Beach Read

I SPENT FAR TOO much of my Saturday trying to choose a perfect destination for Gus’s first Adventure in Romance. Even though I’d been suffering from chronic writer’s block, I was still an expert in my field, and my list of possible settings for his introduction to meet-cutes and Happily Ever Afters was endless.

I’d pounded out another thousand words first thing in the morning, but since then I’d been pacing and Googling, trying to choose the perfect place. When I still couldn’t make up my mind, I’d driven myself to the farmer’s market in town and walked the sunny aisle between the stands, searching for inspiration. I picked through buckets of cut flowers, longing for the days when I could afford a bundle of daisies for the kitchen, calla lilies for the nightstand in the bedroom. Of course, that had been back when Jacques and I were sharing an apartment. When you were renting in New York by yourself, there wasn’t much money for things that smelled good for a week, then died in front of you.

At the booth of a local farm, I filled my bag with plump tomatoes, orange and red, along with some basil and mint, cucumbers, and a head of fresh butter lettuce. If I couldn’t pick something to do with Gus tonight, maybe we’d cook dinner.

My stomach grumbled at the thought of a good meal. I wasn’t big on cooking myself—it took too much time I never felt like I had—but there was definitely something romantic about pouring two glasses of red wine and moving around a clean kitchen, chopping and rinsing, stirring and sampling tastes from a wooden spoon. Jacques had loved to cook—I could follow a recipe okay, but he preferred a more intuitive, cook-all-night approach, and kitchen intuition and food-patience were both things I sorely lacked.

I paid for my veggies and pushed my sunglasses up as I entered the enclosed part of the market in search of some chicken or steak and fell back into brainstorming.

Characters could fall in love anywhere—an airport or auto body shop or hospital—but for an anti-romantic, it would probably take something more obvious than that to get the ideas going. For me, the best usually came from the unexpected, from mistakes and mishaps. It didn’t take inspiration to dredge up a list of plot points, but to find that moment—the perfect moment that defined a book, that made it come alive as something greater than the sum of its words—that required an alchemy you couldn’t fake.

The last year of my life had proven that. I could plot all day, but it didn’t matter if I didn’t fall into the story headfirst, if the story itself didn’t spin like a cyclone, pulling me wholly into itself. That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.

While the interview with Grace hadn’t given me any of those all-consuming tornadoes of inspiration, I had awoken with a glimmer of it. There were stories that deserved to be told, ones I’d never considered, and I felt a spark of excitement at the thought that maybe I could tell one of them, and like doing it.

I wanted to give Gus that feeling too. I wanted him to wake up tomorrow itching to write. Proving how difficult it was to write a rom-com was one thing, and I was confident Gus would see that, but getting him to understand what I loved about the genre—that reading and writing it was nearly as all-consuming and transformative as actually falling in love—would be a different challenge entirely.

I was too distracted to write when I got home, so I put myself to better use. I twisted my hair into a topknot, put on shorts and a Todd Rundgren tank top, and went to the guest bathroom on the second floor with trash bags and boxes.

Dad or That Woman had kept the closet stocked with towels and backup toiletries, which I piled into donation boxes and carried to the foyer one at a time. On my third trip, I stopped before the kitchen window facing into Gus’s house. He was sitting at the table, holding an oversized note up for me to see. Like he’d been waiting.

I balanced the box against the table and swiped my forearm up my temple to catch the sweat beading there as I read:

JANUARY, JANUARY, WHEREFORE ART THOU, JANUARY?

The message was ironic. The butterflies in my chest were not. I pushed the box onto the table and grabbed my notebook, scribbling in it. I held the note up.

New phone who dis?

Gus laughed, then turned back to his computer. I grabbed the box and carried it out to the Kia, then went back for the rest. The humidity of the last few days had let up again, leaving nothing but breezy warmth behind. When I’d finished loading the car, I poured myself a glass of rosé and sat on the deck.

The sky was bright blue, an occasional fluffy cumulus cloud drifting lazily past, and the sunlight painted the rustling treetops a pale green. If I closed my eyes, shutting myself off from what I could see, I could hear squeals of laughter down by the water.

