by Jenn Bennett
“Evie says it’s safe for cats and dogs and babies, so I figure it’s okay for Josies.”
“Look, the window is mostly installed and should be finished up by tomorrow. It wasn’t cheap, but it was no Summers & Co by a long shot, so stop taking expired allergy medicine. Seriously. Okay?”
“Okay.” I tap my fingers on the receiving table, a little nervous. “Any word from the Summers or the police?
“There isn’t such a thing as CCTV in Beauty, and no private security cameras caught them. The lady who owns Regal Cosmetics on the corner said she’s willing to testify that she saw a blue car drive through here at that time, but she didn’t see the actual crime. And neither did we.…”
“But we know he did it. And they never had me breaking the window on camera either.”
“But they had my confession,” he says. “And Adrian will flay the skin from his body before he confesses.”
“Then what happens next?”
“I don’t know, honestly. My dad’s a little worried. I think some of the damage is covered by our insurance, but mostly he’s concerned about Levi Summers and how it affects us long term, businesswise.”
“He’s your father’s biggest customer?”
“Pretty much. But it’s more than the actual dollars he pays us. If he takes his business away and tells other people to do the same …”
I nod. “Yeah, I get it. He can have you guys blacklisted.”
“That’s one way of putting it. He’s got a lot of influence in this town. Owns a bunch of property. The department store. The newspaper.”
The magazine, I think, but I definitely don’t say it out loud.
“What are your parents going to do about it?” I ask.
He scrubs the back of his neck and shakes his head, shrugging with one shoulder. “They’re just waiting to see how things shake out.”
“Lucky?” I ask in small voice. “Do you think I should tell them that I broke the department store window? Would that help?”
His brow lowers. “Absolutely not. You said you wouldn’t, Josie.”
“But—”
“We already talked about this.”
“Why, though? Wouldn’t it be better for your parents if Levi Summers knew I did it? I don’t want to ruin their business—this is my fault.”
“What about LA? What about your father not taking you in if you have a police record? What about your mom putting you in a car and dragging you out of town before your grandmother even comes back—what about that, huh?”
Oh. Did I say that in the police station? Wait …
Is he worried I’m going to leave town again before Grandma comes back from Nepal? I try to catch his gaze with mine, but he won’t look at me. His eyes light everywhere but on my face, and that’s how I know for certain.
He’s worried I’m going to leave.
Well.
To be honest, so am I.
“Okay, hey,” I say. “I won’t tell them I smashed the department store window.”
His shoulders relax. “Okay.”
“It’s going to be fine.”
“It’s going to be fine,” he repeats.
I’m not sure either of us believe that one hundred percent, but we’re trying.
He taps his fingers on one of the book carts and looks around the stockroom at shelving filled with boxes of supplies and fixture parts—pegs and old signage and book stands—until his gaze pauses on the open door near the receiving desk. “That’s new. Used to be sitting off its hinges and the inside overflowing with junk.”
“Mom and I put it back on and I cleaned it out.” I brush off my hands and walk to the walk-in closet. “Darkroom. See? A very rudimentary, very tiny one.”
“You develop film in here?”
“Yep.”
“How does it work?”
“Like this …”
He follows me inside. “Wow. Close quarters.”
Man, he’s not kidding. I should’ve thought this through. “Uh, well. It’s normally just me in here.”
“Right, yeah. Cool clock,” he says, pointing to the wall. “Analog?”
“That’s my timer.” I try not to bump into his arm as I shuffle around him to flip on a lamp that sits on a makeshift plywood desk under the slanted part of the ceiling in the corner. Then I scoot past him, shut the door, and close a floor-length curtain over it.
“Cozy,” he says.
“That’s to ensure no light leaks in here from cracks,” I tell him, a little nervous.
“Ah.”
Best to stick to the technical details. “It already had ventilation, because someone started to turn this into a restroom at some point. So that’s my fan going outside. Shelves below the desk for all my pans. Tools here. And I’ve kind of got things divided into a dry side here, and a wet side here, for my chemicals, see?”
“Looks dangerous.”
“Only if you stick your face in it, so don’t do that.” I flip on the safelight bulb that’s installed in the overhead socket, and the closet glows red. “Ta-da! That’s what I use when I’m developing. Magic.”
“Whoa,” he says, turning his head to look around. His red shirt blends in with the walls. “It’s like we’re in a strip club.”
“Uh …”
“Obviously I’ve never been in a strip club.”
“Makes two of us. Does Beauty even have one?”
He snorts. “We still have strict bathing suit laws on the books. Technically, I think the town has the right to put you on trial for being a witch if you show your stomach on a public beach.”
“Beauty, Where Modern is Just a Word We Use for Our Furniture.”
“Beauty, Where IKEA is a Little Too Progressive,” he says.
I chuckle and try another one. “Beauty, Where Tabasco Sauce is Sort of Unnecessary, Really?”
