Beach Read

“I DON’T WANT TO do this,” I said. Gus and I were standing at the top of the stairs outside the master bedroom.

“You don’t have to,” he reminded me.

“If you can learn how to dance in the rain—”

“Still haven’t done that,” he interrupted.

“—then I can stare the ugly things down,” I finished.

I opened the door. It took me a few breaths before I could calm myself enough to move. A California King sat against the far wall, flanked by matching turquoise end tables and lamps with blue and green beaded shades. A framed Klimt print hung over the high gray headboard. Opposite the bed, a mid-century-style dresser stretched along the wall, and a small round table sat in the corner, draped in a yellow tablecloth and decorated with a clock and a stack of books—my books.

The room was otherwise ordinary and impersonal. Gus opened one of the drawers. “Empty.”

“She’s already cleared it out.” My voice shook.

Gus gave me a tentative smile. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

I went forward and opened the drawers one by one. Nothing in any of them. I went to the side table on the left. No drawers, just two shelves. A porcelain box sat on the top one.

This had to be it. The thing I’d been waiting for. The deep, dark answer that I’d expected to spring out at me all summer. I opened it.

Empty.

“January?” Gus was standing beside the round table, holding the tablecloth up. From below, an ugly gray box stared back at me, complete with a numbered keypad on its face.

“A safe?”

“Or a really old microwave,” Gus joked.

I approached it slowly. “It’s probably empty.”

“Probably,” Gus agreed.

“Or it’s a gun,” I said.

“Was your dad the gun type?”

“In Ohio, he wasn’t.” In Ohio, he was all biographies and cozy nights in, dutiful hand-holding at doctors’ appointments, and Groupon Mediterranean cooking classes. He was the father who woke me up before the sun to take me out on the water and let me steer the boat. As far as I knew, letting an eight-year-old drive through the empty lake for twenty seconds at a time was the peak of his impulsiveness and recklessness.

But anything was possible here, in his second life.

“Wait right here,” Gus said. Before I could protest, he’d fled the room. I listened to his steps on the staircase, and then a moment later, he returned with a bottle of whiskey.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“To steady your hand,” Gus said.

“What, before I pry a bullet out of my own arm?”

Gus rolled his eyes as he unscrewed the top. “Before you crack the safe.”

“If we drank green smoothies like we drink alcohol, we would live forever.”

“If we drank green smoothies like we drink alcohol, we would never leave the toilet, and that would do nothing to help you right now,” Gus said.

I took the bottle and sipped. Then we sat on the carpet in front of the safe. “His birthday?” Gus suggested.

I scooted forward and entered the number. The lights flickered red and the door stayed locked. “At home all our codes were their anniversary,” I said. “Mom and Dad’s. I doubt that applies here.”

Gus shrugged. “Old habits die hard?”

I entered the date with low expectations but my stomach still jarred when the red lights flashed.

I wasn’t prepared for the fresh wave of jealousy that hit me. It wasn’t fair that I hadn’t gotten to know him through and through. It wasn’t fair Sonya had parts of him that, now, I never would. Maybe the safe’s code had even been some significant landmark for them, an anniversary or her birthday.

Either way, she would know the combination.

All it would take would be one email, but it wasn’t one I wanted to send.

Gus rubbed the crook of my elbow, drawing me back to the present.

“I don’t have time for this right now.” I stood. “I have to finish a book.” This week, I decided.

THE IMPORTANT THING, I told myself, was that the house could easily be sold. A safe was nothing, no big curveball. The house was practically empty. I could sell it and go back to my life.

Of course now when I thought about this, I had to do everything I could to avoid the question of where that would leave me and Gus. I had come here to sort things out and instead had made them messier, but somehow, in the mess, my work was thriving. I was writing at a speed I hadn’t reached since my first book. I felt the story racing ahead of me and did everything I could to keep pace.

I banned Gus from the house for all but an hour each night (we set a literal timer) and spent the rest of my time writing in the second bedroom upstairs, where all I could see was the street below me. I wrote late into the night, and when I woke up, I picked up where I left off.

I lived in the give-up pants and even swore to start calling them something better if I could just finish this book, as if I were bargaining with a god who was deeply invested in my (thoroughly non-capsule) wardrobe.

I didn’t shower, barely ate, chugged water and coffee but nothing harder.

At two in the morning on Saturday, August second, the day of our event at Pete’s, I reached the final chapter of FAMILY_SECRETS.docx and stared down the blinking cursor.

It had all played out more or less how I’d imagined it. The clown couple was safe but still living with their secrets. Eleanor’s father had stolen her mother’s wedding ring and sold it to give his other family the money they needed. Eleanor’s mother still had no idea the other family existed, and she believed she had only misplaced the ring, that perhaps when they unpacked in their next town, it would fall out of a pocket or a fold of towels. In her heart, the bit of colorful yarn her husband had tied around her finger more than replaced it. Love, after all, was often made not of shiny things but practical ones. Ones that grew old and rusted only to be repaired and polished. Things that got lost and had to be replaced on a regular basis.

