Most Likely to Succeed

“He and his dad don’t get along, apparently, and this was the last straw. Unfortunately for Sawyer, my granddad has finally rejoined society and gotten a girlfriend. I told you about Chantel. My granddad says Sawyer is cramping his style. Granddad talked to my mom about it, because they’re actually speaking again. It just so happens that my mom has been looking for someone to help with breakfast at the B and B, since I refuse to do it anymore.”

“I’m so proud of you for standing up for yourself.” Harper was introverted. Serving breakfast and associating with her mom’s guests at the B and B—different ones every week—had been a special kind of torture for her, like a cat in a room full of toddlers.

“Me too. But I’ve felt awful that it left my mom in the lurch. Along comes Sawyer, who’s willing to work just a couple of hours a day as long as it doesn’t interfere with his evenings waiting tables at the Crab Lab. And he needs a place to stay.”

“Sawyer is serving breakfast at your B and B?” I asked incredulously.

Harper nodded. “He does a great job, much better than I ever did. After he’s fed everybody, he actually sits down and talks to them if he has time before school, whereas I made up any excuse to hide in the kitchen. He can be very charming to the elderly and people he doesn’t know. You’d be shocked.”

“Wait a minute.” The full meaning of what she was saying finally hit me. “Sawyer is living at your B and B?”

She laughed nervously. “Actually, no. We don’t have an empty room. It’s too soon after Labor Day. But one of the rooms will be empty Monday, and he’ll move over there. Mom says he can stay through hurricane season, until business picks up again around Christmas. Right now he’s staying at our house.”

I gaped at her. “The house where you live?” Harper’s place was a two-bedroom. When she and Tia and I had sleepovers there, one of us had to take the couch in the living room.

“Yeah.”

She’d told me all of this so calmly that I sensed I was protesting too much again. I asked logically and rationally, “Doesn’t that weird you out?”

“Not really. He basically comes in, grumbles, and wanders away again. He’s a lot like my granddad.”

“But your whole reason for telling your mom you didn’t want to help at the B and B anymore was that you’re not a people person,” I reminded her. “You need your personal space. You invite friends over occasionally, sure, but people hanging out too long drives you nuts.”

“I don’t have to entertain him,” Harper explained. “He doesn’t say much. It’s like he’s not there.” She looked past me out the dark window, searching for a reason that would make better sense to me. Finally she settled on “I feel safer while he’s over.”

“Safer from whom? Your dad? I thought the divorce was finally going through. You think he’ll come back?”

“Probably not,” she said vaguely. “I just don’t mind Sawyer being there.”

“Doesn’t Brody mind?” Brody didn’t strike me as the jealous type. He was way too confident for that. But bad boy Sawyer living with Brody’s girlfriend? That was different.

“Sawyer called Brody to tell him,” she said. “And anyway, it’s only for a few more nights. Next week he’ll move over to the B and B, and it’ll be like we’re neighbors, that’s all. We were neighbors before.”

“Now you’ll be neighbors who eat breakfast together every morning,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that, but Sawyer put it best. He said a lot of people in the same class at school might feel uncomfortable moving in together, so to speak, but he and I have gotten all that out of the way and have nothing left to feel uncomfortable about, because he’s already slipped me the tongue.” She laughed.

She stopped laughing when she saw the way I was looking at her. “I told you about that,” she reminded me. “Two weeks ago, when I thought Brody was getting back together with Grace. Sawyer was doing me a favor.”

“He sure was.” Brody and Harper’s relationship had worked out now, but they’d had a rocky start, complete with Harper and Sawyer trying to make Brody jealous—and succeeding. When I’d heard about this, I’d burned with jealousy myself. Sawyer never offered himself up when Aidan and I had trouble—which, lately, was all the time.

“Why didn’t you tell me before now that Sawyer moved in?” I complained. These were big changes in Harper’s home life, and they’d been going on for half a week. I couldn’t imagine why I’d been left out of the best friends call tree.

“Because.” Harper lowered her voice and bent toward me again for privacy from the cheerleading van, a.k.a. the school’s rumor mill. “Ever since you figured out that you and Sawyer were really the ones elected Perfect Couple That Never Was, you’ve acted strange about him.”

Before I could protest—Strange, how?—she went on. “I didn’t want this to be a big deal. It’s not a big deal. He’ll just be there when you come over. Of course Tia won’t care, since the two of them are such good friends. I figured you wouldn’t mind either, now that you know why he’s there. And I wouldn’t want to give him the impression he’s not welcome, when he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Harper wasn’t one to throw her weight around or scold, but I was almost sure she was giving me a warning look.