Beach Read(83)

“It was warmer in my imagination!” I shrieked back, and Gus pulled me in against him, wrapping his arms around my back and rubbing it to bring warmth into my skin.

And then he kissed me deeply and whispered, “I love you.” And then again, with his hands in my hair and his mouth on my temples and cheeks and jaw, as a ratty plastic bag drifted past on the surface of the water. “I love you, I love you.”

“I know.” I sank my fingers into his back as if my grip could stop time and keep us there. Us and the too-cold lake and the litter swimming through it. “I love you too.”

“And to think,” he said, “you promised you wouldn’t fall in love with me.”





24


The Book





“I DON’T WANT TO do this,” I said. Gus and I were standing at the top of the stairs outside the master bedroom.

“You don’t have to,” he reminded me.

“If you can learn how to dance in the rain—”

“Still haven’t done that,” he interrupted.

“—then I can stare the ugly things down,” I finished.

I opened the door. It took me a few breaths before I could calm myself enough to move. A California King sat against the far wall, flanked by matching turquoise end tables and lamps with blue and green beaded shades. A framed Klimt print hung over the high gray headboard. Opposite the bed, a mid-century-style dresser stretched along the wall, and a small round table sat in the corner, draped in a yellow tablecloth and decorated with a clock and a stack of books—my books.

The room was otherwise ordinary and impersonal. Gus opened one of the drawers. “Empty.”

“She’s already cleared it out.” My voice shook.

Gus gave me a tentative smile. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

I went forward and opened the drawers one by one. Nothing in any of them. I went to the side table on the left. No drawers, just two shelves. A porcelain box sat on the top one.

This had to be it. The thing I’d been waiting for. The deep, dark answer that I’d expected to spring out at me all summer. I opened it.

Empty.

“January?” Gus was standing beside the round table, holding the tablecloth up. From below, an ugly gray box stared back at me, complete with a numbered keypad on its face.

“A safe?”

“Or a really old microwave,” Gus joked.

I approached it slowly. “It’s probably empty.”

“Probably,” Gus agreed.

“Or it’s a gun,” I said.

“Was your dad the gun type?”

“In Ohio, he wasn’t.” In Ohio, he was all biographies and cozy nights in, dutiful hand-holding at doctors’ appointments, and Groupon Mediterranean cooking classes. He was the father who woke me up before the sun to take me out on the water and let me steer the boat. As far as I knew, letting an eight-year-old drive through the empty lake for twenty seconds at a time was the peak of his impulsiveness and recklessness.

But anything was possible here, in his second life.

“Wait right here,” Gus said. Before I could protest, he’d fled the room. I listened to his steps on the staircase, and then a moment later, he returned with a bottle of whiskey.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“To steady your hand,” Gus said.

“What, before I pry a bullet out of my own arm?”

Gus rolled his eyes as he unscrewed the top. “Before you crack the safe.”

“If we drank green smoothies like we drink alcohol, we would live forever.”

“If we drank green smoothies like we drink alcohol, we would never leave the toilet, and that would do nothing to help you right now,” Gus said.

I took the bottle and sipped. Then we sat on the carpet in front of the safe. “His birthday?” Gus suggested.

I scooted forward and entered the number. The lights flickered red and the door stayed locked. “At home all our codes were their anniversary,” I said. “Mom and Dad’s. I doubt that applies here.”

Gus shrugged. “Old habits die hard?”

I entered the date with low expectations but my stomach still jarred when the red lights flashed.

I wasn’t prepared for the fresh wave of jealousy that hit me. It wasn’t fair that I hadn’t gotten to know him through and through. It wasn’t fair Sonya had parts of him that, now, I never would. Maybe the safe’s code had even been some significant landmark for them, an anniversary or her birthday.

Either way, she would know the combination.

All it would take would be one email, but it wasn’t one I wanted to send.

Gus rubbed the crook of my elbow, drawing me back to the present.

“I don’t have time for this right now.” I stood. “I have to finish a book.” This week, I decided.

THE IMPORTANT THING, I told myself, was that the house could easily be sold. A safe was nothing, no big curveball. The house was practically empty. I could sell it and go back to my life.

Of course now when I thought about this, I had to do everything I could to avoid the question of where that would leave me and Gus. I had come here to sort things out and instead had made them messier, but somehow, in the mess, my work was thriving. I was writing at a speed I hadn’t reached since my first book. I felt the story racing ahead of me and did everything I could to keep pace.