by Jenn Bennett
I want to tell him that I’m glad he brought me in here to show me his work and be reunited with his stupidly nice, wonderfully loud family. That he’s not a monster. That he’s actually wonderful and kind and funny, and I never realized how much I missed my best friend until right this minute.
No, I don’t just miss him. I want my best friend back. My boy.
But I think I also want Lucky 2.0.
I also want to ask him if he would please hold my hand again.
I also want to be a lot more than friends.
I’m greedy: I want it all.
Tick, tick, tick.
What in the world do I do now?
DRIVE LIKE IT’S YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD: Obnoxious red paper sign posted in the shop window of Regal Cosmetics in the South Harbor district. The shop’s owner has made multiple complaints to the police and during town hall meetings about speeding cars and loud music. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 13
Of all the things I’ve inherited from my mother—the secret-keeping, my inability to communicate in a healthy manner, love for fried food, and intense loathing of the word “y’all”—the one thing I wish she’d passed down was her ability to chitchat in uncomfortable situations. She’s very good at it, and even when she’s putting her foot in her mouth, she’s usually able to laugh it off and talk her way out of things. Gift of gab.
I could use a little gab when Lucky takes me home from Sunday dinner and—after I text Evie and find out that Mom is out of the apartment on another one of her “night drives” around the harbor—drops me off in front of the bookshop. I just don’t know what to say to him, not when he’s all clammed up and pushing me away.
He’s back to being intimidating and distant, and as I hand him back the sparkly tri-corn horse helmet, I’m weighing whether I should try to be gabby, like Mom, or serious, and tell him about all the things I realized in his garage.
But before I can speak up, a bright blue sports car with an obnoxious, thundering racing engine screeches its brakes in front of the shop. Hypnotic music thumps from the interior, and three pale, male faces look out at us. I don’t know the two in the front, but the boy with his arm hanging out the back window is more than recognizable.
“What do we have here?” Adrian Summers drunkenly says. His face is still bandaged from the wreck with Evie, and he’s got terrible bruises under both eyes. Two crutches are propped on the seat next to him. “It’s the littlest Saint-Martin and Beauty’s only one-man motorcycle gang. I smell collusion.”
“And I smell vodka,” Lucky says with feigned cheerfulness. “Do you have a liquor license for your bar-on-wheels? Gonna have to report you to town hall if you don’t.”
Adrian makes a sloppy shooing gesture to Lucky and points a water bottle at me, the contents of which aren’t quite clear. “You. Is Wild Winona home?”
All my muscles tense. “Go away, Adrian.”
“I need you to do me a favor. Go upstairs and tell Evelyn to come down here. She’s not answering my texts, and I need to see her.”
No way in hell am I doing that. The two guys in the front seat are staring out at us, chuckling, and they look as inebriated as Adrian. Not sure if they’re Goldens or some of his Harvard buds, home for the summer.
“She’s probably in class,” I say.
“On Sunday?” Adrian says.
“She has a test,” I tell him. Ugh, Lucky’s right. I’m a terrible liar. She’s only taking one class this summer, and Adrian probably knows it.
“It’ll only take a minute. Tell her to come down now,” he says, slapping the car door with his open palm twice. “Chop-chop.”
“No one’s telling Evie anything,” Lucky says.
“Stay out of this,” Adrian warns. “Not your fight.”
“Not anyone’s fight,” I say. “I’ll tell her you came by.”
“But I’m here right now, and I came all this way. Come on,” he says, “Go fetch Evie.”
“I’m asking you nicely to please leave.”
“What if I say no?”
Lucky swings off his bike. “Get the hell out of here, Summers.”
“Or what? You’ll punch me? Call the cops and get thrown in jail again? And why are the two of you always together? Methinks you got a little something going on.”
“Not your business, is it?” Lucky says.
Adrian grins. “I mean, sure, she looks nice with her clothes off, but we’ve all seen it. Not worth it, man.”
Adrian’s buddies in the car laugh along with him.
Lucky swears profusely and starts to lunge for the car, but I grab his arm.
“Keep talking like that,” I tell Adrian, hoping I sound braver than I feel, “and I’ll make sure to remind Evie what kind of an asshole you are, and how she made the absolute right decision to stay away from you.”
Adrian glares at me for a moment and then lazily points his water bottle at Lucky. “Haven’t forgotten about you. Gonna get you back for that window, grease monkey. Eye for an eye …”
Signaling his buddies in the front seat, Adrian gives up on us, and the car peels away from the curb—causing a lone SUV on the otherwise empty road to slam on its brakes and honk when they cut in front of it without looking. Then they speed down the block and disappear into the night.
“Goldens … entitled pricks,” Lucky grumbles. “You okay?”
I nod, feeling mildly creeped out. It was probably just boozy talk, nothing more. He won’t remember it tomorrow. Still. It weirds me out that we’re here alone. Maybe it shows on my face, because Lucky asks, “Hey. Do you want me to stick around, or … ?”
I shake my head. “We’ve got a security alarm. I’ll lock the door and set it. And I’ll text Mom. She’ll come home.”
“You sure?” he asks, wavering.
