“I’ll tell her that you also don’t have a life, Graham Hawthorne,” she says, and suddenly her ability to cut men down is clear as Graham’s eyes go wide with alarm. She’s kind of scary, if I’m honest.
“What did I do?” Graham asks, lifting his hands in resignation.
“Nothing, unless you block my beach day.”
Rowan sighs, looks at me, then at his girlfriend, and shrugs.
“Looks like we’re having a beach day. Josie gets what Josie wants.”
By two, everyone is on the beach—not on the Daytrip property, but in front of the lifeguard stand where Claire is working for the afternoon. We did this a lot last summer while she was working, and it always worked out well. Since it’s Monday, the Seabreeze is closed, so Lainey agreed instantly, in part because she also wanted to meet the cool, hot PI, Josie. Deck and Grant had no job today, so they tagged along, and Miles happily closed up the mechanic shop early, taking any excuse to join his girlfriend on the sand. Now, the guys are throwing a football, and we girls are sitting around Claire’s chair, chatting and tanning.
It’s the perfect summer day.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Josie says after a while. She slides her sunglasses onto her head, pushing back her dark brown locks, then digs through her bag before handing me an orange bend-clasp folder. “These are for you.” I eye it skeptically, because I’ve heard of a PI handing over files in a folder like that, and it’s typically bad news.
“For me?” I repeat as she grins wide and shakes the folder for me to grab.
"I heard you were hunting for information and found it. It was easy—I only flirted with one gross principal."
My emotions flip instantly.
“No way,” I say, eagerly taking the envelope from her hands. “You got them?”
“Sutton told me they existed, and I couldn’t resist.” She leans back, arms crossed behind her head, and sighs blissfully. “My best friend, Rory, is a genius with records. I could’ve asked her to hack the school files, but that’s no fun.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Sutton agrees, even though she seems lost as Josie rambles. “What’s the fun indeed?” I want to tease my best friend’s sister, but then I’m opening the clasp and sliding out the photos, and the words catch in my throat.
"Oh my god," I murmur as I move through the stack. There are a dozen photos of Graham at various ages playing football. He’s in various uniforms, from elementary school to college. Through them, I get to see every stage of him growing up.
Unfortunately, it means I can’t show Graham my own old cheer photos—he never had an awkward phase. He was always sure of himself, always put together, likely always the coolest guy at his school. It’s a little sad, since I know he behaved that way as a curated defense mechanism. I watch him stumble in the sand. Decker laughs before offering him a hand up, and I smile.
I love that here, he doesn’t feel the need to keep a facade up, no longer has to present only one, perfect, closed-off version of himself. He catches my eye, smiles, and gives me a wink before throwing the ball to Rowan, and I look back down at the photos again.
“Is it weird to think these are hot? He couldn’t have been older than nineteen in this one,” I say, voice low. In my defense, the shot is some kind of douchey photo he must have posted on some social media site, but mygod,it seems the abs aren't a new development.
“No, they are hot,” Lainey assures. Without our noticing, my brother appears beside us, scaring the shit out of me.
“What’s hot?” Grant asks, brow raised.
“June’s boyfriend,” Claire answers from her perch above us. Grant’s face scrunches up in confusion.
“Hey, so, that’s a child,” he says, a bit alarmed, and I let out a laugh. Lainey reaches over to grab one of the photos.
“It’sGrahamas a child, and in this one, he’s of drinking age,” she says. “I think it’s okay to say he’s hot here.”
“What are we talking about?” Graham asks, walking over, and we all scramble to hide the photos, but one falls into the sand. He reaches to grab and inspect it before giving us a confused look. “Are those all pictures of me?”
“Yes,” I say, smiling up at him. I have a sudden urge to explode with giggles, and Graham’s partly annoyed, partly confused face only makes it worse. He looks at Josie and lets out a deep sigh before glancing over his shoulder to where Rowan is approaching.
“Rowan, your girlfriend is doing deep dives on me,” he complains, but Rowan just shrugs.
“Welcome to my life,” Rowan replies, and Graham blinks at him. Carefully, I take the photos from him and slide them back into the envelope for safekeeping.
“I’m hiding those,” he says, glaring at the one on top, a photo of him in what had to be middle school, before I close up the envelope and slide it safely in my bag.
“I have them all saved on a digital drive. I’ll email you the originals,” Josie says with a smile, and I let out a loud laugh as Graham grimaces.
“So, you were always hot, huh?” Sutton asks, and a blush burns on Graham’s cheeks. Hot and absolutelyadorable. How on earth has no one ever cracked him, tried to win over this version of him?
