Beach Read(80)

When we’d finished, he pulled a bag of tortilla chips and a couple of Clif Bars out of the pack along with the same two flasks he’d taken to line dancing.

I propped myself up on my elbow to watch him, and he turned one of the lanterns on, the light casting him in reds and golds. He held the chips out to me. “Just a precaution?” I said, nodding toward the provisions.

Gus’s dimple deepened. His hand skimmed up the side of my arm and down across my collarbone. “An optimistic one. I’m an optimist now.” His fingers drifted to my chin, and he tilted it up to kiss my throat again. His other hand came up and he caught both sides of my jaw as he kissed me deeply, slowly, drank me in. When he pulled back, his fingers threaded through my hair, his thumb roving over my bottom lip, he asked, “Are you happy, January?”

“Extremely,” I said. “Are you?”

He gathered me against him and kissed my temple. His voice crackled against my ear. “I’m so happy.”

IN THE MORNING, we pulled on our damp clothes, packed up, and walked back to the car. The skies were clear and bright, and Gus turned on the radio, then held my hand against the gearshift, the light dappling us through the trees and windshield.

I felt like I had the Gus of Pete’s house right then. And I felt a little more like the January of before too, the one who could fall fearlessly. I searched my stomach for that tight feeling, the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I could find it, if I tried hard enough, but for once, I didn’t want to. This moment felt worth whatever pain it might bring later, and I tried to repeat that to myself until I was sure I’d be able to remember it if I needed to.

Gus lifted my hand from the gearshift and pressed it to his mouth without looking over at me.

Last night I’d known all this could slip away, dissolve around me. I’d half expected it to by the time the first cold streaks of morning light hit the tent and Gus realized what he’d done, and more importantly, everything he’d said. But instead, when his eyes opened, he’d given me a closed-mouthed smile and pulled me against him, nuzzling his face into the side of my head, kissing my hair.

Instead, here we were in the car, Gus Everett holding on to my hand and not letting go.

What happened two days ago in his study had seemed like an inevitability, a crash course we’d been set on since the beginning of the summer. This, however—this was something I hadn’t even let myself daydream about. I wouldn’t have known how to. He didn’t look like anyone from the story.

On the drive back, we stopped for breakfast at a greasy spoon diner along the highway, at which point I slipped away to call Shadi from the bathroom. The Haunted Hat’s (Ricky’s—we were going to have to start calling him by his name soon, if this kept up) little sisters were sharing their room with Shadi, at their mothers’ insistence, and she’d sneaked away to talk to me at the bottom of their cul-de-sac but was still whispering like the whole family was sleeping in a pile on top of her.

“Oh my God,” she hissed.

“I know,” I said.

“My GOOOOOOOD,” she repeated.

“Shad. I know.”

“Wow.”

“Wow,” I agreed.

“I can’t wait to visit and watch him be completely smitten with you,” she said.

The thought made my stomach feel like it was fizzing. “We’ll see.”

“No,” she said with finality. “How could he not be? Not even Sexy, Evil Gus could be that deranged, habibi.” A lady was knocking on the bathroom door then, so we said our quick “I love you” and “Goodbye” and I went back to the sticky vinyl booth and the pile of pancakes and Gus. Sexy, disheveled, lazily smiling Gus, who gripped my knee beneath the table again and sent sparks down my belly and up my thighs.

I wanted to go back to the bathroom, him in tow.

Our breakfast stop turned into a trip to the bookstore in town, where they had none of my books in stock except the first, and no special display for their two copies of The Revelatories, and that turned into a stop at a bar with an outdoor patio.

“What’s your favorite bad review?” I asked him.

He smiled to himself as he thought, stirring the whiskey and ginger ale in front of him. “Like in a magazine or from a reader?”

“Reader first.”

“I’ve got it,” he said. “It was on Amazon. One star: ‘Did not order book.’”

I threw my head back, laughing. “I love the ones where they accidentally ordered the wrong book, then review based on how different it was from the book they meant to order.”

Gus’s laugh rattled. He touched my knee beneath the table. “I like the ones that explain what I was trying to do. Like, ‘The author was trying to write Franzen, but he’s no Franzen.’”

I pantomimed gagging myself and Gus covered his eyes until I stopped. “But were you?”

“Trying to write Franzen?” He laughed. “No, January. I’m just trying to write good books. That sound like Salinger.”

I erupted into laughter, and he grinned back. We fell into easy silence again as we sipped on our drinks. “Can I ask you something?” I said, after a minute.

“No,” Gus answered, deadpan.

“Great,” I said. “Why did you try to keep me away from New Eden? I mean, I know you said you didn’t want me to have to see it, and I get that. Except that the whole point of this bet was for you to convince me the world was how you said it was, right? And that was the perfect opportunity.”