Beach Read

“SWEAR YOU CAN do this, January,” Anya was saying as I zoomed out of town. “If I promise Sandy a book by September first, we have got to have a book by September first.”

“I’ve written books in half that time,” I shouted over the wind.

“Oh, I know you have. But we’re talking about this manuscript. We’re talking specifically about the one that’s now taken fifteen months and counting. How far are you?”

My heart was racing. She was going to know I was lying to her. “It’s not written,” I said. “But it’s planned. I just need some time to hammer it out, no distractions.”

“I can do no distractions. I can be the Queen of Not Distracting You, but please. Please, please, please, don’t lie to me about this. If you want a break—”

“I don’t want a break,” I said. And I couldn’t afford one. I had to do whatever it took. Empty the beach house so I could sell it. Write a romance despite having recently lost close to all faith in love and humanity. “It’s coming along great, actually.”

Anya pretended to be satisfied, and I pretended to believe she was satisfied. It was June second and I had just under three months to write a book-like thing.

So of course, rather than heading straight home to work, I was driving to the grocery store. I’d had two sips of Pete’s latte, and it was three sips too many. I dumped it in the trash can on my way into Meijer and replaced it with a giant iced Americano from the Starbucks kiosk inside before stocking up on enough drafting food (macaroni, cereal, anything that didn’t require much prep) to last me a couple of weeks.

By the time I got home, the sun was high, the heat thick and sticky, but at least the iced espresso had softened the pounding in my skull. When I’d finished unloading the groceries, I carried my computer onto the deck, only to realize I’d let the battery die last night. I went back inside to plug it in and caught my phone buzzing on the table. A text from Shadi: No WAY. Sexy, Evil GUS? Did he ask about me? Tell him I miss him.

I typed back, Still sexy. Still EVIL. I will NOT tell him as I will NOT be speaking to him again, for as long as we both shall live. He didn’t remember me.

Shadi answered immediately. Hmmmm, there is LITERALLY no way that’s true. You are his fairy princess. His shadow self. Or he’s yours or whatever.

She was referring to another humiliating Gus moment I’d tried to forget. He’d ended up in a general math class with Shadi and mentioned that he’d noticed we were friends. When she confirmed, he asked her what my “deal” was. When she asked him to elaborate on what the hell that meant, he’d shrugged and mumbled something about how I acted like a fairy princess who’d been raised by woodland creatures.

Shadi told him I was actually an empress who’d been raised by two very sexy spies.

Seeing him in the wild after all this time was horrifying, I told her. I’m traumatized. Please come nurse me back to health.

Soon, habibi, she wrote back.

I was aiming to write fifteen hundred words that day. I only made it to four hundred, but on the bright side, I also won twenty-eight consecutive games of spider solitaire before I stopped to stir-fry some veggies for dinner. After I’d eaten, I sat in the dark, folded up at the kitchen table, with a glass of red wine caught in the glow of my laptop. All I needed was a bad first draft. I’d written dozens of those, spat out faster than I could type and then painstakingly rewritten in the months following.

So why couldn’t I just make myself write this bad book?

God, I missed the days when the words poured out. When writing those happy endings, those kisses in the rain and music-swelling, knee-on-the-ground proposal scenes had been the best part of my day.

Back then, true love had seemed like the grand prize, the one thing that could weather any storm, save you from both drudgery and fear, and writing about it had felt like the single most meaningful gift I could give.

And even if that part of my worldview was taking a brief sabbatical, it had to be true that sometimes, heartbroken women found their happy endings, their rain-falling, music-swelling moments of pure happiness.

My computer pinged with an email. My stomach started flipping and didn’t stop until I’d confirmed it was just a reply from Pete, with the address for her book club and a one-sentence message: Feel free to bring your favorite drink or just yourself :)))

I smiled. Maybe some version of Pete would make it into the book.

“One day at a time,” I said aloud, then swiped up my wine and wandered to the back door.

I cupped my hand around my eyes to block the glare on the glass and peered toward Gus’s deck. Smoke had been pluming out of the firepit earlier, but it was gone now, the deck abandoned.

So I slid the door open and stepped out. The world was cast in shades of blue and silver, the gentle rush of the tide breaking on sand made louder by the silence of the rest of the world. A gust of wind blew off the treetops, making me shiver, and I tightened the robe around me, draining my wineglass, then turned back to the house.

