what to say—that the whole thing was an accident. That I never intended to break the window or was even aiming for Summers & Co, because I would never do anything to hurt my father’s best client.”
“Oh God,” I whisper.
“So I said it ricocheted and hit the glass. Just a stupid mistake. Said I’m sorry, yadda-yadda-yadda. And my dad apologized. And my mom apologized. It was a disgusting suck-up fest of epic proportions, and Levi Summers said, ‘No problem. I won’t press charges—’ ”
“Oh, thank God!” I say.
“ ‘—if Lucky pays for the window to be replaced.’ ”
“O-o-oh.”
“Oh yeah,” Lucky says with a tight smile. “Richest man in town. But he didn’t get that way by giving it away, right? Oh no. He watches every penny. And he wants me to pay every penny back. Guess how many pennies that is?”
He tells me. I nearly pass out.
“That’s …” I do a quick calculation in my head. “It would take me a year to earn that at the bookshop, working part-time.” Even with my Photo Funder subscriber donations, which are down to an all-time low of sixty-five dollars this month. Guess I’m not providing enough new content for my subscribers, because a couple of them bailed. Or maybe they don’t like all my new photos of signs around Beauty.
Maybe I should’ve given them actual nudes, like Adrian said.
“Well,” Lucky says, “your cheap-ass mom needs to give you a raise, because it will take me about six months to pay it off, working for my dad. Our lawyer negotiated that I pay for the glass itself and work off the cost of the repair labor by doing some tasks around the department store. Like tomorrow, I go in before the store opens to vacuum out the window display. I’ve already done it once, but the store manager wants me to go over it again, just to make sure. And I get to do other helpful things like”—he ticks off a list on his fingers—“sweep up the sidewalk. Repaint the lines on the parking lot. Wash the windows using the scaffold lift. Clean seagull nests off the roof. You know, fun stuff. All summer long.”
“That’s awful.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t have plans or anything,” he says, rancor in his tone.
“Hey!” I say, frustrated. “I didn’t ask you to do this, you know.”
“But you didn’t turn it down, did you? You didn’t argue. Not even a ‘Hey, thanks for having my back, Lucky. That was a swell thing you did for me.’ ”
“I don’t have your phone number!”
He cranes his neck and pretends to peer over the boat in the direction of the bookshop. “Golly gee. Is it just me, or do you live awfully close to our boatyard? What is it … an entire two-minute walk away?”
“My mom won’t let me see you.”
A single brow arches, the one that’s missing the tail end, making it look like an apostrophe. “Is that so?” He sounds amused. Like I’ve told a funny joke. Or a dirty one. Something improper and salacious.
I throw up my hands. “Fine. She thinks there’s something going on between us, okay? Are you happy? And I didn’t tell her I threw the rock because … I just didn’t. I was a coward. Is that what you want to hear?”
“That’s a start,” he says, a little smug.
“Well, there you go. I’m a coward. I chickened out.”
“If you tell her you threw the rock, then you’d have to tell her about other things, right? Like that you were trying to get a magazine internship so that you could impress your fancy father.”
I stare at him, practically feeling my ribs cracking under the thundering pressure of my heartbeat. In a small voice I admit, “It’s easier not to say anything. I don’t want to tell her about the photo Adrian flashed around at the party. I don’t want to tell her everything Adrian said about our family. And I don’t want to explain why I was upset at Adrian’s father before the party even started that night.…”
“No, you can’t do that,” he says, and there’s an edge to his words. As if he’s implying that everything I want—the magazine internship, Los Angeles, apprenticing with my father … a real family—is sitting on one side of a scale being measured against his worth, and I’m selfishly choosing my own needs over his.
And, okay, I am. I know I am. He knows I am.
And I wish I could change it.
“I’m not that person,” I argue. “I’m not just out for myself