At home, Mom and Dad’s yard had backed up to another family’s, one with three young kids. As soon as they moved in, Dad had planted a grove of evergreens along the fence to create some privacy, but he’d always loved that on late summer nights, as we sat around the firepit, we’d hear the screams and giggles of the kids playing tag, or jumping on the trampoline, or lying in a tent behind their house.

Dad loved his space, but he also always said he liked to be reminded that there were other people out there, living their lives. People who didn’t know him or care to.

I know feeling small gets to some people, he had once told me, but I kind of like it. Takes the pressure off when you’re just one life of six billion at any given moment. And when you’re going through something hard—at the time, Mom was doing chemo—it’s nice to know you’re not even close to the only one.

I’d felt the opposite. I was harboring a private heartbreak. About the universe, about Mom’s body betraying her again. About the life I’d dreamed of dissipating like mist. I’d watched my U of M classmates over Facebook as they went on to grad school and (mysteriously funded) international travel. I’d watched them post doting Mother’s Day tributes from far corners of the world. I’d listened to the kids who lived behind my parents’ house shriek and giggle as they played Ghost in the Graveyard.

And I’d felt secretly heartbroken that the world could do this to us again, and even worse because I knew saying any of that would only make things harder for Mom.

And then she’d kicked it the second time. And I’d been so grateful. More relieved than I knew a person could feel. Our life was back on track, the three of us stronger than ever. Nothing could tear us apart ever again, I was sure.

But still, I was mourning those years lost to doctor visits and shed hair and Mom, the do-er, lying sick on the couch. Those feelings didn’t fit with our beautiful post-cancer life, I knew—they added nothing helpful or good—so I’d tamped them down once more.

When I found out about Sonya, they’d all sprung out, fermented into anger over time, like an overzealous jack-in-the-box pointed straight at Dad.

“Question.”

I looked up and found Gus leaning against the railing on his deck. His gray T-shirt was as rumpled as everything else I’d seen him wear. His clothes very likely never made it from the hamper to drawers, assuming they made it to the laundry in the first place, but the muss of his hair also suggested he could have just rolled out of a nap.

I went to stand against the railing on my side of the ten-foot divide. “I hope it’s about the meaning of life. That or which book is first in the Bridget Jones series.”

“That, definitely,” he said. “And also, do I need to wear a tuxedo tonight?”

I fought a smile. “I would pay one hundred dollars to see what a tuxedo under your laundry regimen looks like. And I’m extremely broke, so that says a lot.”

He rolled his eyes. “I like to think of it as my laundry democracy.”

“See, if you let something inanimate vote on whether it wants to be washed, it’s not going to answer.”

“January, are you taking me to a reenactment of the Beauty and the Beast ball or not? I’m trying to plan.”

I studied him. “Okay, I’ll answer that question, but on the condition that you tell me, honestly, do you own a tuxedo?”

He stared back. After a long pause, he sighed and leaned into the railing. The sun had started to set and the flexed veins and muscles in his lean arms cast shadows along his skin. “Fine. Yes. I own a tuxedo.”

I erupted into laughter. “Seriously? Are you a secret Kennedy? No one owns a tuxedo.”

“I agreed to answer one question. Now tell me what to wear.”

“Considering I’ve only seen you in almost imperceptibly different variations of one outfit, you can safely assume I wouldn’t plan anything requiring a tuxedo. I mean, until now, when I found out you owned a tuxedo. Now all bets are off. But for tonight, your grumpy bartender costume should do.”

He shook his head and straightened up. “Phenomenal,” he said, and went inside.

In that moment, I knew exactly where I was going to take Gus Everett.

“WOW,” GUS SAID.

The “carnival” I’d found eight miles from our street was in a Big Lots parking lot, and it fit there a bit too easily.

“I just counted the rides,” Gus said. “Seven.”

“I’m really proud of you for getting that high,” I teased. “Maybe next time see if you can aim for ten.”

