Beach Read Page 6

  “You’re literally shivering.”

  “Maybe I’m trembling with the anticipation of an exhilarating walk home.”

  “Maybe your body temperature is plummeting and your blood pressure and heart rate are dropping and your skin tissue is breaking up as it freezes.”

  “Are you kidding? My heart is positively racing. I just sat in on a three-hour-long book club meeting about spy novels. I need to run some of this adrenaline off.” I started down the sidewalk.

  “Wrong way,” Gus called.

  I spun on my heel and started in the other direction, back past Gus’s car. His mouth twisted in the dim light of the console. “You do realize we live seven miles from here. At your current pace that puts your arrival at about . . . never. You’re going to walk into a bush and quite possibly spend the rest of your life there.”

  “That’s actually the perfect amount of time I’ll need to sober up,” I said. Gus pulled slowly down the road alongside me. “Besides, I cannot risk waking up with another hangover tomorrow. I’d rather walk into traffic.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m worried you’re going to do both. Let me take you home.”

  “I’ll fall asleep tipsy. Not good.”

  “Fine, I won’t take you home until you’re sober, then. I know the best trick for that in all of North Bear Shores.”

  I stopped walking and faced his car. He stopped too, waiting.

  “Just to be clear,” I said, “you’re not talking about sex stuff, are you?”

  His smile twisted. “No, January, I’m not talking about sex stuff.”

  “You’d better not be.” I opened the passenger door and slid onto the seat, pressing my fingers to the warm vents. “Because I carry pepper spray in this tote. And a gun.”

  “What the fuck,” he cried, putting the car in park. “You’re drunk with a gun flopping around in your wine bag?”

  I buckled my seat belt. “It was a joke. The gun part, not the ‘killing you if you try something’ part. I meant that.”

  His laugh was more shocked than amused. Even in the dark of the car, I could see his eyes were wide and his crooked mouth was tensed. He shook his head, wiped the rain off his forehead with the back of his hand, and put the car back into drive.

  * * *

  —

  “This is the trick?” I said, when we pulled into the parking lot. The rain had slowed but the puddles in the cracking asphalt’s potholes glowed with the reflection of the neon sign over the low, rectangular building. “The trick for sobering up is . . . donuts.” That was all the sign said. For all intents and purposes, it was the diner’s name.

  “What did you expect?” Gus asked. “Was I supposed to almost drive off a cliff, or hire someone to fake-kidnap you? Or wait, was that sex-stuff comment sarcastic? Did you want me to seduce you?”

  “No, I’m just saying, next time you’re trying to convince me to get in your car, you’ll save a lot of time if you cut right to donuts.”

  “I’m hoping I won’t have to coax you into my car very often,” he said.

  “No, not very often,” I said. “Just on Mondays.”

  He cracked another smile, faint, like he’d rather not reveal it. It instantly made the car feel too small, him a little too close. I tore my gaze away and got out of the car, head clearing immediately. The building glowed like a bug zapper, its empty, seventies-orange booths visible through the windows along with a fish tank full of koi.

  “You know, you should consider driving for Uber,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, your heat works great. I bet your air-conditioning’s decent too. You don’t smell like Axe, and you didn’t say a word to me the whole way here. Five stars. Six stars. Better than any Uber driver I’ve had before.”

  “Hm.” Gus pulled the smudgy door open for me, bells jangling overhead. “Maybe next time you get into an Uber, you should try announcing that you have a loaded gun. You might get better service.”

  “Truly.”

  “Now don’t be alarmed,” he said under his breath as I stepped past him.

  “What?” I turned back to ask.

  “Hello!” a voice called brightly over the Bee Gees song crackling through the place.

  I spun to face the man behind the illuminated display case. The radio sat there on the counter, producing at least as much static fuzz as crooning disco. “Hi,” I replied.

  “Howdy,” the man said with a deep nod. He was at least as old as my parents and wire-thin, his thick glasses held to his face with neon-yellow Croakies.

  “Hi,” I said again. My brain was caught in a hamster wheel, the same realization playing over and over: this elderly gentleman was in his underwear.

  “Welllll, hello there!” he chirped, apparently determined not to lose this game. He leaned his elbows on top of the case. His underwear, thankfully, included a white T-shirt, and he had mercifully opted for white boxers rather than briefs.

  “Hi,” I said one last time.

  Gus sidestepped between my open jaw and the counter. “Can we just do a dozen day-olds?”

  “Shore!” The underwear-baker grapevined down the length of the display and grabbed a to-go box from the stack on top of it. He carried it back to the old-school register and tapped out a couple of numbers. “Five dollars flat, my man.”

  “And coffee?” Gus said.

  “Can’t in good conscience charge you for that stuff.” The man jerked his head toward the carafe. “That shit’s been sitting in there sizzling for three good hours. Want me to make you the new stuff?”

  Gus looked to me pointedly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s for you. What do you think? Free and bad? Or a dollar and . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to say good, which told me everything I needed to know.

  “That shit” was always sitting in there, sizzling.

  “Free,” I said.

  “Five flat, then, as discussed,” the man said.

