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The glass door closes behind Luke, the jingling of a bell fixed to the top, sounding around us. There are surfboards and surf-this and surf-that just about everywhere in this tiny place. Surfboards are mounted on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. Surf accessories are placed here and there, leaving little room for the more normal summertime stuff, which is what I need. Migrating to a small T-shirt rack, I sift through them in search of my size.
“How about this?” I hear Luke say from behind.
An ugly button-up Hawaiian shirt with a loud flowered print dangles from a hanger on the end of his finger.
I wrinkle my nose at him. “Seriously?” Then I lean in closer and whisper, “I think that’s for old men.”
Luke laughs under his breath—because he totally knew that—and places the hanger back on the metal rack behind him.
“Tryin’ to make me look like a tourist?” I accuse in jest and go back to sifting through the shirts on a more fashionable rack. “Might as well find me a muumuu and drape a lei around my neck, too.”
He points and says, “I think the muumuus are on the back wall, but I, uh, wouldn’t go that far.” He almost looks scared.
Shaking my head and trying not to laugh, I quickly find a suitable outfit: a simple white scoop-neck tee, a pair of light pink shorts with two white stripes down the sides, and a pair of white flip-flops—Paige would not be proud. Five-minute shopping, to Paige, is reserved for things like a quick run into the drugstore for a box of tampons.
Luke breaks out his wallet when we step up to the register.
“No, I don’t think so,” I protest sassily and reach inside my purse, but before I can fish my wallet out from underneath my camera, he slaps a credit card down on the counter.
I lean toward him and hiss low under my breath, “Luke, seriously, I can pay for my own stuff.”
“Yeah, so what,” he says in a normal tone, not caring that the cashier can hear us, “and so can I. As your host here on the best vacation you’ll ever take, I’m paying from here on out. I talked you into staying; it’s the least I can do.”
The cashier hesitates, looking between us, and then reluctantly slides his credit card from the counter and goes to run it through the little device attached to the side of her computer screen.
I just look back at him, baffled.
“You won’t win this argument,” he says, “so just save your breath.” He smiles charmingly with teeth, and I don’t know whether to play-pop him on the arm and tell the girl not to use his card, or smile at him in return and let him have his way. But I get the feeling he’ll have his way no matter what, so I don’t argue with him.
The bell on the door jingles again as we make our way back outside into the sunshine. Walking side by side down the length of the sidewalk, I glance over at him and say, “Maybe I’ll just find a bunch of really expensive stuff then. Make you pay for that, if you wanna play that game.”
He grins, looking over at me briefly.
“Like what?” he asks.
I shrug. “I have a professional shopper and fashion guru for a best friend, just so you know”—I nod heavily once, one eyebrow arced in a dramatic fashion—“and she taught me everything I know about shopping and fashion.”
“Oh, she did, did she?” Luke’s grin seems to deepen; I halfway expect something clever to come out of his mouth any second now, but it’s like he’s biding his sweet time.
I cross my arms. “Yeah, she did. I didn’t really have much of a sense of style before Paige got ahold of me. And by the time she was done, I fit right in on Rodeo Drive with the best of ’em.”
He purses his lips. “Wow, that’s really interesting,” he says smartly. “But y’know, I gotta be honest; I think your best friend is probably better at it than you.”
Shocked, I stop on the sidewalk, turning to look right at him, not knowing how to take what he just said, but knowing that it stung.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Luke smiles softly, tilting his head to one side.
“I guess that came out wrong,” he says. “I just mean that you don’t seem wasteful.”
Still unsure, but feeling a little better, I just look at him, waiting for him to go on, and we both begin walking down the sidewalk again very slowly.
“I used to buy stuff like that,” he says, and now I’m even more confused. And intrigued. “For about two years I blew every dime I earned on clothes and cars and you name it”—he looks over—“but now I’m back to being me. And I prefer me.”
Wait … cars, plural?
“Wow,” I speak up. “Do tell.”
