by Emily Henry
I wanted to hold on to him, and this moment, for a while.
As if in agreement, Gus squeezed my hands in his. “I do, you know,” he said. It was almost a whisper, a tender, rugged thing like Gus himself. “Care about you.”
“I do,” I told him. “Know that, I mean.”
The tangerine light glinted over his teeth when he smiled, deepening the shadows in his rarely seen dimples, and we stayed there, letting nothing happen all around us.
20
The Basement
I have bad news and bad news, Shadi texted me the next morning.
Which should I hear first??? I replied. I sat up slowly, careful not to rouse Gus. To say we’d fallen asleep on the couch seemed like a misrepresentation of the truth. I’d had to actively decide to go to sleep the night before.
For the first time since we’d started hanging out, we’d ventured to the world of movie marathons and binge-watching. “You choose one and then I’ll choose one,” he’d said.
That was how we’d ended up watching, or talking through, While You Were Sleeping, A Streetcar Named Desire, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (as punishment for making me watch A Streetcar Named Desire), and Mariah Carey’s Glitter (as we descended further into madness). And even after that, I’d been wide awake, wired.
Gus had suggested we put on Rear Window, and halfway through, not long before the first hints of sun would skate through the windows, we’d finally stopped talking. We’d lain very still on our opposite ends of the couch, everything below our knees tangled up in the middle, and gone to sleep.
The house was chilly—I’d left the windows open and they’d fogged as the temperature began to inch back up with the morning. Gus was scrunched nearly into the fetal position, one throw blanket wrapped around himself, so I draped the two blankets I’d been using over him as I crept into the kitchen to turn the burner on beneath the kettle.
It was a still, blue morning. If the sun had come up, it was caught behind a sheet of mist. As quietly as I could, I pulled the bag of ground coffee and the French press from the lazy Susan.
The ritual felt different than it had that first morning, more ordinary and thus somehow more holy.
Somewhere in the last week or so, this house had started to feel like my own.
My phone vibrated in my hand.
I have fallen in love, Shadi said.
With the haunted hat? I asked, heart thrilling. Shadi was always the very best, but Shadi in love—there was nothing like it. Somehow, she became even more herself. Even wilder, funnier, sillier, wiser, softer. Love lit my best friend up from within, and even if every one of her heartbreaks was utterly devastating, she still never closed herself off. Every time she fell in love again, her joy seemed to overflow, into me and the world at large.
Of course you have, I typed. Tell me EVERYTHING.
WELL, Shadi began. I don’t know!! We’ve just spent every night together, and his best friend LOVES me and I love him, and the other night we just like, stayed up literally until sunrise and then while he was in the bathroom, his friend was like “Be careful with him. He’s crazy about you” and I was like “lol same.” In conclusion, I have more bad news.
So you mentioned, I replied. Go on.
He wants me to visit his family . . .
Yes, that’s terrible, I agreed. What if they’re NICE? What if they make you play Uno and drink whiskey-Cokes on their porch???!
WELL, Shadi said. I mean. He wants me to go this week. For Fourth of July.
I stared down at the words, unsure what to say. On the one hand, I’d been living on an island of Gus Everett for a month now, and I had come down with neither prairie madness nor cabin fever.
On the other, it had been months since I’d seen Shadi, and I missed her. Gus and I had that intoxicating rapid-release form of friendship usually reserved for sleepaway camps and orientation week of college, but Shadi and I had years of history. We could talk about anything without having to back up and explain the context. Not that Gus’s style of communication called for much context. The bits of life he shared with me were building their framework as we went. I got a clearer picture of him every day, and when I went to sleep each night, I looked forward to finding more of him in the morning.
But still.
I know it’s terrible timing, Shadi said, but I already talked to my boss, and I get off again for my bday in August and I PROMISE I will pack the entire sex dungeon up myself.
The kettle began to whistle and I set my phone aside as I poured the water over the grounds and put the lid on the press to let it steep. My phone lit up with a new message and I leaned over the counter.
Obviously I don’t HAVE to go, she said. But I feel like??? I HAVE to. But like, I don’t. If you need me now, I can come now.
I couldn’t do that to her, drag her away from something that was clearly making her happier than I’d seen her in months.
If you come in August, how long will you stay? I asked, opening negotiations.
An email pinged into my inbox and I opened it with trepidation. Sonya had finally replied to my query about the porch furniture:
January,
I would love the porch furniture but I’m afraid I can’t afford to buy it from you. So if you were offering to give it to me, let me know when I could bring a truck & friends to pick it up. If you were offering to sell it to me, thank you for the offer, but I’m unable to take you up on it.
Either way, is there a time we could talk? In person would be good, I—
“Hey.”
I closed my email and turned around to find Gus shuffling into the kitchen, the heel of his hand rubbing at his right eye. His wavy hair stuck up to one side and his T-shirt was creased like a piece of ancient parchment behind glass at a museum, one of the sleeves twisted up on itself to reveal more of his arm than I’d seen before. I felt suddenly greedy for his shoulders.
