Beach Read

by Emily Henry

  Dave pulled at a stray thread peeling out of the hole in the knee of his jeans. “I know that. I just had to make sure my ma understood. She still feels bad. Like she could’ve maybe talked my dad out of staying, gotten him to leave with us. He’d still be alive, she thinks.”

  “And you?” Gus asked.

  Dave scrunched up his lips. “Do you believe in fate, Augustus?”

  Gus hid his grimace at the name. “I think some things are . . . inevitable.”

  Dave slumped forward, tugged on his hat bill. “Used to sleepwalk as a kid. Real bad habit. Scary stuff. Once, before we went to New Eden, my mom found me standing at the edge of our apartment’s pool with a butter knife in my hand. Naked. I didn’t even sleep naked.

  “Two weeks before we joined New Eden, we’d been at a park, just Ma and me, when a storm started up. She always liked the rain, so we stayed out too long. Thunder got going. Big, scary clashes. So we started running home. There was a chain-link fence around the park, and when we reached it, she yelled for me to wait. She wasn’t sure how lightning worked but she figured it was a bad idea to let her six-year-old grab a fistful of metal. She wrapped her hand in her shirt and opened the gate for me.

  “We got all the way home. We were on the front steps when it happened. A crack like a giant ax had hit the world. Honest to God, I thought the sun was crashing into Earth. That’s how bright the light was.”

  “What light?” Gus said.

  “The bolt of lightning that hit me,” Dave said. “We weren’t religious people, Augustus. Especially not my dad. But that scared Ma. She decided to make a change. We went to church that next week—the strictest one she could find—and on our way out, someone handed her a flier. NEW EDEN, it said. God is inviting you to a new beginning. Will you answer?”

  Gus was writing notes, nodding as he went. “So she took that as a sign?”

  “She thought God had saved my life,” Dave said. “Just to get her attention. A week later we were moving into the compound, and Dad went along with it. He didn’t believe, but he considered a child’s ‘spiritual upbringing’ to be the job of the mother. I don’t know what got him. What changed his mind. But over the next two years he got in deeper than Ma ever had. And then, one night, she woke up in our trailer with a bad feeling. There was a storm raging outside and she peeked her head into the living room where I slept and the fold-out was empty, just a bunch of rumpled blankets.

  “She tried to wake my dad, but he slept like a rock. So she went out into the storm. Found me standing there, naked as can be, in the middle of the woods, lightning touching down around me like falling fireworks. And you know what happened next?”

  Dave looked at me, paused. “It hit the trailer. The whole thing went up in flames. That was the first fire at New Eden, and it wasn’t a bad one, not like the one that killed my dad. They got that first one out before it could do much damage. But my mom took me out of there the next day.”

  “She took it as another sign?” Gus confirmed.

  “See, here’s the thing,” Dave said. “My mom believes in fate, in destiny—in the divine hand of God. But not so much that there’s no room to blame herself for what happened to my dad. She was the one who brought us there. And she was the one who took me out. She didn’t tell him, because she knew he was in too deep. He wouldn’t have just refused to leave—he would’ve atoned for us.”

  “Atoned?” I said.

  “Lingo,” Dave explained. “It’s a confession on someone else’s behalf. They didn’t want us to think of it as reporting, keeping tabs on your neighbors. It was ‘atoning.’ It was making the selfless sacrifice of putting a wedge in your own relationship with a person in order to save them from sin. Deep down she knew that if she told Dad she wanted out, we both would’ve been punished. She would’ve gotten at least two weeks in isolation. I would’ve been beaten, then stuck with another family until her ‘wavering faith had been restored.’ They said they didn’t like the violence. That it was their own sacrifice to discipline us out of love. But you could always tell the ones who did.

  “She knew all that. So fated or not, my mom saw the future. She couldn’t have saved him. But she did what she had to do to save me.”