“Yeah,” I say, hoping I sound more confident than I feel. “She could be on her way back any minute, so I should probably head up.”
I need to check on Evie. Make sure Adrian isn’t harassing her via texts.
“I’m only a few minutes away, if you get freaked out or need backup, or whatever. Not that you can’t handle it yourself. But … you know.”
“Thanks,” I say, meaning it and hoping he knows it.
“And maybe you could let me know when your mom gets home? I’ll be up for a while.”
“Yeah, no problem. I will,” I say, then gesture upstairs. “I’m gonna …”
“Yep.”
“Good night.”
“G’night,” he says, still sounding concerned.
Everything I wanted to tell him from earlier gets lost under all this new worry. For a moment, I even worry that some of this is my fault—that maybe Adrian wouldn’t have even stopped and threatened us right now if it weren’t for me breaking the Summers & Co Department Store window. But I guess that’s not true; he would’ve come to see Evie regardless.
After Lucky revs his Superhawk’s engine a few times—his eyes on the street, as if he really wasn’t quite sure Adrian was gone—he finally straps on his helmet and drives away from the curb.
Letting out a sigh, I head around the bookshop to the back of the building and jog up the steps. It’s quiet now. Thank God. When I get to the top and stick my key in the door, I hear something in the distance that interrupts the quiet and gives me pause.
Racing engine. Thump of loud music.
They’re coming back.
My pulse rockets. I take the key out of the lock when the brakes squeal.
Then I hear something worse. A terrible sound I know too well.
Glass shattering.
Oh God. No, no, no …
Taking the steps two at a time, I race back down and sail around the bookshop to find the sports car speeding off in the opposite direction on the dark street, its red taillights two glowing eyes. And across the road, the boatyard office window is gone. Shattered. Smashed. Glass tinkling from the open window frame onto the sidewalk.
What did Adrian say? A
n eye for an eye?
Problem is, he took out the wrong one.
* * *
It’s like Summers & Co all over again, only this time it feels so much worse, because it—
Wasn’t an accident.
And it’s the boatyard window.
Not some retail object that showcases luxury goods, that can be replaced by the richest man in town with the snap of his fingers. No. The simple warehouse office window through which a big, happy family laughs.
This is personal.
An old man in a truck slows as he sees the damage.
“Hit and run!” I shout.
He pulls over at the curb, confused. I know the feeling. And that’s when I remember the black cat.
Oh no!
I race across the street, holding up my hand to stop another approaching car, and crunch over broken glass, peering into the boatyard offices. I can’t see! There are too many ambient streetlights making too many shadows. My heart’s in my stomach, thinking about the poor animal. Lucky will be devastated if anything bad has happened to it.
One of the shadows shifts—above. On a tall filing cabinet.
Thank God.
I reach through the broken window and coax it into my open arms, snatching the warm body as it tries to lurch past me in a panic. Claws dig into my shoulders, but I don’t care. “I’ve got you,” I tell it, quickly moving to the side alley where it’s less chaotic. “You’re okay. Let’s call your big brother.”
I’m shaking as I pull out my phone and scroll to Lucky. He answers on the first ring, and I bluntly say, “Come back. Adrian broke the front boatyard window and drove away. Call your parents. I’ll call the police. I’ve got your cat.”
I don’t even have to, though, as I already hear the wail of a siren competing with the shrill boatyard security alarm. I stand numbly in the dark alley, petting the twitchy black cat as scattered people begin jogging toward the dark, gaping hole in the building. And then it’s:
Evie, racing down from the apartment.
Police lights.
Lucky’s Superhawk.
His parents.
My mom.
An ambulance, which isn’t needed, but sticks around—just in case.
A city clean-up crew.
And crowds of gawking people, well past midnight.
Mom opens up the bookstore and makes coffee for the Karrases and the police. Kat is furious. The black cat is relieved to be allowed to retreat into one of the boat-repair bays, away from all the chaos. And for the first time, I learn that it has a name. Saint Boo. Boo for short. The cat with seven lives at this point.
“I was twelve,” Lucky explains when I question his name choice, the only chance I get to talk to him alone amongst the chaos for a few minutes. “And I swear to God, if Boo had been hurt by a flying piece of glass or ran out into traffic, I would’ve killed someone.”
I believe him, and we both know who that someone is.
But now that the shock of it all is fading away, there’s another emotion that’s settling in, especially for Lucky’s father: worry.
“Is it the money?” I ask. “To repair all this?”
He shakes his head. “I think it’s more about being in a fight with Levi Summers. It’s just a window, but a war with him could ruin our business.”
My stomach twists.
It should have been our window.
It should have been our war.
I don’t know what to do, but I’m a little scared, and I think maybe it’s time to reevaluate my part in all this. No way can I let my original mistake cause an entire war that ruins a family business. Everything was so easy when we stepped into town. I had the three-step Los Angeles plan. Graduate from high school before my grandmother comes back from Nepal. Save up money. Prove to my father that I’m worthy of being his apprentice.…
Now I’ve already dipped into my savings to start helping Lucky pay for the window. And I can’t even get up the nerve to email the stupid magazine about the internship because I’m a secret vandal and the nude photo of my mom, and, and—
Tick, tick, tick.