“Wow,” I said. “This is what Gus Everett looks like before he puts on his face.”
Eyes still sleepily scrunched, he held his arms out to his sides. “What do you think?”
My heart fluttered. “Exactly what I pictured.” I turned my back to him as I dug through the cabinets for a couple of mugs. “In that you look exactly how you always do.”
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“That’s your right, as an American citizen.” I spun back to him with the mugs, hoping I appeared more casual than I felt about waking up in the same house as him.
His hands were braced against the counter as he leaned, like always, into it, his mouth curled into a smile. “Thanks be to Jack Reacher.”
I crossed my heart. “Amen.”
“That coffee ready?”
“Very nearly.”
“Porch or deck?” he asked.
I tried to imagine cabin fever. I tried to imagine this getting old: that smile, those rumpled clothes, the language only Gus and I spoke, the joking and crying and touching and not touching.
A new message came in from Shadi: I’ll stay at LEAST a week.
I texted her back. See you then, babe. Keep me posted on the hauntings of your heart.
* * *
—
It was Wednesday, and we’d spent the day writing at my house (I was now a solid 33 percent into the book) while we waited for the buyer to come pick up the furniture from the upstairs bedroom. I’d held off on selling the porch furniture now that Gus and I had gotten in the habit of using it some nights. I’d started boxing up knickknacks from the entire downstairs and dropping them off at Goodwill and even selling off the less necessary furniture downstairs. The love seat and armchair from the living room were gone, the clock from the mantel was gone, the place mats and tapered candles and votives in the armoire by the kitchen table all donated.
Maybe because it was starting to feel less like a home than a d
ollhouse, it had become our de facto office, and when we’d finished work that day, we’d relocated to Gus’s.
He was in the kitchen, getting more ice, and I took the opportunity to peruse (snoop through) his bookshelves as thoroughly as I’d wanted to ever since the night I moved in and saw them lit up through my living room window. He had quite the collection, classics and contemporary alike. Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, William Faulkner, George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay. For the most part he’d arranged them in alphabetical order, but he obviously hadn’t kept up on shelving new purchases for a while, and these sat in stacks in front of and on top of other books, the receipts still poking out from under their covers.
I crouched to get a better look at the bottom row on the shelf furthest from the door, which was entirely out of order, and audibly gasped at the sight of a thin spine reading GREGORY L. WARNER HIGH SCHOOL.
I opened the yearbook and flipped to the E surnames. A laugh burst out of me as my eyes fell on the black-and-white shot of a shaggy-haired Gus standing with one foot on either side of a dilapidated set of train tracks. “Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you, Lord.”
“Oh, come on,” Gus said as he stepped back into the room. “Is nothing sacred to you, January?” He set the ice bucket on the sideboard and tried to pry the book from my hands.
“I’m not done with this,” I protested, pulling it back. “In fact, I doubt I’ll ever be done with this. I want this to be the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I look at before I go to bed.”
“Okay, pervert, stick to your underwear catalogues.” He tried again to pluck it from my hands, but I turned away and clutched it to my chest, forcing him to reach around me on either side.
“You can take my life,” I yelped, dodging his hands, “you can take my freedom, but you’ll never take this goddamn yearbook from me, Gus.”
“I would much rather just have the yearbook,” he said, lunging for it again. He caught either side of the book, his arms wrapped around me, but still I didn’t release it.
“I was not kidding. This is too bright a light to hide under a bushel or a lampshade. The New York Times needs to see this. GQ needs to see this. You need to submit this to Forbes’s sexiest men contest for consideration.”
“And again, I’m seventeen in that picture,” he said. “Please stop objectifying child-me.”
“I would’ve been obsessed with you,” I told him. “You literally look like you bought that outfit in a packaged Teen Rebel costume from a Halloween shop. Wow, it’s true what they say. Some things really don’t ever change. I swear you’re wearing the exact same outfit today as you are in that picture.”
“That is one hundred percent untrue,” he argued, still pressed up against my back, his arms folded around me to rest on the book. I’d managed to keep the page marked with my finger, and as I opened the book again, his grip relaxed. He leaned over my shoulder to get a better look, his hands scraping down my arms to rest on my hips.
As if for balance. As if to keep from falling over my shoulder.
How many times could we possibly end up in situations like this? And how long until I lost what little self-control I’d managed to maintain?
As soon as something concrete happened between us, that would be it. I was going to lose him. He’d be freaked out, afraid that I was too into him, wanted too much from him, that he was bound to destroy me. And meanwhile I’d be . . . too into him, bound to be destroyed.
I was too much of a romantic for anything to stay casual, and even if we were totally incompatible, I was already in deeper with Gus than a purely physical attraction.
And it seemed like neither of us could stop pushing the boundaries.
As we stared at the yearbook, or pretended to, his hands ran lightly back and forth along my hips, pulling me into him then pushing me away, in a terribly appropriate metaphor. I could feel the tightness of his stomach against my back, and I chose to focus on his photo instead.