“I wish I were high,” Gus grumbled.

“It’s perfect,” I replied.

“For what?” he said.

“Um, duh,” I said. “Falling in love.”

A laugh barked out of Gus, and again I was a little too proud of myself for my own liking. “Come on.” I felt a pang of regret as I handed over my credit card at the ticket booth in exchange for our all-you-can-ride bracelets, but was relieved when Gus interrupted to insist on buying his own. That was one of many horrible parts of being broke: having to think about whether you could afford to share sucked.

“That wasn’t very romantic of me, I guess,” I said as we wandered into the throng of bodies clustered around a milk can toss.

“Well, lucky for you, that is pretty much my exact definition of romance.” He pointed to the teal row of porta potties at the edge of the lot. A teenage boy with his hat turned backward was gripping his stomach and shifting between his feet as he waited for one of the toilets to open up while the couple beside him hardcore made out.

“Gus,” I said flatly. “That couple is so into each other they’re making out a yard away from a literal row of shit piles. That juxtaposition is basically the entire rom-com lesson for the night. It really does nothing to your icy heart?”

“Heart? No. Stomach, a little. I’m getting sympathy diarrhea for their friend. Can you imagine having such a bad time with your friends that a porta potty becomes a beacon of hope? A bedrock! A place to rest your weary head. We’re definitely looking at a future existentialist. Maybe even a coldly horny novelist.”

I rolled my eyes. “That guy’s night was pretty much my entire high school—and much of college—experience, and somehow I survived, tender human heart intact.”

“Bullshit!” Gus cried.

“Meaning?”

“I knew you in college, January.”

“That seems like the biggest in a series of vast exaggerations you’ve made tonight.”

“Fine, I knew of you,” he said. “The point is, you weren’t the diarrhea-having third wheel. You dated plenty. Marco, right? That guy from our Fiction 400 workshop. And weren’t you with that premed golden boy? The one who was addicted to studying abroad and tutoring disadvantaged youth and, like, rock climbing shirtless.”

I snorted. “Sounds like you were more in love with him than I was.”

Something sharp and appraising flashed over Gus’s eyes. “But you were in love with him.”

Of course I was. I’d met him during an impromptu snowball fight on campus. I couldn’t imagine anything more romantic than that moment, when he’d pulled me up from the snowdrift I’d fallen into, his blue eyes sparkling, and offered his dry hat to replace my snow-soaked one.

It took all of ten minutes as he walked me home for me to determine that he was the most interesting person I’d ever met. He was working on getting his pilot’s license and had wanted to work in the ER ever since he’d lost a cousin in a car accident as a kid. He’d done semesters in Brazil, Morocco, and France (Paris, where his paternal grandparents lived), and he’d also backpacked a significant portion of the Camino de Santiago by himself.

When I told him I’d never been out of the country, he immediately suggested a spontaneous road trip to Canada. I’d thought he was kidding basically until we pulled up to the duty-free shop on the far side of the border around midnight. “There,” he said with his model grin, all shiny and guileless. “Next we need to get you somewhere they’ll actually stamp your passport.”

That whole night had taken on a hazy, soft-focus quality like we were only dreaming it. Looking back, I thought we sort of had been: him pretending to be endlessly interesting; me pretending to be spontaneous and carefree, as usual. Outwardly we were so different, but when it came down to it, we both wanted the same thing. A life cast in a magical glow, every moment bigger and brighter and tastier than the last.

For the next six years, we were intent on glowing for each other.

I tucked the memories away. “I was never with Marco,” I answered Gus. “I went to one party with him, and he left with someone else. Thanks for reminding me.”

Gus’s laugh turned into an exaggerated, pitying “awh.”

“It’s fine. I persevered.”

Gus’s head cocked, his eyes digging at mine like shovels. “And Golden Boy?”

“We were together,” I admitted.

