Beach Read(36)

I was grateful for the dark. My face was suddenly on fire. My stomach felt like molten lava was pouring down it. Was I misunderstanding? Should I ask? Did it matter? That was almost a decade ago, and even if things had gone differently that night, it wouldn’t have amounted to anything in the long run.

Still, I was burning up.

“Well, shit,” I said. I couldn’t get anything else out.

He laughed. “Anyway, your parents,” he said. “It couldn’t have been all bad.”

I cleared my throat. It could not have sounded any less natural. I might as well have just screamed I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY SAD PARENTS WHILE I’M THINKING FIERY THOUGHTS ABOUT YOU and gotten it over with.

“It wasn’t,” I said, focusing on the road. “I don’t think.”

“And the night they met?” he pressed.

Again, the words came gushing out of me, like I’d needed to say them all year—or maybe they were just a welcome diversion from the other conversation we’d been having. “They went to this carnival at a local Catholic church,” I said. “Not together. Like, they went separately to the same carnival. And then they ended up standing in line next to each other for that Esmeralda thing. You know, the animatronic psychic-in-a-box?”

“Oh, I know her well,” Gus said. “She was one of my first crushes.”

There was no reason that should’ve sent new fireworks of heat across my cheeks, and yet, here we were. “So anyway,” I went on. “My mom was the fifth wheel on this, like, blatant double date trying to disguise itself as a Casual Hang. So when the others went off to go through the Tunnel-o-Love, she went to get her fortune. My dad said he left his group when he spotted this beautiful red-haired girl in a blue polka-dot dress.”

“Betty Crocker?” Gus guessed.

“She’s a brunette. Get your eyes checked,” I said.

A smile quirked Gus’s lips. “Sorry for interrupting. Go on. Your dad’s just spotted your mom.”

I nodded. “Anyway, he spent the whole time he was in line trying to figure out how to strike up a conversation with her, and finally, when she paid for her prediction, she started cussing like a sailor.”

Gus laughed. “I love seeing where you get your admirable qualities from.”

I flipped him off and went on. “Her prediction had gotten stuck halfway out of the machine. So Dad steps up to save the day. He manages to rip the top half of the ticket out, but the rest is still stuck in the machine, so Mom can’t make sense of the words. So then he told her she’d better stick around and see if her fortune came out with his.”

“Oh, that old line,” Gus said, grinning.

“Works every time,” I agreed. “Anyway, he put in his nickel and the two tickets came out. Hers said, You will meet a handsome stranger, and his said, Your story’s about to begin.” They still had them framed in the living room. Or at least, when I was home for Christmas, they were still up.

That deep ache passed through me. It felt like a metal cheese slicer, pulled right through my center, left there midway through my body. I’d thought missing my dad would be the hardest thing I’d ever do. But the worst thing, the hardest thing, had turned out to be being angry with someone you couldn’t fight it out with.

Someone you loved enough that you desperately wanted to push through the shit and find a way to make a new normal. I would never get a real explanation from Dad. Mom would never get an apology. We’d never be able to see things “from his point of view” or actively choose not to. He was gone, and everything of him we’d planned to hold on to was obliterated.

“They were married three months later,” I told Gus. “Some twenty-five years after that, their only daughter’s first book, Kiss Kiss, Wish Wish came out with Sandy Lowe Books, with a dedication that read—”

“‘To my parents,’” Gus said. “‘Who are proof of fate’s strong, if animatronic, hand.’”

My mouth fell open. I’d almost forgotten what he had told me at the gas station, that he’d read my books. Or maybe I hadn’t let myself think about it, because I was worried that meant he’d hated them, and somehow I was still competing with him, needing him to recognize me as his rival and equal.

“You remember that?” It came out as a whisper.

His eyes leapt toward me, and my heart rose in my throat. “It’s why I asked about them,” he said. “I thought it was the nicest dedication I’d ever read.”

I made a face. Coming from him, that might not have been a compliment. “‘Nicest.’”

“Fine, January,” he said in a low voice. “I thought it was beautiful. Is that what you want me to admit?”

Again my heart buoyed through my chest. “Yes.”

“I thought it was beautiful,” he said immediately, sincerely.

I turned my face to the window. “Yeah, well. It turned out to be a lie. But I guess Mom thought it was a nice enough one. She knew he was cheating on her and she stayed with him.”

“I’m sorry.” For several minutes, neither of us spoke. Finally, Gus cleared his throat. He made it sound so natural. “You asked why New Eden. Why I wanted to write about it?”

I nodded, glad for the topic change, though surprised by his segue.