  Gus was silent, thoughtful. Lost in thought, he looked suddenly younger, a little softer. I felt a rush of anger low in my stomach. Why didn’t someone save you? I thought. Why didn’t someone scoop you up and run you out in the middle of the night?

  I knew it was complicated. I knew there must’ve been reasons, but it still sent a pang through me. It wasn’t the story I would’ve written for him. Not at all.

  * * *

  —

  Gus shut the door behind Dave with a quiet click and turned to face me. For a moment we said nothing, both exhausted from the four-hour interview. We just looked at each other.

  He leaned against the door. “Hey,” he said finally.

  “Hey,” I answered.

  A wisp of smile sneaked up the corner of his mouth. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Yeah.” I shifted between my feet. “You too.”

  He straightened and went toward the walnut sideboard in the corner, pulling two crystal highball glasses from below and setting them beside the careful arrangement of dark liquor bottles. “Want a drink?”

  Of course I wanted a drink. I’d just heard a harrowing tale of a child beaten for imaginary crimes, and aside from that, I was alone with Gus for the first time since our kiss. Even from across the room, the heat in the house felt like a stand-in for our tension. For the thorny jumble of feelings today had stirred up in me. Anger with all the broken parents, heartache that they too must’ve felt like kids—helpless, unsure how to make the right decisions, terrified of making the wrong ones. I felt sick for Dave and what he’d been through, sad for my mother and how lost I knew she must feel without Dad, and still, even with all that, being in the same room as Gus made me feel a little warm and heavy, like from across the room he was still a physical force pressing into me.

  I heard the soft clink of ice against the glasses. (He kept ice in a bucket on a tray with his liquor? How Moneyed Connecticutian of him.)

  I wanted answers about Pete, and about Gus’s parents and his marriage, but those were the sorts of tidbits a person had to offer up, and Gus hadn’t. He hadn’t even let me into his house until one of his research subjects had shown up here unannounced. Not that he’d been in my house either, but my house wasn’t a part of me. It wasn’t even really mine—it was just baggage. Gus’s house was his home.

  And Dave had been inside before I had.

  Gus turned then to look at me, brow furrowed.

  “You got a tattoo.” It was the first thing I could think to say when we’d been silent too long.

  His eyes darted toward his arm. “I did.”

  That was it. No explanation, no information about where he’d been. I was welcome to sit here, to have a drink with him and talk about books and meaningless memories of girls puking on the backs of our heads, but that was it.

  My heart sank. I didn’t want that, not now that I’d had glimpses of more. If I wanted casual, surface-level chitchat and conversational land mines, I’d call my mom. With him, I wanted more. It was who I was.

  “Scotch?” Gus asked.

  “I didn’t get much done today. I should get back to it.”

  “Yeah.” He started nodding, slowly, distractedly. “Yeah, okay. Tomorrow then.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  For once I was dreading planning our Saturday night. He left the glasses on the sideboard and came to open the door for me. I stepped onto the porch but hesitated at the sound of my own name. When I looked back, his left temple was resting against the doorjamb.

  He was always leaning on something, like he couldn’t bear to hold all his own weight upright for more than a second or two. He lounged, he sprawled, he hunch
ed and reclined. He never simply stood or sat. In college, I’d thought he was lazy about everything except writing. Now I wondered if he was simply tired, if life had beaten him into a permanent slouch, folded him over himself so no one could get at that soft center, the kid who dreamed of running away on trains and living in the branches of a redwood.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  “You said that already.”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I did.”

  I fought a smile, stifled a flutter in my stomach. A smile and a flutter weren’t enough for me. I was done with secrets and lies, no matter how pretty. “Good night, Gus.”

  17

  The Dance

  TUX TONIGHT? Gus wrote at noon on Saturday.

  Anxiety crept up every time I thought about being alone in the car with him, but I’d also had tonight planned since last Saturday, and I wasn’t ready to bow out of our deal, not when I was finally writing for the first time in months. OH, DEFINITELY, I wrote back.

  SERIOUSLY? Gus asked.

