Beach Read(71)

“This story’s completely made up,” Gus said. “That never happened.”

“Cross my heart,” Maggie said in her wistful, airy way. “You couldn’t have been more than five. Remember that, Gussy? When you were a little guy, you and Rose would come to the pool with us once or twice a week.”

Gus’s face changed, something behind his eyes, like he was sliding a metal door closed behind them. “Nope. Doesn’t ring any bells.”

Rose? Pete’s real name was Posey, a little bouquet. Rose must’ve been her sister, Gus’s mom.

“Well, the fact remains,” Maggie went on. “You loved to swim, whether you do it now or not, and your suit’s just waiting in the spare room.” Maggie looked me up and down next. “I’m sure we could find something that would fit you too. It’d be long in the upward direction. And the across direction. You’re a tiny thing, aren’t you?”

“I never thought so until this summer.”

Maggie rubbed my arm and smiled serenely. “That’s what living among the Dutch will do to you. We’re hardy stock out this-a-way. Come meet everyone. Gussy, you say hi too.”

And with that, we were spirited through Pete and Maggie’s back garden. Gus knew everyone—mostly faculty and the partners and children of faculty from the local university, along with two of Maggie’s sisters—but seemingly had very little to say to any of them beyond a polite greeting. Darcy, Maggie’s youngest sister, was a good three inches taller than Maggie with yellow, straw-like hair and giant blue eyes, while Lolly was a good foot shorter than Maggie with a blunt gray bob. “She’s got horrible middle child syndrome,” Maggie whispered to me as she guided me and Gus to another nook in the garden where they’d set up a beanbag toss. Two of the Labradors ran amiably back and forth, making half-assed attempts to catch the beanbags as the kids threw them.

“I’m sure they’d let you join in,” Maggie told us, waving toward the game.

Gus’s smile split wide in that rare, unrepentant way as he turned toward her. “I think we’ll just start with a drink.”

She patted his arm gently. “Oh, you’re Pete’s godson all right, Gussy. Let’s get you two some of my world-famous blue punch!”

She went on ahead, and as we followed, Gus cast a conspiratorial look my way that warned the drink would be terrible, but after our strained drive over, even that was enough to send heat down through my body, all the way to my toes. “World-infamous,” he whispered.

“Hey, do you know what kind of stone this path is made of?” I whispered back.

He shook his head in disbelief. “Just so you know, asking that question is the one thing I can never forgive you for.”

We’d stopped walking on the path, in a nook formed by lush foliage, out of view of both the beanbag toss and the deck.

“Gus,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

For a moment, his gaze was intense. He blinked and the expression vanished, a careful indifference replacing it. “Yeah, it’s nothing.”

“But there is an ‘it,’” I said.

Gus shook his head. “No. There’s no ‘it’ except the blue punch, and there will be a lot of that. Try to pace yourself.”

He started toward the deck again, leaving me to follow. When we reached it, Maggie already had two full-to-the-brim cups ready for us. I took a sip and did my best not to cough. “What’s in this?”

“Vodka,” Maggie said airily, ticking the ingredients off on her fingers. “Coconut rum. Blue cura?ao. Tequila. Pineapple juice. A splash of regular rum. Do you like it?”

“It’s great,” I said. It smelled like an open bottle of nail polish remover.

“Gussy?” she asked.

“Wonderful,” he answered.

“Better than last year, isn’t it?” Pete said, abandoning her post at the grill to join us.

“At least more likely to strip the paint from a car if spilled,” Gus said.

Pete guffawed and smacked his arm. “You hear that, Mags? I told you this stuff could power a jet.”

Maggie smiled, unbothered by their teasing, and the light caught Gus’s face just right to reveal his secret dimple and lighten his eyes to a golden amber. Those eyes cut to me and his mild smile rose. He didn’t look like a different person. He looked more at ease, more sure, like all this time I’d only ever come face-to-face with his shadow.

Standing there in that moment, I felt like I’d stumbled on something hidden and sacred, more intimate even than what had passed between us at his house. Like Gus had pulled back the curtains in the window of a house I’d been admiring, whose insides I’d been dreaming about but even so, underestimated.

I liked seeing Gus like this, with the people he knew would always love him.

We’d just had sex like the world was burning down around us, but if I ever got to kiss Gus again, I wanted it to be this version of him. The one who didn’t feel so weighted down by the world around him that he had to lean just to stay upright.

“… Maybe that first weekend in August?” Pete was saying. She, Maggie, and Gus were all looking right at me, awaiting an answer whose question I hadn’t heard.

“Works for me,” Gus said. “January?” He still seemed relaxed, happy. I weighed my options: agree to something without having any concept of what that something was, admit that I hadn’t been listening, or fish for more information with some (possibly damning) questions.