Beach Read(64)

But still.

I know it’s terrible timing, Shadi said, but I already talked to my boss, and I get off again for my bday in August and I PROMISE I will pack the entire sex dungeon up myself.

The kettle began to whistle and I set my phone aside as I poured the water over the grounds and put the lid on the press to let it steep. My phone lit up with a new message and I leaned over the counter.

Obviously I don’t HAVE to go, she said. But I feel like??? I HAVE to. But like, I don’t. If you need me now, I can come now.

I couldn’t do that to her, drag her away from something that was clearly making her happier than I’d seen her in months.

If you come in August, how long will you stay? I asked, opening negotiations.

An email pinged into my inbox and I opened it with trepidation. Sonya had finally replied to my query about the porch furniture:

January,

I would love the porch furniture but I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy it from you. So if you were offering to give it to me, let me know when I could bring a truck & friends to pick it up. If you were offering to sell it to me, thank you for the offer, but I’m unable to take you up on it.

Either way, is there a time we could talk? In person would be good, I—



“Hey.”

I closed my email and turned around to find Gus shuffling into the kitchen, the heel of his hand rubbing at his right eye. His wavy hair stuck up to one side and his T-shirt was creased like a piece of ancient parchment behind glass at a museum, one of the sleeves twisted up on itself to reveal more of his arm than I’d seen before. I felt suddenly greedy for his shoulders.

“Wow,” I said. “This is what Gus Everett looks like before he puts on his face.”

Eyes still sleepily scrunched, he held his arms out to his sides. “What do you think?”

My heart fluttered. “Exactly what I pictured.” I turned my back to him as I dug through the cabinets for a couple of mugs. “In that you look exactly how you always do.”

“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”

“That’s your right, as an American citizen.” I spun back to him with the mugs, hoping I appeared more casual than I felt about waking up in the same house as him.

His hands were braced against the counter as he leaned, like always, into it, his mouth curled into a smile. “Thanks be to Jack Reacher.”

I crossed my heart. “Amen.”

“That coffee ready?”

“Very nearly.”

“Porch or deck?” he asked.

I tried to imagine cabin fever. I tried to imagine this getting old: that smile, those rumpled clothes, the language only Gus and I spoke, the joking and crying and touching and not touching.

A new message came in from Shadi: I’ll stay at LEAST a week.

I texted her back. See you then, babe. Keep me posted on the hauntings of your heart.

IT WAS WEDNESDAY, and we’d spent the day writing at my house (I was now a solid 33 percent into the book) while we waited for the buyer to come pick up the furniture from the upstairs bedroom. I’d held off on selling the porch furniture now that Gus and I had gotten in the habit of using it some nights. I’d started boxing up knickknacks from the entire downstairs and dropping them off at Goodwill and even selling off the less necessary furniture downstairs. The love seat and armchair from the living room were gone, the clock from the mantel was gone, the place mats and tapered candles and votives in the armoire by the kitchen table all donated.

Maybe because it was starting to feel less like a home than a dollhouse, it had become our de facto office, and when we’d finished work that day, we’d relocated to Gus’s.

He was in the kitchen, getting more ice, and I took the opportunity to peruse (snoop through) his bookshelves as thoroughly as I’d wanted to ever since the night I moved in and saw them lit up through my living room window. He had quite the collection, classics and contemporary alike. Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, William Faulkner, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay. For the most part he’d arranged them in alphabetical order, but he obviously hadn’t kept up on shelving new purchases for a while, and these sat in stacks in front of and on top of other books, the receipts still poking out from under their covers.

I crouched to get a better look at the bottom row on the shelf furthest from the door, which was entirely out of order, and audibly gasped at the sight of a thin spine reading GREGORY L. WARNER HIGH SCHOOL.

I opened the yearbook and flipped to the E surnames. A laugh burst out of me as my eyes fell on the black-and-white shot of a shaggy-haired Gus standing with one foot on either side of a dilapidated set of train tracks. “Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you, Lord.”

“Oh, come on,” Gus said as he stepped back into the room. “Is nothing sacred to you, January?” He set the ice bucket on the sideboard and tried to pry the book from my hands.

“I’m not done with this,” I protested, pulling it back. “In fact, I doubt I’ll ever be done with this. I want this to be the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I look at before I go to bed.”

“Okay, pervert, stick to your underwear catalogues.” He tried again to pluck it from my hands, but I turned away and clutched it to my chest, forcing him to reach around me on either side.

“You can take my life,” I yelped, dodging his hands, “you can take my freedom, but you’ll never take this goddamn yearbook from me, Gus.”