  NO, I wrote. DO YOU HAVE COWBOY BOOTS?

  WHAT DO YOU THINK? Gus said. FROM EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ME, TAKE A WILD GUESS WHETHER I OWN COWBOY BOOTS.

  I stared at the blank page then went for it: YOU’RE A MAN OF MANY SECRETS. YOU COULD HAVE A WHOLE CLOSET FULL OF TEN-GALLON HATS. AND IF YOU DO, WEAR ONE. 6 PM.

  When Gus appeared at my door that night, he was wearing his usual uniform, plus a wrinkly black button-up. His hair was swept up his forehead in a way that suggested it had been forced there via him anxiously running his hand through it while he wrote. “No hat?” I said.

  “No hat.” He pulled his other hand from behind his back. He was holding two flasks, the thin, foldable kind you could tuck under your clothes. “But I brought these in case you’re taking me to a Texan church service.”

  I crouched by the front door, tugging my embroidered ankle boots on. “And once again, you reveal that you know much more about romance than you’ve previously let on.”

  Even as I said it, my stomach clenched.

  Gus has been married.

  Gus is divorced.

  That was why he was so sure love could never last, and he’d told me none of these key details, because he hadn’t really let me in.

  If my comment reminded him of any of that, he didn’t let on. “Just so you know,” he said, “if I actually have to wear a cowboy hat at some point tonight, I will probably die.”

  “Cowboy hat allergy.” I grabbed my keys from the table. “Got it. Let’s go.”

  This date would’ve been perfect, if it had been a date.

  The parking lot of the Black Cat Saloon was jammed and the rough-hewn interior was just as packed. “A lot of flannel,” Gus mused as we made our way in.

  “What do you expect on line-dancing night, Gus?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Gus said, freezing. I shook my head. “This has been an exact recurring nightmare I’m only just realizing was actually a premonition.”

  On the low stage at the front of the barnlike room, the band picked up again, and a crush of bodies moved past on our left, knocking me into him. He caught me around the rib cage and righted me as the group pushed toward the dance floor. “You good?” he shouted over the music, his hands still on my ribs.

  My face was hot, my stomach flipping traitorously. “Fine.”

  He leaned in so I could hear him. “This seems like a dangerous environment for someone your size. Maybe we should leave and go . . . literally anywhere else.”

  As he eased back to look me in the face, I grinned and shook my head. “No way. The lesson doesn’t even start for another ten minutes.”

  His hands slid off me, leaving pulsing points behind on my skin. “I guess I survived Meg Ryan.”

  “Barely,” I teased, then blushed as flashes of memory seared across my mind. Gus’s mouth tipping mine open. Gus’s teeth on my clavicle. Gus’s hands tightening against my hips, his thumb scraping over the jut of bone.

  The moment stretched out between us. Or rather, it seemed to tighten between us, and since we didn’t move any closer, the air grew taut. The song was winding down now and a lanky man with a horsey face bounded onto the stage with a microphone, summoning beginners to the floor for the next song.

  I grabbed Gus’s wrist and cut a path through the crowd to the dance floor. For once, his cheeks were flushed, his forehead dented with worried wrinkles. “You honestly have to write me into your will for this,” he said.

  “You might not want to talk through the instructions,” I replied, tipping my head toward the horse-faced caller, who was using a volunteer from the crowd to demonstrate a few key moves, all while talking with the speed of an auctioneer. “I have a feeling this guy won’t be repeating much.”

  “Your last will and testament, January,” Gus whispered fiercely.

  “And to Gus Everett,” I whispered back, “a closet full of ten-gallon hats!”

  His laugh crackled like popping oil. I thought of its sound against my ear that night at the party. We hadn’t said anything as we danced in that slick basement, not a single word, but he’d laughed against my ear and I’d known, or at least suspected, that it was because he was dimly aware that we should have been embarrassed to be all over each other like that. We should have been but there were more pressing feelings to be felt that night. Just like at the drive-in.

