He lifts one shoulder, lets it drop, and looks off into the harbor. “Eh, it was bullshit. Whatever. My dad has a lawyer he uses for the boatyard, so she told me 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!”