Beach Read(82)

September 1, she replied. Hard deadline this time.

I didn’t mess with the coffee. I was wide awake as it was.

I sat at the table and began to write. When Gus got up, he put the kettle on, then walked back to the table and took a swig from the beer bottle he’d left there last night.

I looked up at him. “That’s disgusting.”

He held it out to me. “Do you want some?”

I took a swig. “Even worse than I imagined.”

He smiled down at me. His hand grazed my clavicle and skimmed down me, parting my robe as he went. His fingers caught on the tie, and he tugged it loose, letting the fabric fall open. He reached through to touch my waist, drawing me onto my feet.

He turned me against the table and eased me onto it as he walked in between my legs. He caught the collar of my open robe and slid it down my arms, leaving me bare on the table. “I’m working,” I whispered.

He lifted one of my thighs against his hip as he pushed in closer. “Are you?” His other hand rolled across my breast, catching my nipple. “I know you have a bet to win. This can wait.”

I dragged him closer. “No. It can’t.”

FOCUS WAS A problem. Or rather, focusing on anything but Gus was a problem. We decided to go back to writing in our separate houses during the day, which might’ve been a more successful solution if either of us had enough self-control to not write notes back and forth all day.

I want you, he once wrote.

When did writing get so hard? I wrote back.

Hard, he wrote.

He wasn’t always the instigator. On Wednesday, after resisting as long as I possibly could, I wrote, Wish you were here and drew an arrow down toward myself.

You’re not the only one, he wrote back. Then, Write 2,000 words and then we can talk.

This proved to be the key to getting anything done. We changed the goalposts. Two thousand words and we could be in the same room. Four thousand words and we could touch.

Our whole arrangement was seeming less like a sprint and more like a three-legged race, full of teamwork and encouragement. Ultimately, I was still determined to win, though I was no longer sure what I was trying to prove, or to whom.

At night, we went out sometimes. To the Thai restaurant we’d ordered from so many times, a cute little place where everything was gilded and you sat on cushions on the floor and ordered from a menu whose cover was mock papyrus. To the pizza place we’d ordered from so many times, a less cute little place with plasticky red booths and interrogation-room lighting. We went to the Tipsy Fish, a bar in town, and when someone Gus knew from town walked in, he nodded hello without jerking his hand away from me.

Even as we played darts and, later, pool, we stayed connected, visibly together, Gus’s hand curled casually around my hips or resting gently under my shirt at the small of my back, my fingers laced through his or snagged on his belt loop.

The next night, when we were leaving Pizza My Heart, we walked past Pete’s Book Shop and saw her and Maggie inside, having a glass of wine in the armchairs in the café.

“We should say hi,” Gus said, and so we ducked inside.

“It’s our anniversary,” Maggie explained airily.

“With North Bear,” Pete added. “The day we moved here. Not our anniversary—our anniversary’s January thirteenth.”

“No kidding,” I said. “That’s my birthday.”

“Really?!” Maggie seemed delighted. “Well, of course it is! The best day of the year—it only makes sense God would pull that.”

“A perfectly good day,” Pete agreed.

Maggie nodded. “And so is today.”

“I’d move here all over again,” Pete said. “Best thing we ever did, apart from falling in love.”

“And adopting the Labradors,” Maggie added thoughtfully.

“And extending a certain invitation to book club, which seems to have worked out all right,” Pete added with a wink.

“Tricking us, you mean,” Gus said, smiling.

He looked at me, and I wondered if we were thinking the same thing. It might not’ve been the best thing I ever did, moving here, showing up at Pete’s house that night for book club. But it was a good one. The best in a few years at least.

“Just stay for one quick glass, Gussy,” Maggie insisted, already pouring into the clear plastic cups they used for iced coffee.

One glass grew to two, two grew to three, and Gus pulled me onto his lap in the armchair across from them. Their hands were draped loosely between their chairs, knotted together, and Gus’s were rubbing idle circles on my back as we talked and laughed into the night.

We left at midnight, when Pete finally pronounced that they should be getting home to the Labradors and Maggie started whisking around to clean up, but we were too tipsy to drive, so we walked through the heat and mosquitoes.

And as we did, I thought over and over again, I almost love him. I’m starting to love him. I love him.

And when we reached our houses, we ignored them and followed the path down to the lake instead. It was a Friday, after all, and we were still bound to our deal.

We stripped off our clothes and ran, shrieking, into the cold bite of the water, hand in hand. Out until it hit our thighs, our waists, our chests. Our teeth were chattering, our skin was alive with chills as the icy water batted us back and forth. “This is terrible,” Gus gasped.