The air was warm but not even close to hot enough to make the chill pleasant. Most of the people left on the beach had pulled sweatshirts on or wrapped themselves in towels and blankets. Everyone, all those wind-beaten and sunburned faces, all that lake-tangled hair, those eyes squinting into the fierce light. Looking at the same setting sun.
It made me ache. I felt suddenly more alone than ever. There was no floppy-haired, romantic Jacques waiting for me in Queens—no one to cook me a real meal or whisk me away from the computer. No missed calls or Was just thinking about Karyn and Sharyn and almost peed again texts from Mom, and no way for me to send her a picture of the sunlight dripping onto the lake without opening the wound that was the lake house.
I’d only seen Shadi twice since the funeral, and with her work schedule, most texts from her came in long after I’d gone to bed, and most of my replies went out long before she’d wake up.
My writer friends had stopped checking in too, as if sensing that every note from them, every call and text, was just one more reminder of how terribly far behind I had fallen. Was falling. Every moment of every day, I was tripping backward while the rest of the world marched forward.
Honestly, I even missed Sharyn and Karyn: sitting on their colorful rag rug drinking the nasty-ass bathtub moonshine they were so proud of while they hawked homemade essential oils that smelled great, even if they didn’t actually cure cancer.
My world felt empty. Like there was no one in it, except sometimes Gus, and nothing in it except this book, and the bet. And no matter how much better this book felt than every iteration of it that had come in the last twelve months, it wasn’t enough.
I was on a beautiful beach, in a beautiful place, and I was alone. Worse, I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop being alone again. I wanted my mom, and I missed my lying dad.
I sat down in the sand, folded my legs to my chest, rested my forehead against my knees, and cried. I cried until my face was hot and red and soaking wet, and I would’ve kept crying if a seagull didn’t shit on my head, but of course, it did.
And so I stood and turned back to the path only to find someone frozen in the middle of it, watching me ugly cry like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
It was like something out of a movie, the way Gus was standing there, except that there was nothing romantic or magical about it. Even though I’d been sobbing about being alone, he was one of the last people I would’ve chosen to see me like this. Momentarily forgetting the pile of bird excrement on my head, I wiped at my face and eyes, trying to make myself look more … something.
“Sorry,” Gus said, visibly uncomfortable. He glanced sidelong down the beach. “I saw you come down here, and I just …”
“A bird pooped on my head,” I said tearily. Apparently there was nothing more to say than that.
His look of painful empathy cracked under a soundless laugh. He closed the gap between us and pulled me roughly into a hug. The action seemed uncomfortable, if not painful, for him at first, but even so it was something of a relief to be held.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “But just so you know … you can.”
I buried my face in his shoulder, and his hands’ clumsy patting against my back settled into slow, gentle circles, before they stopped moving at all, just curled in against my spine, easing me closer. I let myself sink into him. The crying had stopped as fast as it had started. All I could think about was the press of his hard stomach and chest, the sharp ridges of his hips and the almost smoky smell of him. The heat of his body and his breath.
It was a bad idea to stand here like this with him, touch him like this, but it was also intoxicating. I decided to count to three and then let go.
I got to two before his hand slid into my hair, cradling the back of my head, then jerked suddenly clear as he took an abrupt step back. “Wow. That’s a lot of shit.”
He was staring at his hand and the goop dripping off of it.
“Yeah, I said ‘bird’ but it very well could have been a dinosaur.”
“No kidding. I guess we should get cleaned up before we take off for the night.”
I sniffed and wiped the residual tears away from my eyes. “Was take off an intentional bird pun or …?”
“Hell no,” Gus said, turning back toward the trail with me. “I said that because I assumed we would be taking a helicopter ride over the lake.”
A ripple of timid laughter went through me, breaking up the residual knot of emotion and heat in my chest. “Is that your final guess?”
He looked me up and down, as if weighing my outfit against some widely recognized helicopter-date uniform. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Sooo close.”
“Really?” he said. “What is it, then? Tiny airplane over the lake? Tiny submarine under the lake?”
“You’ll have to wait and find out.”
We parted ways between our houses, agreeing to meet at my car in twenty minutes. When I’d washed my hair for the second time that day, I threw it into a bun and put the same (poop-free) outfit back on. I’d packed most of the supplies for our trip earlier that day, so all I had left to do was grab the rest out of the fridge and stuff it into the cooler I’d found on one of the kitchen’s bottom shelves.
It was 7:30 when Gus and I finally set out and 8:40 when we finally pulled in to Meg Ryan Night at Big Boy Bobby’s Drive-In.
“Oh my God,” Gus said as we drove up to the booth to hand over the tickets I’d bought online. “This is a triple feature.” He was reading the glowing marquee to our right: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail. “Aren’t half of those Christmas movies?”
The attendant raised the gate and I pulled through. “Half of three is one and a half, so no, half of these movies aren’t Christmas movies.”
“Have I mentioned that Meg Ryan’s face pisses me off?”
I scoffed. “One, no. Two, that’s impossible. Her face is adorable and perfect.”
“Maybe that’s what it is,” Gus said. “I couldn’t tell you, and I know it’s not logical, but I … just can’t stand her.”
“Tonight that’s all going to change,” I promised. “Trust me. You just have to open your heart. If you can do that, your world’s going to be a much brighter place from now on. And maybe you’ll even stand a chance at writing a sellable rom-com.”
“January,” he said solemnly as I backed into an open parking spot, “just imagine what you’d do to me if I took you to a six-hour-long Jonathan Franzen reading.”
“I cannot and I will not,” I said. “And if you choose to use one of our Friday nights in such a way, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, but it’s Saturday and thus I’m the captain of this ship. Now come help me figure out where we can buy the Big Bobby Ice Cream Surprise I read about online. According to the website it is ‘SOOO Worth It!’”
“It had better be.” Gus sighed, climbing out of the Kia to join me. As the previews flashed clunkily across the screen, we made our way through the field to the concession stands. I beelined for the wooden sign painted to look like an ice cream sundae, but Gus touched my arm, stopping me from getting in line right away. “Will you just promise me one thing?”
“Gus, I won’t fall in love with you.”
“One more thing,” he said. “Please just try your hardest not to puke.”
“If I start to, I’ll just swallow it.”