The Summer Girlfriend (Heart Beach, #1)(50)

Also, what if agreeing to return to Heart Beach meant that he could continue helping Noelle? She still needed more tuition money. She deserved to go back to college and become a librarian or be whatever she wanted to be. If he brought Noelle back to Heart Beach, they could play the part of a happy couple for a few more weeks, and he could pay her in return. Then, once summer ended and he moved to California, he and Noelle really could go their separate ways, and that would be the end of it.

He could keep Celeste happy and help Noelle at the same time.

Well, that was only if Noelle agreed to extend their arrangement.

He exhaled deeply.

“I—I’ll try to work things out with Noelle,” he said. “But I can’t promise she’ll want to come back with me.”

“She’ll want to work it out. I know she will. She loved being here with you, I could tell. Trust me. Listen, I’m so glad we had this talk, sweetheart. We’re heading to the beach now, so I’ve gotta go. But I’ll see you Friday, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll be there.”

The call ended. Jeremiah blinked rapidly as he tried to gather his bearings. Then he turned off the nearest exit and hopped back on the highway in the opposite direction. He called Noelle, and she answered on the first ring.

“Hi,” she said. “Did you forget something?”

At the sound of her voice, the tension slowly left his body.

“Nah, I didn’t,” he said. “Are you still home?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I want to talk to you about something,” he said. “Do you mind coming back outside?”

She paused. Then, “Okay.”

Fifteen minutes later, he reentered Noelle’s apartment complex. She was waiting on the sidewalk in front of her building. She’d changed out of the sundress from earlier and was now wearing an old Hidden Gems Books T-shirt and denim shorts. He felt a strong tightening in his chest again at the sight of her.

She smiled curiously at him as he got out of the car and walked toward her.

“What’s up?” she asked.

Better to just come out with it.

“The plan backfired,” he said, and she frowned. “My family wants us to work it out because…my happiness is important to them, and they thought we looked happy. My mom asked me to spend the last few weekends at Heart Beach before I move, and even though I have a lot going on, I don’t have the heart to tell her no, because I should be there with them. She wants you to come back with me because she saw you being kind to my nieces and their friends, and despite our dramatic breakup, my family sees something in us and wants us to stay together.”

Noelle’s eyes widened. “I really didn’t think much of it when I helped your nieces. I just figured they needed some guidance. And your sisters did make a couple comments last night about us working things out, but I didn’t think they were that invested.” She blinked at him. “What are you gonna do?”

“When is your next wedding?” he asked.

“September. I have a bridal shower the last Saturday of August. Why?”

“If you spend the next four weekends with me in Heart Beach, I’ll pay you the same rate per weekend,” he said. “So fourteen thousand total. No, fifteen.”

Noelle’s jaw dropped. “Fifteen thousand…”

“Is that enough to cover the rest of what you need for tuition and your bills for the month?”

She blinked and nodded silently.

“Okay,” he said. If she agreed to extend their arrangement, he wanted to make sure she had everything she needed and then some. He didn’t want her to have to worry about anything. “If you say yes, what I’m thinking is that when I move, I’ll say we broke up and things fizzled out, and that will be it.”

“Jeremiah…” Her laugh was half surprise, half confusion. “I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t an extremely appealing offer. But wouldn’t it be easier and less expensive if you just told your family the truth?”

“Telling them the truth would cause a lot of drama and it’s not drama that I have the capacity to deal with right now.” He could predict his family’s reactions. His mom and sister would look at him with crushed expressions of hurt and disappointment, and Percy would criticize him for being careless and irresponsible. He cleared his throat. “I just want to keep the peace and keep my mom happy. And I want you to have that money, so all your tuition problems will be taken care of.”

Noelle stared at him, brows drawn together as she bit her lip.

“If I come back, will I have to act removed from everyone?” she asked. “Because that was hard, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with it for a whole month.”

“No, there’s no point now,” he said. “You can just be at the house and enjoy yourself. And pretend to be my girlfriend, of course. That’s all I’m asking.”

She eyed him silently. He waited, anxious.

“If I do this, I need you to explain to me what’s going on between you and your brother,” she said. “You don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty, but I need the gist of it.”

It was a fair request. He just hadn’t expected her to ask it.

“The gist of it is that Percy is mad at me for leaving Smith’s Sweets,” Jeremiah said. “He thinks I did it to be selfish, but I was just trying to grow and see what I could accomplish on my own.”