“Like a— you mean a girl?”
“Yes, babe. I’m sorry.”
I put the sunflower down. I picked it back up. I put it down again. “How long?”
“Two months, he said. He wanted to give us a heads up because he’s never brought anyone to the beach house before.” She paused. “He’s such a dud, honestly. He’s in love with someone else and he’s bringing someone else to the beach house. He’s such a dickhead—”
“Stop calling your brother dickhead.” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. “He’s not in love with me, Callie. If he was, we’d be together. That’s how it works.”
“August, the whole Calloway clan can see he’s in love with you —”
“The whole family keeps saying that and maybe you’re all wrong. Maybe you’ve all been reading him wrong this entire time.Maybe he just— maybe I’m just his baby sister’s friend who is eight years younger than him. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he sees me like a kid sister and that’s the whole story.”
“Right,” Callie said. “And that’s why he drives through after-school pickup traffic every Thursday afternoon just to buy your leftover flowers. And why he has a different excuse every week for why he happened to be in the area.”
I opened my mouth.
“He’s here,” I said.
“Of course he is.” I could hear her smiling. “Have fun. Ask him about the girl.”
“I will not be doing that—”
“Bye, babe.”
She hung up.
I looked up.
Fletcher Calloway was walking through the farmer’s market like he had no idea I existed. He was looking at the other booths, the baked goods, the candle stand on the far end. He was tall in a way that made the market feel slightly smaller than it had a minute ago. He had on a dark suit, no tie, like he’d come from somewhere that had required a jacket and he’d decided halfway through the morning that the tie wasn’t worth it anymore.
He walked up to my booth and then he looked at me.
My heart did the thing it always did. I’d stopped being surprised by it. Five years of this and it still felt like missing a step on a staircase.
I gave him my most dazzling smile.
Oh no. Why did I smile at him first? That too with the most desperate one I could manage? My face went warm. He was going to think I was obsessed with him. Which I was. I had been. Ever since the night at the farmer’s market five years ago, when I’d started chatting with a man I’d thought was just being friendly, and it had become very clear very fast that he was not just being friendly, and Fletcher had appeared out of nowhere and stood next to me and said, very calmly,she’s with me,and the man had looked at Fletcher and left immediately. I hadn’t even known Fletcher was at the market that night. He hadn’t explained how he’d seen what was happening from wherever he’d been standing. He’d just handed me a bottle of water and asked if I was okay.
That was the night.
That was the whole thing, right there.
Now he was looking at my eyes and then looking away and I was standing here with my dazzling smile and my red face like an absolute disaster.
“Hi August,” he said.
Try to be cool. Try to be cool.
“Hey Fletcher.”
“How’s business today?”
Before I could answer, Cliff leaned over from his booth. “Slow,” he said. “She’s sold a couple flowers and I’ve sold about ten bottles.”
“Eight bouquets,” I said. “And five shea butter lip balms that I recently added to the collection, which I think is actually pretty good for a Thursday—”
“She’s a glass-half-full kind of girl,” Cliff told Fletcher. He was studying Fletcher the way a man studies someone he hasn’t decided about yet. “I haven’t known her long but I can already tell. Glass half full. Maybe glass too full.”