My initial giddiness faded, and the picture struck me anew. Probably 30 percent of the boys in my own high school yearbook had gone for the same angsty look, but Gus’s was different. The crooked line of his mouth was tense and unsmiling. The white scar that bisected his top lip was darker, fresher, and his eyes were ringed with tired circles. Even if Gus was constantly surprising me in small ways, there was also an instinctual level at which I felt I knew him, recognized him. At book club, Gus had known that something had changed me, and looking at this photo, I knew something had happened to him not long before the picture was taken.
“Was this after your mom . . .” I trailed off, unable to get the words out.
Gus’s chin nodded against my shoulder. “She died when I was a sophomore. That’s my senior photo.”
“I thought you dropped out,” I said, and he nodded again.
“My dad’s brother was a groundskeeper at this huge cemetery. I knew he was going to hire me full-time the second I was eighteen—insurance and everything—but my friend Markham insisted we take the photo and submit it anyway.”
“Thank you, Markham,” I whispered, trying to keep things light, despite the sadness welling in my chest. I wondered if my eyes looked like that now, so lost and empty, if after Dad’s funeral my face had been this hollowed out. “I wish I’d known you,” I said helplessly. I couldn’t have changed anything, but I could have been there. I could have loved him.
My dad might’ve been a liar, a philanderer, and a traveling businessman, but I didn’t have a single memory of feeling truly alone as a kid. My parents were always there, and home was always my safe place.
* * *
—
No wonder I’d seemed like a fairy princess to Gus, skipping through life with my glittery shoes and deep trust in the universe, my insistence that anyone could be who they wanted, have what they wanted. It made me ache, not being able to go back and see him clearly, be more patient. I should’ve seen the loneliness of Gus Everett. I should’ve stopped telling myself a story and actually looked around at the world.
His hands kept moving. I realized I was moving with them, like he was a wave I was rocking with. Whenever he pulled me toward him, I found myself pressing back against him, arching to feel him against me. His hands slid down to my legs, curled into my skin, and I did everything I could to keep my breathing even.
We were playing a game: how far can we go without admitting we’ve gone?
“I had a thought,” he said.
“Really?” I teased, though my voice was still thick with a half dozen conflicting emotions. “Do you want me to grab the video camera to document?”
Gus’s hands tightened against me, and I leaned back against him. “Hilarious,” he said flatly. “As I was saying, I had an idea, but it affects our research.”
Ah. Research. The reminder that we still had to couch whatever this was in the terms of our deal. That, ultimately, this still was some kind of game.
“Okay, what’s up?” I turned to him, and his hands skidded across my skin as I shifted, but he didn’t let go.
“Well.” He grimaced. “I told Pete and Maggie I’d go to their Fourth of July, but that’s on Friday.”
“Oh.” I stepped back from him. There was something disorienting about remembering the rest of the world existed when his hands were on me. “So you need to skip one of our research nights?”
“Well, the thing is, I also really need to get out to see New Eden soon if I’m going to keep drafting,” he said. “So since I can’t go on Friday, I was hoping I could do it on Saturday.”
“Got it,” I said. “So we skip Rom-Com 101 this week and take a Lit Fic field trip?”
Gus shook his head. “You don’t have to go—I can do this one on my own.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I go?”
Gus’s teeth worried at his bottom lip, the scar beside his cupid’s
bow going even whiter than usual. “It’s going to be awful,” he said. “You sure you want to see it?”
I sighed. This again. The old fairy-princess-can’t-handle-this-cruel-world song and dance. “Gus,” I said slowly, “if you’re going, I’m going too. That’s the deal.”
“Even though I’m skipping out on Romance Hero boot camp for the week?”
“I think you’ve done more than enough line dancing this month,” I said. “You deserve a break and a Fourth of July party.”
“What about you?” he said.
“I always deserve a break,” I said. “But my breaks largely consist of line dancing.”
He cleared his throat. “I meant Friday.”
“Friday what?”
“Do you want to go to Pete’s on Friday?”
“Yes,” I answered immediately. Gus gave his trademark closed-mouthed smile. “Wait. Maybe.” His expression fell and I hurried to add, “Is there a way to . . .” I thought and rethought how to phrase it. “Pete’s friends with my dad’s mistress.”
“Oh.” Gus’s mouth juddered open. “I . . . wish she’d mentioned that when I asked her if I could invite you. I wouldn’t have agreed if I’d realized . . .”
“I’m not sure she knows.”
“Or she was trying to get a promise from me by omitting important information,” he said.
“Well, you should go,” I said. “I’m just not sure if I can.”
“I’ll find out,” Gus said quickly. “But if she’s not?”
“I’ll come,” I said. “But I’m definitely bringing up rocks to Maggie.”
“You’re sick and twisted, January Andrews,” Gus said. “That’s what I love about you.”
My stomach dipped and rose higher than it had started out. “Oh, that’s what it is.”