And Eleanor. Eleanor’s heart had been thoroughly broken.

The circus was moving on. Tulsa was shrinking behind them, their week there fogging over like a dream upon waking. She was looking back, with an ache she thought would never stop spearing through her.

There; there was where I was supposed to leave it. I knew that.

It had a nice cyclical quality to it. A temporary neatness that the reader could see unraveling somewhere far ahead off the page. Or perhaps not.

There it was, exactly as it was meant to be, and my chest felt heavy and my body felt chilled and my eyes were damp, although possibly more from exhaustion and the fan overhead than anything else.

But I couldn’t leave it there. Because no matter how beautiful the moment was, in its own sad way, I didn’t believe it. This wasn’t the world I knew. You lost beautiful things—years of your mother’s good health, your shot at the dream career, your father way too soon—but you found them too: a coffee shop with the world’s worst espresso; a bar with a line-dancing night; a messy, beautiful neighbor like Gus Everett. I set my hands on the keyboard and started typing.

White flurries began to drift down around her, snagging in her hair and clothes. Eleanor looked up from the dusty road, marveling at the sudden snowfall. Of course it wasn’t snow. It was pollen. White wildflowers had sprung up on either side of the road, the wind shaking their buds out into itself.

Eleanor wondered where she was going next, and what the flowers would look like there.

I saved the draft and emailed it to Anya.

Subject: Something Different.

Please don’t hate me. Love, J.

I GOT UP early and drove twenty minutes to print the draft at the nearest FedEx, just so I could hold it in my hand. When I got back, Gus was waiting on my porch for me, sprawled on the couch with his forearm thrown over his eyes. He lifted it to peer at me, then smiled and sat up, making room for me to sit.

He pulled my legs over his lap and scooted me closer to him. “And?” he said.

I dropped the stack of paper in his lap. “Now I just have to wait and see if Anya fires me. And how mad Sandy is. And whether we can sell the book and I have something to ‘lord over you.’”

“Anya won’t fire you,” Gus said.

“And Sandy?”

“Will probably be mad,” Gus said. “But you wrote another book. And you’ll write more. Probably even one she wants. You’ll sell the book, though not necessarily before I sell mine, and either way, I’m sure you’ll find something to lord over me.”

I shrugged. “I’ll try my best anyway. What about you—are you close to done?”

“Actually, yeah. With a draft anyway. Another week or two should do it.”

“That should be about how long it takes me to do the dishes I’ve left around the house this week.”

“Perfect timing,” Gus said. “Look at fate, taking charge.”

“Fate is wont to do that.”

We parted ways before the event to get ready, and when my hair was dry after a much-needed shower, I lay on my bed, exhausted, and watched the fan twirl. The room felt different. My body felt different. I could have convinced myself I’d snatched someone else’s limbs and life and fallen in love with them.

I drifted off to sleep and woke with an hour to spare. Gus knocked on my door thirty minutes later, and we headed to the shop on foot—normally I would hate to get sweaty before an event, but here, it seemed to matter less. Everyone was a little sweaty in North Bear Shores, and the stiff black event dress hadn’t appealed to me after a summer in shorts and T-shirts, so I’d put the white thrift-store sundress on again, with the embroidered boots.

At the bookstore, Pete and Maggie took us into the office to have a glass of champagne. “Scare away any jitters,” Maggie said sunnily.

Gus and I exchanged a knowing look. We’d both done enough events to know that in towns like this one, the turnout was pretty much local friends and family (at least when it was your first book; after that, most of them couldn’t be bothered) and people who worked at the bookstore. Maggie and Pete had moved the display table up to the counter and set up about ten folding chairs, so clearly, they had some understanding of this too.

“Shame school’s not in session,” Pete said, as if anticipating my thoughts. “You’d get a full house then. The professors like to make this sort of thing mandatory. Or at least extra credit.”

Maggie nodded. “I would’ve made it mandatory for my students.”

“From now on, I’m putting labradorite in every book,” I promised. “Just to give you a good excuse to do that.”

She clutched her heart as if that was the sweetest thing she’d heard in months.

“Go time, kids,” Pete announced and led the way out. There were four more chairs lined up behind the counter, and she ushered Gus and me in between her and Maggie, who would be “interviewing” us. Lauren and her husband were in the audience, along with a couple of other women I recognized from the cookout, and five strangers.

Generally, I preferred not to know so much of my audience. Actually, I preferred not to know anyone. But this felt nice, relaxed.

Pete was still standing, welcoming everyone to the event. I looked over at Gus and knew right away something was wrong.