  I reached for my wallet, but Gus headed me off, slapping five dollar bills down on the counter. He tipped his head, gesturing for me to accept the foam cup and box of donuts the man was holding. To fit twelve into this box, they’d been compacted into one box-shaped mash of fried dough. I grabbed them and plopped into a booth.

  Gus sat across from me, leaned across the table, and pried the box open. He stared down at the donut guts between us. “God, those look disgusting.”

  “Finally,” I said. “Something we agree on.”

  “I bet we agree on a lot.” He plucked a mangled maple-nut donut out and sat back, examining it in the fluorescent light.

  “Such as?”

  “All the important stuff,” Gus said. “The chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere, whether the world needs six Pirates of the Caribbean movies, that White Russians should only be drunk when you’re already sure you’re going to vomit anyway.”

  He managed to fit the whole donut into his mouth. Then, without an ounce of irony, he made eye contact with me. I burst out laughing.

  “Fffwaht?” he said.

  I shook my head. “Can I ask you something?”

  He chewed and swallowed enough to answer. “No, January, I’m not going to tell this guy to turn his music down.” He reached over and snatched another donut clump from the box. “Now I have a question for you, Andrews. Why’d you move here?”

  I rolled my eyes and ignored his question. “If I were going to ask you to encourage this guy to make one small change to his business practices, it would definitely not be the radio volume.”

  Gus’s grin split wide, and even now, my stomach flipped traitorously. I wasn’t sure I’d seen him smile like that before, and there was something intoxicating about it. His dark eyes flitted toward the counter and I followed his gaze. The underwear-clad man was positively boogying back and forth between his
ovens. Gus’s eyes came back to mine, hyperfocused. “Are you going to tell me why you moved here?”

  I stuffed a donut chunk into my mouth and shook my head.

  He half shrugged. “Then I can’t answer your question.”

  “That’s not how conversations work,” I told him. “They’re not just even trades.”

  “That’s exactly what they are,” he said. “At least, when you’re not into foot jobs.”

  I covered my face with my hands, embarrassed, even as I said, “You were extremely rude to me, by the way.”

  He was silent for a minute. I flinched as his rough fingers caught my wrists and tugged my hands away from my face. His teasing smile had faded, and his brow was creased, his gaze inky-dark and serious. “I know. I’m sorry. It was a bad day.”

  My stomach flipped right side up again. I hadn’t expected an apology. I’d certainly never gotten an apology for that happily ever after comment. “You were hosting a raging party,” I said, recovering. “I’d love to see what a good day looks like for you.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched uncertainly. “If you removed the party, you’d be a lot closer. Anyway, will you forgive me? I’ve been told I make a bad first impression.”

  I crossed my arms, and, emboldened by the wine or his apology, I said, “That wasn’t my first impression.”

  Something inscrutable passed across his face, vanishing before I could place it. “What was your question?” he said. “If I answer it, will you forgive me?”

  “Not how forgiveness works either,” I said. When he began to rub his forehead, I added, “But yes.”

  “Fine. One question,” he said.

  I leaned across the table. “You thought they were doing your book, didn’t you?”

  His brows knit together. “‘They’?”

  “Spies and Liquified Pies,” I said.

  He pretended to be aghast. “Do you perhaps mean Red, White Russians, and Blue Book Club? Because that nickname you just gave it is an affront to literature salons everywhere, not to mention Freedom and America.”

  I felt the smile break out across my face. I sat back, satisfied. “You totally did. You thought they were reading The Revelatories.”

  “First of all,” Gus said, “I’ve lived here five years and Pete’s never invited me to that book club, so yeah, it seemed like a fairly reasonable assumption at the time. Secondly”—he snatched a glazed cake donut from the box—“you might want to be careful, January Andrews. You just revealed you know the title of my book. Who knows what other secrets are on the verge of spilling out of you?”

  “How do you know I didn’t just Google it?” I countered. “Maybe I’d never heard of it before.”

  “How do you know that your Googling me wouldn’t be even more amusing to me?” Gus said.

  “How do you know I wasn’t Googling you out of suspicion you had a criminal background?”

  Gus replied, “How do you know I won’t keep answering your questions with other questions until we both die?”

  “How do you know I’ll care?”

  Gus shook his head, smiling, and took another bite. “Wow, this is terrible.”

  “The donuts or this conversation?” I asked.

  “This conversation, definitely. The donuts are good. I Googled you too, by the way. You should consider getting a rarer name.”

  “I’ll pass that suggestion along to the higher-ups, but I can’t make any promises,” I said. “There’s all kinds of red tape and bureaucratic bullshit to go through.”

  “Southern Comfort sounds pretty sexy,” he said. “You have a thing for Southern boys? No teeth and overalls really rev your engine?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m led to believe you’ve never been to the South and possibly couldn’t locate ‘south’ on a compass. Besides, why does everyone try to make women’s writing semiautobiographical? Do people generally assume your lonely, white, male—”

  “Coldly horny,” Gus inserted.

  “—coldly horny protagonists are you?”

  He nodded thoughtfully, his dark eyes intent on me. “Good question. Do you assume I’m coldly horny?”