Then he says: “I’ve been one of your anonymous Photo Funder subscribers since you started the account.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says, lashes covering eyes that stare at the floor between us. “I wanted to, but I was worried you’d think it was weird. Especially after what Adrian said about nudes at the party and him flashing that pic of your mom.”
My brain tries to make sense of it. “I started that account last summer. I was living in …” Where? I can’t even remember where Mom and I were. “Massachusetts.”
“Your grandmother told me about it.”
I stare at his shirt, the color of it disappearing in the safelight’s eerie glow. My pulse swishes inside my temples so loudly that I can’t think straight. “She told you about my photography subscription account? You’ve been following me online for … a year?”
“Well, your photos. You don’t really say anything personal—just the photo descriptions. You don’t even have a recent selfie posted, so it’s not like I’ve been spying on you.”
“I don’t care about that. I care about the fact that you’ve been there all this time and haven’t said anything to me. This whole time? We could have been talking all this time? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I don’t know.…” His brow furrows like he’s a little unsure, and he finally admits, “I wanted to get back in touch with you somehow, but I didn’t know how to go about doing it. When I found out about your website, at first, I thought it was the perfect way to reconnect. But then I lost my nerve to speak up, so I just sort of stayed in the shadows. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”
“You should have told me!”
“You’re mad.”
“I’m not mad, I’m …”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m hurt that you didn’t reach out to me and say hello,” I say, getting flustered. “No one in my family communicates normally, so I was led to believe … I thought your family moved away from Beauty, okay? I didn’t even know you were still here. We could have been friends online. Mom and I have come to visit every ye
ar or so—were you at Evie’s dad’s funeral?”
“We were out of town that weekend. We went to the wake the night before—”
Oh. Mom and I didn’t make it into town until late that night, after the wake.
I shake my head, “It doesn’t matter now. You should’ve told me it was you online.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” he says, a little angry … a little desperate.
We were so close, yet so far. Connected by my photos but separated by his anonymity. The sorrow of this catches me off guard and tightens inside my chest.
“I checked that old email account of mine for years, hoping you’d reply to my last email. You don’t know how lonely I was, Lucky.”
“About the same as me?” he challenges, dark eyes narrowing. “Or maybe a little less, seeing as how you got to leave, and I was stuck here, all alone. You were off seeing the world, but I was trapped.”
“Lucky, Mom and I were literally living in Section 8 housing before we moved to Beauty. Do you know what that is?”
“So? You haven’t been trapped. You’ve traveled. You’ve seen things.”
Oh, I’ve seen things, all right.
But … But. I guess I never thought about it that way. Maybe he has a point.
He lifts a hand. “Now look at you. Don’t even want to be here anymore. All you think about is running off to Malibu to live with a man you don’t even know—that’s how much you hate it here?”
“Hey!” I snap. “You may remember that people are circulating nude photos of my mother around town and saying that it’s me, making kissy faces at me when I walk down the street—okay? And this jet-setter life of mine that you’re painting in your mind has been gossiped about and criticized at Beauty High since the day I walked through the doors. So don’t make it sound like I’ve had the red carpet rolled out for me.”
“And don’t make it sound like you haven’t had anyone to help you fix that. Because both me and my family are now shouldering the load for you.”
“Didn’t ask you to. Have said a million times that I will turn myself in.”
“If you do, I’ll never forgive you.”
Breath comes faster through my nostrils.
He wants honesty from me? Fine. Let’s do this.
“Is that why you did it?” I ask.
“Did what?”
“Is that why you took the fall for me? For the department store window? Because you’re scared my mom’s going to take me away again, and you’re trying to keep me here?”
Surprise widens his eyes—just for a moment. It’s quickly replaced by anger.
“I did it for a lot of reasons.”
“Oh really?”
“Really.”
“Name one,” I challenge.
“Okay, fine. You want to know one reason why?”
“Yes.”
“One reason I did it is because what happened at the party that night was shitty, and you were upset, and that made me upset, and Adrian Summer is obviously a complete asshole, so, yeah. It was unfair that you were going to get dragged through the mud for a stupid window that his dad can afford to replace a million times over. So I thought, what did it matter if I got dirty? Because unlike you, I actually do deserve to get punished. I’m not good. I’m a scarred-up monster who nearly got his little cousin killed because I wasn’t watching her when I should’ve been, so what does it matter? That’s one reason why I did it,” he says, his face a rocky cliff being thrashed by a sea of dark emotions. “Because I deserve it.”
I blink.
The red safelight glows above our heads in the cramped darkroom, but the light inside my head is clear and bright: Lucky hasn’t gotten over the fire at the lake house. The rumors. The bad reputation. The sullen attitude. The detention. I watch the turbulent emotions swirling around his face until they change into something else that I can’t quite identify.
“I should go,” he says in a rough voice, eyes on the floor, trying to move around me.
I block the door with my body.
He looks shocked.
I’m surprised, myself.
“You can’t live in the past, always thinking about the lake house fire,” I tell him. “You’re not a monster, and you don’t deserve to be punished for something that happened years ago. Your cousin survived. You survived.”