At first, I thought the blue glow that caught my eye was coming from my own laptop, but the light wasn’t coming from my house. It shone from the otherwise dark windows of Gus’s place, bright enough that I could see him pacing in front of his table. He stopped suddenly and bent to type for a moment, then picked a beer bottle up off the table and began to pace again, his hand running through his hair.

I recognized that choreography well. He could love-struck pirates and werewolves me all he wanted, but when it came down to it, Augustus Everett was still pacing in the dark, making shit up like the rest of us.

PETE LIVED IN a pink Victorian on the edge of the college campus. Even in the thunderstorm that had whipped off the lake that Monday evening, her home looked sweet as a dollhouse.

I parked along the curb and stared up at its ivy-encroached windows and charming turrets. The sun hadn’t totally set yet, but the soft gray clouds that filled the sky diffused any light to a dim greenish glow, and the garden that sprawled from Pete’s porch to her white picket fence looked lush and magical beneath its shroud of mist. This was the perfect escape from the writing cave I’d been hiding in all day.

I grabbed the tote bag full of signed bookmarks and Southern Comfort quote-pins from the passenger seat and jumped out of the car, pulling my hood up as I bolted through the rain and eased the gate open to slip in along the cobbled path.

Pete’s garden was, quite possibly, the most picturesque place I’d ever been, but the best part might’ve been that, over the rumble of thunder, “Another Brick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd was playing so loudly that the porch was shivering as I stepped onto it.

Before I could knock, the door swung open and Pete, very full plastic blue wineglass in hand, sang out, “Jaaaaaaaaaaaaanuary Andrews!”

Somewhere behind her, a chorus of voices sang back, “January Annnnnndrews!”

“Peeeeete,” I sang in response, holding out the bottle of chardonnay I’d grabbed from the store on the way over. “Thanks so much for having me.”

“Ohhhh.” She accepted the bottle of wine and scrunched up her eyes as she examined the label, then chuckled. It was called POCKETFUL OF POSIES, but I’d scratched POSIES out and written PETES in its place. “Sounds French!” she joked. “Which is the Dutch word for fancy!” She waved for me to follow her down the hall, toward the music. “Come on in and meet the girls.”

There was a pile of shoes, mostly sandals and hiking boots, arranged neatly on a rug by the door, so I kicked off my heeled green rain boots and followed the barefoot trail Pete cut down the hall. Her toenails were painted lavender to match her fresh manicure, and in her faded jeans and white linen button-up, she struck a softer image than she had at the store.

We swept past a kitchen whose granite countertops were crowded with liquor bottles and stepped into the living room at the back of the house. “Normally, we use the garden, but normally God isn’t bowling a perfect game overhead, so inside will have to do tonight. We’re just waiting on one more.”

The room was small enough to feel crowded with the five people total inside it. Of course, the three black Labradors snoozing on the couch (two of them) and armchair (the third) didn’t help. Bright green wooden chairs had been dragged in, ostensibly for the humans to sit in, and arranged to form a small semicircle. One of the dogs jumped up and wandered, tail wagging, through the sea of legs to greet me.

“Girls,” Pete said, touching my back, “this is January. January brought wine!”

“Wine, how lovely!” a woman with long blonde hair said, sweeping forward to give me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. When the blonde pulled back, Pete passed her the bottle of wine, then edged around the room toward the sound system. “I’m Maggie,” the blonde said. Her tall, willowy stature was made more striking by the sea of drapey white things she’d dressed herself in. She smiled down at me, equal parts Galadriel Lady of the Golden Wood and aging Stevie Nicks, and the wrinkled corners of her brown eyes crinkled sweetly. “So lovely to meet you, January.”

Pete’s voice came a bit too loudly as the music dropped out from under it: “She’s Mrs. Pete.”

Maggie’s serene smile seemed to be a version of an affectionate eye roll. “Just Maggie will do. And this is Lauren.” She opened an arm to make room for me to shake hands with the dreadlocked woman in the orange sundress. “And back there, on the couch, is Sonya.”

Sonya. The name hit my stomach like a hammer. Before I’d even seen her, my mouth went dry. My vision fuzzed at the corners.

“Hi, January,” That Woman said meekly from under the snoring Labradors. She forced a smile. “Nice to see you.”