Before Levi Summers yanked my application.
“I’m sorry,” she says, making a pained face while holding up a hand to stop me, “but Ms. Cox canceled all her appointments this week. Her daughter is in the hospital.”
“Oh no,” I say.
“Do you have her email address?”
“I think I had her card”—I did not—“but if you could give it to me again … ?”
She thumbs through something on her desk and hands me a business card. “There you are. You can just email her and ask her when she wants to reschedule. Give her a bit to respond. She’ll be catching up for a while. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course,” I say.
The receptionist nods once and smiles. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon,” I say, feeling weirdly dismissed.
Once I’m outside the building, I feel a little disappointed yetalso hopeful. I have a business card and an email address. I’ll just wait a few respectable days for this poor woman’s child to get out of the hospital, then boom. Email her and request a meeting to talk about reconsidering me for the internship that I’mdefinitelynot too young to get.
No one got anything by not asking for it. Right?
Unless this Nina Cox woman has seen the nude photo. Or heard that I was taken to the police station,ugh… Feeling 50 percent less confident, I pocket the business card and head around the corner of theCoast Lifeoffices.
I could go back home. That’s what I tell myself … another lie. I feel my nerves get a little twitchy, and I slow my gait in an attempt to calm myself as I pass by a pair of tourists on a park bench, spooning frozen lemonade into their mouths.
Right now? I’m just a narrow private parking lot away from the scene of my crime.
Summers & Co.
There it is, all boarded up with plywood. My stomach plunges several stories and churns sickeningly.
The side parking lot has been taped off and closed to the public. I think it’s normally where the store valet-parks cars, but right now a lone person in jeans and a tight black T-shirt crouches over freshly painted white parking-space lines, paintbrush in hand. I’d recognize that dark, messy hair and aura of unapproachability anywhere.
Churn. Churn. Churn …
Clutching my portfolio, I pick my sick stomach off the ground and drag my feet over to the taped-off parking lot, then I stand there for a moment and watch Lucky. He’s swearing to himself—or to the paintbrush. Saying really foul, blasphemous things. I only catch half of what he’s mumbling, but wow. It’s remarkably profane—a skill I always admired about him, but right now, I’m intimidated. He’s not in a good mood. I should go. Like, now.
Midbrushstroke, his arm stills. He stops swearing, and before I can take my portfolio and run for the hills, his head slowly lifts.
I raise one hand. “Hi.”
“You know,” he says, sticking the paintbrush into a can and pushing to his feet. “I thought to myself, hey Lucky? What could make this worse? And the answer is, an audience. But not just any audience. Josie Saint-Martin, looking all fancy. Did you dress up for me?”
“I should leave,” I say, pointing vaguely the way I came.
“Don’t go. You’ll miss the best part of the show. Any minute now, the store manager will walk out here to judge my work and find me wanting.” He approaches me and stops in front of the line of yellow tape, brushing dirty hands on his jeans. His black T-shirt is splattered with white paint and even tighter up close. I didn’t realize he was so muscular these days. I mean, goodGod. Is that from working in the boatyard? I’m not sure why that bothers me so much … why I’m even noticing it. I wish I wouldn’t.
“Never mind,” I tell him, a little agitated. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“Oh no. Stay. The loss of my dignity in a public space is so very special,” he says, kissing his fingers like a cartoon chef. “Must-see. You’ll love it. Which is, I assume, why you’re here, to wallow in my misery.”
Anger heats my chest. “You know what?” I say, pointing a finger at him. “You’re kind of a jackass.”
He’s surprised by my outburst. Then his mouth turns upward, dimpling at both corners. “You’re just figuring that out now?”
Huh. Hold on. He’ssmiling? Like, not sarcastic-smiling. Okay, maybe a little sarcastic, because he’s definitely smirking at me. But it’s more playful than mean. And there’s something else there … something different that I haven’t really seen since I’ve been back in town.
I think he’s … happy.