Breathe.
I’m going to figure this out. I will find a way to fix things somehow. But I know one thing. Whatever happens, I will not allow the Karrases to lose their business.
Los Angeles or not …
Mom doesn’t know that I was coming back from Lucky’s house when the boatyard window was broken. But she knows that I was outside the bookshop when Adrian drove up and demanded to talk to Evie. And Mom is pissed. And a little scared.
“If that really was Adrian who did it … ,” she says a day later, when we watch four people installing a new window across the street.
“Of course it was him! Who else would it be?” Who else would hurl a crowbar at a window after drunkenly threatening people with that eye-for-an-eye speech? I don’t understand how the police can’t get fingerprints off it, but apparently they can’t. He must have wiped it before he threw it.
Or someone in the police department is covering for him.…
“Why would an Olympic rower from Harvard be vandalizing windows in Beauty?” Mom says. “Evie? Would he really do that?”
“I couldn’t really say,” Evie murmurs.
Oh, but she could. She could say, all right. Evie doesn’t want me to tell Mom—I think because she’s so embarrassed that Adrian’s such a toxic stalker, even though it’s no reflection on her, duh—but she swore me to secrecy when she showed me all the drunken texts he sent her that night. Forty-three. Forty-three! And that’s on top of eleven phone calls. Who does that? A maniac, that’s who.
Then again, who throws a rock through a historic department store window?
Maybe I’m a maniac too.
Which maniac came first, the chicken or the egg?
After I insist again and again that it was Adrian, begging her to trust me on this one, Mom relents and tries to call up Adrian’s father through his business number—just to talk—but he’s not taking calls. And he’s not the kind of guy to whom you can march up and demand justice. You can’t just ring his doorbell. Guess when he’s the one whose property is destroyed, he’s available. When it’s his son who’s doing the destroying … well, he’s a busy man.
Take a number.
When Wednesday rolls around, Mom locks up the store at noon for our half-day closing and walks next door to Freedom Art Gallery, where several neighborhood shop owners are gathering to talk about security. Hate to break it to them, but they are in zero danger from Wreck-It Ralph. Adrian doesn’t care about their windows.
Evie is remarkably quiet about all of this. Pretty sure she’s far more upset than she’s letting on, but she says she needs time to think about things. So I’m giving her space. But I’m also thinking about those forty-three texts.
Maybe we’ve all got our ticking time bombs.
While Evie closes out the accounting up front, I pull all the empty book carts to the stockroom and line them up for receiving tomorrow, when we’re supposed to be getting a big shipment from a distributor. At least that’s what I start to do, until someone knocks on the stockroom door—the one that opens to the side of the house between the street and the alley.
Delivery people don’t knock. They ring the bell.
Cautious, I unlock the door and peek through the crack to find Lucky’s face staring back at me over a deep-red T-shirt. My heartbeat quickens.
“Hey,” he says, one side of his mouth quirking upward. “Saw Winona heading to the neighborhood meeting next door. My mom’s there too. Not sure if I’m still banned from these premises … ?”
“In Winona’s eyes? I don’t know; in this time of crisis, it’s hard to tell. Would you like to risk it all and come inside for a minute?” Please.
“Isn’t it you who’s taking the risk? I’m not banned from seeing you.”
I shrug, attempting to look casual, and open the door. “And I’m not good at following rules. Welcome to the stockroom.”
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve been back here. Lots.”
“You have?” I say, shutting the door behind him.
“Your grandmother lets me browse the new stuff before it goes out on the shelves.”
She never let us come back here when we were kids. Never. Honestly, I’m surprised she allowed kids in the bookshop. She dislikes noise and disorganization.
“She also lets Saint Boo sleep in here sometimes when we go out of town.”
Mouth open. Jaw on floor. “Beginning to have some serious suspicions that the Diedre Saint-Martin you’ve been acquainted with over the last few years is some kind of pod person,” I tell him. “The grandma I know and love dislikes pets. She’s also a rule-obsessed harpy who ruined my mom’s life, and mine by extension, and listens to too much fiddle music.”
“She does have a disturbing preoccupation with fiddling. Wonder if they fiddle in Nepal?”
“You must’ve missed her weekly postcards on the singing bowls and the flutes.”
“Maybe she’ll like that more than the fiddling and decide to stay. Never know …”
No chance.
“So …” I’m relieved he’s standing here, an arm’s length away. And anxious. And oddly fluttery. It’s the first time I’ve been alone with him since Sunday dinner—minus broken glass and police cars—and I’m trying to hide all those feelings that are now tangled up in the new worries that have descended with Adrian’s drunken stunt, so I busy myself with the empty carts. “How is Saint Boo? And what’s the update on the window? I saw them calking it yesterday afternoon. Is it costing your parents a fortune?” Should I be completely sick to my stomach? Because I am.
“Boo is fine. As for the window …” He squeezes one eye closed.
“Oh boy. That’s what I thought. I’m already downing expired Benadryl I found in my grandmother’s medicine cabinet to make me drowsy enough to sleep at night.”
“That sounds super not good,” he says, frowning. “Don’t do that.”