  “Definitely.”

  This seemed to amuse him and his crooked mouth.

  I glanced out the window. “If Pete wasn’t planning on using either of our books, how did she just forget to tell us what the book club’s pick was? I mean, if she just wanted us to join, you’d think she’d give us a chance to actually read the book.”

  “This wasn’t an accident,” Gus said. “It was an intentional manipulation of the truth. She knows there’s no way I would’ve come tonight if I’d known what was really happening.”

  I snorted. “And what was the end goal of this nefarious plan? To become an eccentric side character in the next Augustus Everett novel?”

  “What exactly do you have against my books, which you have allegedly not read?” he asked.

  “What do you have against my books,” I said, “which you have certainly not read?”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “The pirate reference.” I dug in to a strawberry frosted covered in sprinkles. “That’s not the kind of romance I write. In fact, my books aren’t even shelved as romance, technically. They’re shelved as women’s fiction.”

  Gus slumped against the booth and stretched his lean olive arms over his head, rolling his wrists to make them crack. “I don’t understand why there’d need to be a full genre that’s just books for women.”

  I scoffed. Here it was, that always-ready anger rising like it had been waiting for an excuse. “Yeah, well, you’re not the only one who doesn’t understand it,” I said. “I know how to tell a story, Gus, and I know how to string a sentence together. If you swapped out all my Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you’d get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone, but somehow by being a woman who writes about women, I’ve eliminated half the Earth’s population from my potential readers, and you know what? I don’t feel ashamed of that. I feel pissed. That people like you will assume my books couldn’t possibly be worth your time, while meanwhile you could shart on live TV and the New York Times would praise your bold display of humanity.”

  Gus was staring at me seriously, head cocked, rigid line between his eyebrows.

  “Now can you take me home?” I said. “I’m feeling nice and sober.”

  8

  The Bet

  Gus slid out of the booth, and I followed, gathering the donut box and my cup of sizzling shit. It had stopped raining, but now heavy fog hung in clumps. Without another word, we got into the car and drove away from DONUTS, the word glowing teal in the rearview mirror.

  “It’s the happy endings,” Gus said suddenly as he pulled onto the main drag.

  “What?” My stomach clenched. They all live happily ever after. Again.

  Gus cleared his throat. “It’s not that I don’t take romance seriously as a genre. And I like reading about women. But I have a hard time with happy endings.” His eyes cautiously flashed my way, then went back to the road.

  “A hard time?” I repeated, as if that would make the words make sense to me. “You have a hard time . . . reading happy endings?”

  He rubbed at the curve of his bicep, an anxious tic I didn’t remember. “I guess.”

  “Why?” I asked, more confused than offended now.

  “Life is pretty much a series of good and bad moments right up until the moment you die,” he said stiffly. “Which is arguably a bad one. Love doesn’t change that. I have a hard time suspending my disbelief. Besides, can you think of a single real-life romance that actually ended like Bridget fucking Jones?”

  There it was, the Gus Everett I knew. The one who’d thought I was hopelessly naive. And even if I had some evidence he’d been right, I wasn’t ready to let him trash the thing that had once
meant more to me than anything else, the genre that had kept me afloat when Mom relapsed and our whole imagined future disappeared like smoke on a breeze.

  “First of all,” I said, “‘Bridget fucking Jones’ is an ongoing series. It is literally the worst example you could have chosen to prove that point. It’s the antithesis of the oversimplified and inaccurate stereotype of the genre. It does exactly what I aim to: it makes its readers feel known and understood, like their stories—women’s stories—matter. And secondly, are you honestly saying you don’t believe in love?”

  I felt a little desperate, like if I let him win this fight, it would be the final straw: there’d be no getting back to myself, to believing in love and seeing the world and the people in it as pure, beautiful things—to loving writing.

  Gus’s brow furrowed, his dark eyes flashing from me to the road with that intent, absorbing look Shadi and I had spent so much time trying to put into words. “Sure, love happens,” he said finally. “But it’s better to be realistic so shit’s not constantly blowing up in your face. And love is way more likely to blow up in your face than to bring eternal happiness. And if it doesn’t hurt you, then you’re the one hurting someone else.

  “Entering a relationship is borderline sadomasochistic. Especially when you can get everything you would from a romantic relationship from a friendship, without destroying anyone’s life when it inevitably ends.”

  “Everything?” I said. “Sex?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You don’t even need friendship to get sex.”

  “And what, it never turns into more for you?” I said. “You can keep things that detached?”

  “If you’re realistic,” he said. “You need a policy. It doesn’t turn into more if it only happens once.”

  Wow. The shelf life had shortened. “See?” I said. “You are coldly horny, Gus.”

  He glanced sidelong at me, smiling.

  “What?”

  “That’s the second time you’ve called me Gus tonight.”

  My cheeks flushed. Right, Everett seemed to be his preference these days. “So?”

  “Come on, January.” His eyes went back to the road, the twin spears of the headlights reaching over the asphalt and catching blips of the evergreens whipping past. “I remember you.” His gaze settled on me again, his eyes nearly as solid and heavy as if they were hands.