His face had gone pale and his mouth was tense. All the warmth in him was gone, shut off as if by a valve. I whispered his name but he kept staring right into the “crowd.” I followed his gaze to a tiny woman with nearly black curls and blue eyes that tilted up at the corners, complementing her high cheekbones and heart-shaped face. It took me a few seconds to puzzle it out, a few blissfully ignorant seconds before my stomach felt like it had dropped through my feet and into the floor.

My heart had started racing, like my body understood before my brain could admit it. I looked toward Maggie. Her lips were pursed and her hands were folded in her lap. She was stiff and still, completely unlike herself, and while Pete was carrying on confidently, I could see the change in her body language too, something of a mother bear’s posture: a vicious protectiveness, a readiness to spring.

She sat and scooted her chair around while she readied herself. It was a casual enough gesture, but I thought she might be shaken.

My heart was still thudding against my chest so hard I figured the whole audience could hear it, and my hands started to sweat.

Naomi was beautiful. I should’ve known she would be. I probably had. But I hadn’t expected to see her. Especially not alone, here, looking at Gus like that.

Apologetic, I thought, then, hungry.

My stomach lurched. She had come here with intent. She had something to say to Gus.

God, what if I threw up here?

Pete had kicked off the questioning. Something along the lines of, “Why don’t you start by telling us about your books?”

Gus turned in his chair to face her. He was answering. I didn’t hear what he said but the tone was calm, mechanical, and then he was looking at me, waiting for me to answer, and his face was entirely inscrutable.

It was like the master bedroom of Dad’s house: impersonal, scrubbed clean. There was nothing for me in it. I really felt like I might vomit.

I swallowed it and started describing my last book. I’d done it enough—it was practically scripted. I didn’t even have to listen to myself; I just had to let the words trickle out.

I really felt sick.

And then Pete was asking another question from a handwritten list she had in front of her (Tell us about your books. What’s your writing process like? What do you start with? Who are you influenced by? etc.), and in between them, Maggie contributed her own lofty follow-ups (If your book were a beverage, what would it be? Do you ever imagine where your books should be read? What is the emotional process of writing a book like? Has there ever been a moment from your real life you found yourself unable to capture through words alone?).

This moment would probably be pretty damn hard, I thought.

How many different ways could you write, Eleanor wanted badly to puke up everything she’d eaten that day?

Possibly a lot. Time was inching past, and I couldn’t decide whether I wanted it to move more quickly or if whatever came afterward would only make things worse.

The very question of that seemed to break the curse. The hour was over. The handful of people who’d come were milling forward to talk to us and get books signed, and I was gritting my teeth and trying to socially tap-dance while inside, tumbleweeds were blowing through my desolate heart.

Naomi hung back from the others, leaning against a bookcase. I wondered if she’d picked up the leaning from Gus or the other way around. I was afraid to look at her too long and recognize more of him on her, when I’d spent the last hour trying desperately to find some trace of me on him, proof that he had whispered my name fiercely into my skin even that afternoon. Pete had cornered Naomi and was trying to lead her from the store, but she was arguing, and then Lauren was joining them, trying to keep a scene from breaking out.

I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I could see her curls bobbing as she nodded. The group around the table was dissolving. Maggie was ringing them up, her own clear gaze cutting between the register and the conversation by the door.

Gus looked at me finally. He seemed poised to offer an explanation but the expression on my face must’ve changed his mind. He cleared his throat. “I should see why she’s here.”

I said nothing. Did nothing. He stared back at me for no more than two seconds, then stood and crossed the store. My face was hot but the rest of my body was cold, shivering. Gus sent Pete away, and when she looked at me, I couldn’t meet her gaze. I stood and hurried through the door to the office, then through the office to the back door into a back alley that was nothing more than a couple of dumpsters.

He hadn’t invited her. I knew that. But I couldn’t guess what seeing her did to him, or why she’d come.

Tough, beautiful Naomi, whose unknowability had thrilled Gus. Naomi who didn’t need him or try to save him. Who he had never been afraid to break. Who he had wanted to spend his life with. Who he would have stayed with, despite everything, if given the chance.

I wanted to scream but all I could do was cry. I’d burned through all my anger, and fear was all that was left. Maybe that was what had been there all along, masked in thornier emotions.

Unsure what else to do, I started to walk home. It was dark out by the time I got there, and I’d forgotten to leave the porch light on, so when someone stood from the wicker couch, I nearly fell off the steps.

“I’m sorry!” came the woman’s voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I’d only heard it twice, but the sound had worn grooves into my brain. I would never forget it.

“I was hoping we could talk,” Sonya said. “No, more than hoping. I need to talk to you. Please. Five minutes. There’s a lot you don’t know. Things that will help, I think. I wrote it all down this time.”