  Heat filled my abdomen and I suppressed the thought.

  Onstage, the fiddle started up, and soon the whole band was bouncing through the notes. The experts swarmed the floor, filling in the gaps between the anxiously waiting beginners, of whom we made up at least 20 percent. Gus pushed in close at my side, unwilling to be separated from the sentient safety blanket I’d become as soon as we’d walked through the metal double doors, and the caller shouted into the microphone, “You all ready? Here we go!”

  At his first command, the crowd jostled to the right, carrying Gus and me with it. He snatched my hand as the mass of boots and heels reversed direction. I squealed as Gus jerked me out of the path of a man on a mission to grapevine whether it meant stomping on my foot or not.

  There were no sung lyrics, just the caller’s instructions with their strange, auctioneer rhythm and the sound of shoes scuffing along the floor. I erupted into laughter as Gus went forward instead of back, eliciting a nasty glare from the hair-sprayed blonde he collided with. “Sorry,” he shouted over the music, holding up his hands in surrender, only to get bumped into her pink lace–covered chest as the crowd shifted once more.

  “Oh, God,” he said, stumbling back. “Sorry, I—”

  “God has nothing to do with it!” the woman snapped, digging her hands into her hips.

  “Sorry,” I interceded, grabbing Gus by the hand. “Can’t take him anywhere.”

  “Me?” he cried, half laughing. “You knocked me into—”

  I pulled him through the crowd to the far side of the dance floor. When I looked over my shoulder, the woman had resumed her boot-scoot-boogying, face as stony as a sarcophagus’s.

  “Should I give her my number?” Gus teased, mouth close to my ear.

  “I think she’d rather have your insurance card.”

  “Or a good police sketch.”

  “Or a crowbar,” I shot back.

  “Okay.” Gus’s smile spread enough for a laugh to slip out. “That’s enough from you. You’re just looking for an excuse not to dance.”

  “I’m just looking for an excuse?” I said. “You grabbed that woman’s boobs to try to get kicked out of here.”

  “No way.” He shook his head, caught my arm, and tugged me along as he clumsily fell back into the steps. “I’m in this for the long haul now. You’d better clear your Saturday schedules from here until eternity.”

  I laughed, tripping along with
him, but my stomach was fighting a series of concurrent rises and dips. I didn’t want to feel these things. It wasn’t fun anymore, now that I was thinking it all through, where it would end up—with me attached and jealous and him having shared about as much about his life with me as you might with a hairdresser.

  But then he would say things like that, Clear your Saturday schedules from here until eternity. He would grab me around the waist to keep me from smashing into a support beam I hadn’t noticed in my dancing fugue state. Laughing, he would twirl me into him, and spin me around while the rest of the crowd was walking their feet into their bodies and back out, far wider than their hips, thumbs hooked into real and imagined belt loops.

  This was a different Gus than I’d seen (The one who’d played soccer? The Gus who answered one third of his aunt’s phone calls? The Gus who’d been married and divorced?), and I wasn’t sure what to make of it or its sudden appearance.

  Something had changed in him, again, and he was (whether intentionally or not) letting it show. He seemed somehow lighter than he had, less tired. He was being winsome and flirty, which only made me more frustrated after the past week.

  “We need a shot,” he said.

  “Okay,” I agreed. Maybe a shot would take the strange edge I was feeling off. We swam back to the bar and he nudged aside a pool of peanuts still in their shells to order two doubles of whiskey. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his.

  “To what?” I asked.

  He smirked. “To your happy endings.”

  I’d thought we were friends, that he respected me, and now I felt like he was calling me a fairy princess all over again, laughing to himself about how naive and silly my worldview was, holding his failed marriage like a secret trump card that proved, once again, he knew more than me. A fierce, angry fuse lit in my stomach, and I threw back the whiskey without meeting his lifted shot. Gus seemed to think it was an oversight. He was still downing his whiskey as I headed back out to the dance floor.