I’d thought I was going to marry him. And then Dad had died and everything had changed. We’d survived a lot together with Mom’s illness, but I’d always held things together, found ways to shut off the worrying and have fun with him, but this was different. Jacques didn’t know what to do with this version of me, who stayed in bed and couldn’t write or read without coming apart, who slugged around at home letting laundry pile up and ugliness seep into our dreamy apartment, who never wanted to throw parties or walk the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset or book a last-minute getaway to Joshua Tree.

Again and again he told me I wasn’t myself. But he was wrong. I was the same me I’d always been. I’d just stopped trying to glow in the dark for him, or anyone else.

It was our beautiful life together, amazing vacations and grand gestures and freshly cut flowers in handmade vases, that had held us together for so long.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t get enough of him. Or that he was the best man I’d ever known. (I’d thought that was my dad, but now it was the dad from my favorite 2000s teen drama, Veronica Mars.) Or that he was my favorite person. (That was Shadi.) Or because he made me laugh so hard I wept. (He laughed easily, but rarely joked.) Or that when something bad happened, he was the first person I wanted to call. (He wasn’t.)

It was that we met at the same age my parents had, that the snowball fight and impromptu road trip had felt like fate, that my mother adored him. He fit so perfectly into the love story I’d imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life.

Breaking up still sucked in every conceivable way, but once the initial pain wore off, memories from our relationship started to seem like just another story I’d read. I hated thinking about it. Not because I missed him but because I felt bad for wasting so much of his time—and mine—trying to be his dream girl.

“We were together,” I repeated. “Until last year.”

“Wow.” Gus laughed awkwardly. “That’s a long time. I’m … really regretting making fun of his shirtless rock climbing now.”

“It’s okay,” I said, shrugging. “He dumped me in a hot tub.” Outside a cabin in the Catskills, three days before our trip with his family was scheduled to end. Spontaneity wasn’t always as sexy as it was cracked up to be. You’re just not yourself anymore, he’d told me. We don’t work like this, January.

We left the next morning, and on the drive back to New York, Jacques had told me he’d call his parents when we got back to let them know the news.

Mom’s going to cry, he said. So is Brigitte.

Even in that moment, I was possibly more devastated to lose Jacques’s parents and sister—a feisty high schooler with impeccable 1970s style—than Jacques himself.

“A hot tub?” Gus echoed. “Damn. Honestly, that guy was always so self-impressed I doubt he could even see you through the glare off his own glistening body.”

I cracked a smile. “I’m sure that was it.”

“Hey,” Gus said.

“Hey, what?”

He tipped his head toward a cotton candy stand. “I think we should eat that.”

“And here it finally is,” I said.

“What?” Gus asked.

“The second thing we agree on.”

Gus paid for the cotton candy and I didn’t argue. “No, that’s fine,” he teased when I said nothing. “You can just owe me. You can just pay me back whenever.”

“How much was it?” I asked, tearing off an enormous piece and lowering it dramatically into my mouth.

“Three dollars, but it’s fine. Just Venmo me the dollar fifty later.”

“Are you sure that’s not too much trouble?” I said. “I’m happy to go get a cashier’s check.”

“Do you know where the closest Western Union is?” he said. “You could probably wire it.”

“What sort of interest were you thinking?” I asked.

“You can just give me three dollars when I take you home, and then if I ever find out I need an organ, we can circle back.”

“Sure, sure,” I agreed. “Let’s just put a pin in this.”

“Yeah, we should probably loop in our lawyers anyway.”

“Good point,” I said. “Until then, what do you want to ride?”

“Ride?” Gus said. “Absolutely nothing here.”

“Fine,” I said. “What are you willing to ride?”

We’d been walking, talking, and eating at an alarming rate, and Gus stopped suddenly, offering me the final clump of cotton candy. “That,” he said while I was eating, and pointed at a pathetically small carousel. “That looks like it would have a really hard time killing me.”

“What do you weigh, Gus? Three beer cans, some bones, and a cigarette?” And all the hard lines and lean ridges of muscle I definitely hadn’t gawked at. “Any number of those painted animals could kill you with a sneeze.”

