I wasn’t a coffee snob myself—I could get behind flavored syrups and whipped toppings—but I started most mornings with something drinkable enough to have it black. I filled the kettle and turned the burner on, that warm, earthy smell of gas leaping to life with the flame. I plugged the grinder in and stared out the window as it worked. Last night’s mist had held out, cloaking the strip of woods between the house and the beach in deep grays and blues. The house had chilled too. I shivered, pulling my robe tighter.
As I waited for the coffee to steep, my phone vibrated against the counter.
WELL, Shadi began, a bunch of us went out after work, and AS USUAL, he was totally ignoring me EXCEPT whenever I wasn’t looking and then I could feel him just absolutely staring at me. So eventually he went to the bathroom and I also had to go so I was back in the hallway waiting and then he came out and was like “hey shad” and I was like “wow, I honestly thought you didn’t speak until this moment” and he just like shrugged. So I was like “ANYWAY I was thinking about leaving.” And he was like “oh, shit, really?” And he was just like, obviously disappointed, and then I was like, “Well, I was thinking about leaving with you.” And he was SO nervous!! And like, excited like, “Yeah? That sounds good. When do you want to go?” and I was like “Duh. Now.” And as you can see, the rest is history.
Wow, I typed back. It’s a tale as old as time.
Truly, Shadi responded. Girl meets boy. Boy ignores girl except when she’s not looking. Girl goes home with boy and sees him hang his haunted hat on a crowded rack.
The timer went off and I pressed the coffee and poured some into a mug shaped like a cartoonish orca whale, then took it and my computer out onto the deck, mist pleasantly chilling every bare inch of my skin. I curled up in one of the chairs and started to make a mental checklist for the day, and for the rest of the summer.
First and foremost, I needed to figure out where exactly this book was going, if not in the direction of a feel-good summer romance with a single father. Then I needed to plan out Saturday’s romantic-comedy scenario for Gus.
My stomach flipped at the thought. I’d half expected to wake up in a panic about our agreement. Instead I was excited. For the first time in years, I was going to write a book that absolutely no one was waiting for. And I’d get to watch Gus Everett try to write a love story.
Or I was going to make a huge fool of myself and, far worse, disappoint Anya. But I couldn’t think about that right now. There was work to do.
Aside from working on the book and scheduling the (actual only) Uber driver to take me to get my car from Pete’s, I decided I’d conquer the second upstairs bedroom today and divide whatever was in there into throwaway, giveaway, and sell piles.
I also vowed to move my stuff into the downstairs bedroom. I’d done okay on the couch the first few nights but had awoken this morning to some serious kinks in my neck.
My gaze wandered toward the swath of windows along the back of Gus’s house. At that precise moment, he walked into his kitchen, pulling a (shocker!) rumpled, dark T-shirt over his head. I spun back in my deck chair.
He couldn’t have seen me watching him. But the more I thought about it, the more I worried that I might’ve stared for a couple of seconds before looking away. I could vividly picture the curves of Gus’s arms as he tugged the shirt over his head, a flat length of stomach framed by the sharp angles of hip bones. He was a little softer than he’d been in college (not that it took much), but it suited him. Or maybe it just suited me.
Well. I had definitely stared.
I glanced back quickly and started. Gus was standing in front of the glass doors now. He lifted his mug as if to toast me. I lifted mine in response, and he shuffled away.
If Gus Everett was getting to work already, I also needed to. I opened my computer and stared at the document I’d been picking at for the last few days. A meet-cute. There weren’t meet-cutes in Augustus Everett novels, that was for damn sure.
What was there? I hadn’t read either of them, not Rochambeau and not The Revelatories, but I’d read enough reviews of them to satiate my curiosity.
People doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. People doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Only getting what they wanted if it would ultimately destroy them.
Twisted, secretive families.
Well, I had no experience there! The ache shot through me. It felt like the first few seconds of a burn, when you couldn’t tell whether it was heat or cold burrowing into your skin but knew either way it would leave damage.
The memory of my fight with Mom after the funeral rose up like a tidal wave.
Jacques had left for the airport the second the service was over to make it back for work, missing the showdown with Sonya entirely, and once she’d fled, Mom and I didn’t stick around for long either.
We fought the whole drive back to the house. No, that wasn’t true. I fought. Years’ worth of feelings I’d chosen not to feel. Years of betrayal forcing them out.
“How could you keep this from me?” I’d shouted as I drove.
“She wasn’t supposed to come here!” Mom had said, then buried her face in her hands. “I can’t talk about this,” she’d sobbed, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
From then on, anything else I said was answered with this: I can’t talk about this. I can’t talk about him like this. I’m not going to talk about it. I can’t.
I should have understood. I should have cared more what Mom was feeling.
This was meant to be the moment that I became the adult, hugging her tight, promising everything would be okay, taking her pain. That’s what grown daughters did for their mothers. But back in the church, I’d torn in half and everything had spilled out of me into plain view for the first time.
Hundreds of nights I’d chosen not to cry. Thousands of moments I’d worried about worrying. That if I did it, I’d make things worse for my parents. That I needed to be strong. That I needed to be happy so I wouldn’t drag them down.
All those years when I was terrified my mother would die, I’d tucked every ugly thing out of sight to transform my life into a shiny window display for her benefit.
I’d made my parents laugh. I’d made them proud. I’d brought home solid grades, fought tooth and nail to keep up with Gus Everett. I’d stayed up late reading with Dad and gotten up early to pretend I liked yoga with Mom. I’d told them about my life, asked them endlessly about theirs so I’d never regret wasting time with them. And I hid the complicated feelings that came with trying to memorize someone you loved, just in case.
I fell in love at twenty-two, just like they had, with a boy named Jacques who was the singularly most beloved and interesting person I’d met, and I paraded our happiness past them as often as I could. I gave up on grad school to be close to them but proved I hadn’t really missed out on anything by publishing at twenty-five.
Look! I’m fine! Look! I have every beautiful thing you wanted for me! Look! This hasn’t affected me at all!
Look, they all live happily ever after. Again.
I’d done everything I could to prove that I was okay, that I wasn’t worrying. I did everything I could for that story. The one where the three of us were unbreakable.
On the drive home from the funeral, I didn’t want to be okay anymore.