush to the pool house, and swing open the doors. A crowd of gawkers cranes their necks away from a big-screen TV to see what’s transpiring across the open room. A couple is arguing near the kitchenette area. Half of that couple is my cousin.
“Just leave me alone!” Evie’s shouting across a granite kitchen counter littered with plastic party cups and half-eaten plates of catered food. Tear tracks stain her cheeks. She’s not crying now, but she has been recently. Now she’s just angry.
And the object of her anger is a very tall, very muscular guywith cropped blond hair and intense eyes. His crimson Harvard Crew T-shirt stretches over shoulders broad enough to hold up the world. “You’re the one who showed up at my cousin’s house after breaking up with me,” he shouts back, aggressively pointing at her over the counter. “You’re sending me a lot of mixed signals, Evie.”
Jesus.Thisis Adrian Summers?
“Here’s a signal for you,” she says, holding up her middle finger. “Leave me alone.”
As she stomps around the counter, he drunkenly calls to her, “So typical. You Saint-Martins are a three-ring circus, you know that? Diedre’s the world’s greatest hypocrite. Your mom’s a sociopath. You’re an emotional seesaw. And now Wild Winona, the Whore of Babylon, is back in town, along with her little mistake, the amateur photographer.”
I make a noise, and his attention slides from Evie to me.
