Beach Read(21)

“It’s exactly what you were saying.”

He shook his head again. “Well, it’s not what I meant,” he said. “I meant to say … You were always so …” He huffed. “I don’t know, you’re drinking wine out of your purse. I’m guessing there’s a reason for that.”

My mouth jammed shut, and my chest tightened. Probably Gus Everett was the last person I’d expect to read me like that.

I looked out the window toward the beach house as if it were a glowing red emergency exit sign, a savior from this conversation. I could hear waves breaking on the shore behind the houses, but the fog hung too thick for me to see anything.

“I’m not asking you to tell me,” Gus said after a second. “I just … I don’t know. It’s weird to see you like this.”

I turned toward him and folded my legs up on the seat as I studied him, searching his expression for irony. But his face was serious, his dark eyes narrowed and his brow pinched, his head doing that particular half tilt that made me feel like I was under a microscope. The Sexy, Evil stare that suggested he was reading your mind.

“I’m not writing,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was admitting it, least of all to Gus, but better him than Anya or Sandy. “I’m out of money, and my editor’s desperate to buy something from me—and all I’ve got is a handful of bad pages and three months to finish a book someone other than my mom will spend US dollars on. That’s what’s going on.”

I batted away thoughts of my tattered relationship with Mom and the conversation we’d had after the funeral to focus on the lesser evil of my situation.

“I’ve done it before,” I said. “Four books, no problem. And it’s bad enough that I feel like I’m incapable of doing the one thing I’m good at, the thing that makes me feel like me, and then there’s the added fact that I’m totally out of money.”

Gus nodded thoughtfully. “It’s always harder to write when you have to. It’s like … the pressure turns it into a job, like anything else, and you might as well be selling insurance. The story suddenly loses any urgency to be told.”

“Exactly,” I agreed.

“But you’ll figure it out,” he said coolly after a second. “I’m sure there are a million Happily Ever Afters floating around in that brain.”

“Okay, A, no, there aren’t,” I said. “And B, it’s not as easy as you think, Gus. Happy endings don’t matter if the getting there sucks.”

I tipped my head against the window. “At this point, it honestly might be easier for me to pack it in on the upbeat women’s fiction and hop aboard the Bleak Literary Fiction train. At least it would give me an excuse to describe boobs in some horrifying new way. Like bulbous succulents of flesh and sinew. I never get to say bulbous succulents of flesh in my books.”

Gus leaned back against the driver’s side door and let out a laugh, which made me feel simultaneously bad for teasing him and ridiculously victorious for having made him laugh yet again. In college, I’d barely seen him crack a smile. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d changed.

“You could never write like that,” he said. “It’s not your style.”

I crossed my arms. “You don’t think I’m capable?”

Gus rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying it’s not who you are.”

“It’s not who I was,” I corrected. “But as you’ve pointed out, I’m different now.”

“You’re going through something,” he said, and again, I felt an uncomfortable prickle at him seeming to x-ray me like that, and at the spark of the old competitive flame Gus always ignited in me. “But I’d wager you’re about as likely to churn out something dark and dreary as I am to go all When Harry Met Sally.”

“I can write whatever I want,” I said. “Though I can see how writing a Happily Ever After might be hard for someone whose happy endings usually happen during one-night stands.”

Gus’s eyes darkened, and his mouth hitched into an uneven smile. “Are you challenging me, Andrews?”

“I’m just saying,” I parroted him, “it’s not who you are.”

Gus scratched his jaw, his eyes clouding as he recessed into thought. His hand dropped to rest over the steering wheel and his focus shifted sharply to me. “Okay,” he said. “I have an idea.”

“A seventh Pirates of the Caribbean movie?” I said. “It’s so crazy it might work!”

“Actually,” Gus said, “I thought we could make a deal.”

“What sort of deal, Augustus?”

He visibly shuddered at the sound of his full name and reached across the car. A spark of anticipation—of what, I wasn’t sure—rushed through me. But he was only opening the box in my lap and grabbing another donut. Coconut.

He bit into it. “You try writing bleak literary fiction, see if that’s who you are now, if you’re capable of being that person”—I rolled my eyes and snatched the last bite of donut from his hand. He went on, unbothered—“and I’ll write a Happily Ever After.”

My eyes snapped up to his. The fringes of the porch light were making their way through the fog now, brushing at the car window and catching at the sharp angle of his face and the dark wave that fell across his forehead. “You’re kidding.”