“Some days it feels like it just happened yesterday, and everyone still blames me for not watching her.”
“You can’t really believe that.”
His chest rises and falls as he gazes down at me, blinking in tremolo. “Oh, okay. So I guess you’re going to tell me what I can and can’t believe now?” he says, as if he desperately, secretly wants me to but is far too proud to ask.
“If you’re going to believe stupid things, then, yes. That’s my duty as your friend.”
He snorts softly. “Oh, you mean like your stupid love curse?”
“Hey, tell it to my mom. She’s the one who says it’s ruined all the Saint-Martins’ love lives.”
“Has it, though?” he asks as if he’s eager not to talk about himself anymore.
“I’ve never been in love, so don’t have any firsthand experience.” I try to make a lighthearted joke. “Guess I was too busy traveling the world—and I guess you were just plain busy. Maybe not with Bunny, but I know there have been other girls. Come on.”
He frowns. “Are you accusing me of something, here, or … ?”
“No. I don’t—” I huff out a breath. Wow. I sound like a jealous girlfriend, accusing him of cheating. That went in a weird direction, and he’s still upset, and I’m doing this all wrong … and I wish I could take it back.
“I don’t know why I said that,” I finally admit.
But I do. I wish it would have been me and not those other girls.
I can’t say it, though. Not that. I can’t be that teeth-gratingly honest.
It’s quiet. Still. Almost stifling. We’ve been in here too long, breathing all the air in the small space.
“I need to go,” he says softly. “Move.”
“No.”
He’s surprised by that.
He exhales a hard breath through his nostrils. Silent. Studying my face. The longer he stares at me, not saying anything, the faster my heart races. I try to look anywhere but his eyes. The sharp shadow under his jaw. The bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows. The line of his collarbone against his T-shirt.
Warm fingers graze mine.
My hand trembles as if it’s a rabbit caught in a snare. I know he can feel it, because I’m looking between us, and I can see the tremor as our fingers twine. I’m a little bit terrified. But I don’t move away.
“Josie,” he whispers near the top of my head.
No choice now.
When I tilt my face upward, he’s right there. So close. Sharing the last of the air in the tiny room. Both of our faces lit up like we’re at the last subway stop at midnight; both of us gripping each other like we don’t want to get off.
“Move,” he whispers.
I shake my head slowly.
His eyes are hooded and lazy as they survey my face. He leans closer, closer, and says against my lips, “Move … Josie.”
And when I open my mouth to tell him no, he kisses me.
Softly, once.
Again.
Then I kiss him back.
And that’s the tipping point, right there. He lets go of my fingers to cup my face, and we’re kissing each other like there truly is no air left in the tiny closet. As if we’re locked in some kind of escape room and fighting for our lives—our very survival depends on the maximum amount of pleasure we can derive from one deep, long kiss, and my God, are we going to endure.
A hurricane could hit. Tectonic plates could grind and shift below our feet. A legendary sea monster could rise from the harbor and wrap its tentacles around ships, trying to drown the people of this town, and we wouldn’t care.
We would endure.
I wrap my arms around him
like I do when I’m on the back of his bike, only it’s a hundred times better holding him from the front, especially when he presses his weight against me and we both fall into the door together. I lose my balance and grab the darkroom curtain, but one of the curtain rings pops open where it’s attached to the rod above the door—then another. One, two, three … And the fabric starts to fall down on our heads.
“Oh shit,” he says, untangling us from the falling fabric, one hand on my lower back, pulling me away with him.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I can fix it. Not broken.”
He’s breathing heavily. So am I. And for a moment, I think he’s going to let go of me, and I’m about to shout that I really do not care about the stupid curtain, and then—
Then he’s pulling me closer. Good lord, he feels nice. I feel nice.
We both feel nice.
He’s nuzzling my neck, close to my ear, and I really, really want him to kiss me again. The tremble in my hand is gone. It’s been hijacked by a wave of warm tingles that spreads all the way up my arms and lights up each one of my cells from the inside out, and—
“Josie?”
Muffled voice. Stockroom. Evie.
We push away from each other in a panic, breathing like marathon runners. Seems we’ve failed the escape room and must now face the consequences.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.
He pulls down his T-shirt to cover the front of his jeans.
Well.
Evie calls my name again, and there’s no way in hell we’re sneaking out of this darkroom. No. Way.
She’s going to know what we’ve been doing in here, and—
Oh my God.
I just made out with Lucky.
My best friend.
And you know what? I’d do it again.
Maybe I am cursed, after all.
REBEL ALLEY 1768: Historic marker sign posted in the cobblestone alley behind Siren’s Book Nook. The alley was used to transport illegal seditious material from the printer during the Revolutionary War. (Personal photo/Josephine Saint-Martin)
Chapter 14
The tingly good feelings we cooked up together in the darkroom linger long after Lucky coolly raises his hand to Evie in greeting and slinks out of the stockroom the same way he came in, like it was no big deal.