“Wow,” he said. “First of all, I may only weigh three beer cans, but that’s still three more beer cans than your ex-boyfriend. He looked like he did nothing but chew wheatgrass while running. I weigh easily twice what he did. Secondly, you’re one to talk: you’re what, four feet and six inches?”

“I’m a very tall five four, actually,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes and shook his head at me. “You’re as small as you are ridiculous.”

“So not very?”

“Carousel, final offer,” Gus said.

“This is the perfect place for our montage,” I said.

“Our what now?”

“Young—extremely beautiful and very tall for her height—woman in sparkly tennis shoes teaches fearful, party-hating curmudgeon how to enjoy life,” I said. “There’d be a lot of head shaking. A lot of me dragging you from ride to ride. You dragging me back out of the line. Me dragging you back into it. It’d be adorable, and more importantly it’ll help with your super romantic suicide-cult book. It’s the promise-of-the-premise portion of the novel, when your readers are grinning ear to ear. We need a montage.”

Gus folded his arms and studied me with narrowed eyes.

“Come on, Gus.” I bumped his arm. “You can do it. Be adorable.”

His eyes darted to where I’d bumped him, then back to my face, and he scowled.

“I think you misunderstood me. I said adorable.”

His surly expression cracked. “Fine, January. But it’s not going to be a montage. Choose one death trap. If I survive that, you can sleep well tonight knowing you brought me one step closer to believing in happy endings.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “If you wrote this scene, would we die?”

“If I wrote this scene, it wouldn’t be about us.”

“Wow. One, I’m offended. Two, who would it be about?”

He scanned the crowd and I followed his gaze. “Her,” he said finally.

“Who?”

He stepped in close behind me, his head hovering over my right shoulder. “There. At the bottom of the Ferris wheel.”

“The girl in the Screw Me, I’m Irish shirt?” I said.

His laugh was warm and rough in my ear. Standing this close to him was bringing back flashes of the night at the frat house I’d rather not revisit.

“The woman working the machine,” he said in my ear. “Maybe she’d make a mistake and watch someone get hurt because of it. This job was probably her last chance, the only place that would hire her after she made an even bigger mistake. In a factory maybe. Or she broke the law to protect someone she cared about. Some kind of almost-innocent mistake that could lead to less innocent ones.”

I spun to face him. “Or maybe she’d get a chance to be a hero. This job was her last chance, but she loves it and she’s good at it. She gets to travel, and even if she mostly only sees parking lots, she gets to meet people. And she’s a people person. The mistake isn’t hers—the machinery malfunctions, but she makes a snap decision and saves a girl’s life. That girl grows up to be a congresswoman, or a heart surgeon. The two of them cross paths again down the road. The Ferris wheel operator’s too old to travel with the carnival anymore. She’s been living alone, feeling like she wasted her life. Then one day, she’s alone. She has a heart attack. She almost dies but she manages to call nine-one-one. The ambulance rushes her in, and who is her doctor but that same little girl.

“Of course, Ferris doesn’t recognize her—she’s all grown up. But the doctor never could’ve forgotten Ferris’s face. The two women strike up a friendship. Ferris still doesn’t get to travel, but twice a month the doctor comes over to Ferris’s double-wide and they watch movies. Movies set in different countries. They watch Casablanca and eat Moroccan takeout. They watch The King and I and eat Siamese food, whatever that may be. They even watch—gasp!—Bridget Jones’s Diary while bingeing on fish and chips. They make it through twenty countries before Ferris passes away, and when she does, Doctor realizes her life was a gift she almost didn’t get. She takes some of Ferris’s ashes—her ungrateful asshole son didn’t come to collect them—and sets out on a trip around the world. She’s grateful to be alive. The end.”

Gus stared at me, only one corner of his very crooked mouth at all engaged. I was fairly sure he was smiling, although the deep grooves between his eyebrows seemed to disagree. “Then write it,” he said finally.

“Maybe so,” I said.

He glanced back at the gray-haired woman working the machinery. “That one,” he said. “I’m willing to ride that one. But only because I trust Ferris so damn much.”