By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(78)

She wasn’t sure exactly why they were both doing so much to hide their relationship from Michaela—it’s not like she didn’t know what could happen when two people in their twenties lived in a house together. They weren’t really hiding it from the world at large; they’d gone out to dinner together twice, they’d made out on the beach like teenagers multiple times.

Was it because neither of them wanted to—or was ready to—answer questions from Michaela about what was going on between them?

She didn’t know what was going to happen once she had to go back to New York. She’d avoided thinking about it as much as possible. She usually liked to plan for the future, but all she wanted was to live in the right now as long as she could.

Izzy smiled as she walked into the library on Thursday. Just two more hours until Michaela left for the day, and she and Beau would be all alone. And then just one more day until they had the house to themselves for the weekend.

They both got to work quickly, and when the timer went off, Beau pushed his laptop and the notebook back across the table to Izzy. She read over what was on the screen. It was his revised, cleaned-up version of the day he’d discovered everything about his dad and his mom, and how he’d fled to Santa Barbara, how he’d tried and failed to write for months. She stared at it for a while as she thought about what to say.

“You have that look on your face again,” he said. “Like something’s wrong.”

She looked at him and tried to smile, and he made an exaggerated grimace.

“Okay, please never make that face again. That was some weird kind of half-frown-half-fake-smile hybrid, and it was terrifying.”

She laughed, and he did, too, for a second.

“Come on, Izzy. What is it?”

She sighed. “It’s not that—”

“Yes, yes, I know, it’s not that something’s wrong. You know what I mean.”

She did know what he meant. “Yeah. Okay. This is super readable, you tell this part of the story really well, readers are going to be very invested in it. But the thing is, this book is your memoir, your story. People want to know about you. You don’t say why you lashed out at your mom the way you did, how you felt about what you said to your mom when you discovered everything, or why it took you so long to reach out to her. The facts are important, sure, but the most important thing is how you felt about everyone, and about yourself.”

He crossed his arms and sat back. That stony look was back on his face. “But you know all of that,” he said.

She wanted to soften her voice, but she tried to keep it businesslike between the two of them in the library when they talked about work, so she didn’t.

“Yes, I know all of that,” she said. “But the reader doesn’t. People can guess why, but they’ll guess all sorts of things. Maybe you’re planning to talk about it in a subsequent chapter, but if so, you should lay at least a little groundwork here so it doesn’t feel like it’s just…missing.”

He looked angry. Again. She’d thought this conversation would be easier than it had been the last time, because of everything that had happened between them since. But it was just as hard. At least, it was for her.

He dropped his palms flat on the table. “I can’t believe you would—” He stood up. “I need a break.”

And before she could say anything else, he’d left the library.

Izzy looked after him, stunned. He was just going to walk out on her like that? She thought he would come back right away, but when he hadn’t returned after ten minutes, she grabbed her laptop and notebook and walked up to her room.

She sat down on her bed, not sure what to do. Usually, after they left the library, Beau would pull her across the hall to the TV room, and then she would go up to her room and get more writing done, and then she would go back downstairs and hang out with Beau. They’d eat dinner, watch TV, curl up together on the couch, and end up back in his room. Now she wasn’t sure what to do.

She opened her laptop and tried to work on her book, but she was too distracted. What happened when you had a fight with your boyfriend when you were living together? Was that even a fight? Was Beau even her boyfriend?

She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t even sure what she was crying about. The look on Beau’s face when he’d spat those words out at her in the library, the emptiness she felt about the idea of not having dinner with him tonight, the longing she felt for him right now—not the Beau who had left like that in the library, but the Beau who had woken up and kissed her this morning before she’d left his room.

She should have known these past two weeks were too good to be true. She had known, actually. Everything had been so good between them, so idyllic, with beaches and picnics and swimming and surfing and reading to each other in bed. She’d known it couldn’t last.

She wanted to text Priya, ask for her advice, but since she hadn’t told Priya about any of this, there would be a lot of catching her up first, and Izzy didn’t have the energy for that. See, that’s why she should have told Priya all this last week, in anticipation of something like this happening.

She went to the bathroom to wash her face. That always helped reset her mood. Then she sat back down at her computer. If she was going to feel all these emotions—this frustration, these pent-up tears, this sadness—she might as well use it. She opened her manuscript.