I take another bite, but offer no comment.
After lunch, Luke takes me to some other places around town, where I buy a few small souvenirs for my parents, which I tuck away inside my big purse. But it’s when I notice that I’m literally the only girl walking around this place in a long dress that I regret not having packed a pair of shorts and a top, and I decide to buy a new outfit.
“There’s nothing wrong with your dress,” Luke tries to convince me. “It’s a summery dress—not like you just left church in it, or anything.” He grins, looking me over once. “And besides, it’s sexy on you.”
I blush hard—all that’s missing are my shoulders drawn up around my cheeks.
“Well, thank you,” I say all fancy-like, stepping past Luke holding the door open for me and into a shop that sells all things cute and touristy. “But I’ll feel less out of place if I’m in shorts and flip-flops like everybody else.”
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.