“Like what?” It came out as a whisper.
He put his elbows on the table. “Like the kind of world you write about. Like proof. That it isn’t as bad as it looks. Or it’s more good than bad. Like if we added up all the—all the shit and all the wildflowers, the world would come out positive.”
I reached for his hand and he let me take it, his dark eyes soft and open. “When I first found out about my dad’s affair, I tried to do that kind of math,” I admitted. “How much lying and cheating could he have done and still have been a good father? How deep could he have gotten himself in with That Woman and still loved my mom? Still liked his life. I tried to figure out how happy he could’ve been, how much he could’ve missed us when he was away, and when I was feeling particularly bad, how much he must’ve hated us to be willing to do what he did. And I never got my answers.
“And sometimes I still want them, and other times I’m terrified of what I’d find out. But people aren’t math problems.” I gave a heavy shrug. “I can miss my dad and hate him at the same time. I can be worried about this book and torn up about my family and sick over the house I’m living in, and still look out at Lake Michigan and feel overwhelmed by how big it is. I spent all last summer thinking I’d never be happy again, and now, a year later, I still feel sick and worried and angry, but at moments, I’m also happy. Bad things don’t dig down through your life until the pit’s so deep that nothing good will ever be big enough to make you happy again. No matter how much shit, there will always be wildflowers. There will always be Petes and Maggies and rainstorms in forests and sun on waves.”
Gus smiled. “And sex on bookshelves and in tents.”
“Ideally,” I said. “Unless the world freezes over in a second ice age. And in that case, there will at least be snowflakes, until the bitter end.”
Gus touched the side of my face. “I don’t need snowflakes.” He kissed me. “As long as there’s January.”
HEYYYYY, BABYCAKES. JUST wanted to make sure we’re still on for a September 1 manuscript delivery. Sandy keeps checking in, and I will gladly be the human barricade that keeps her off your back, but she’s desperate to buy something from you and if I keep promising her a book … well, then there really does need to be a book in the end.
Gus had spent the night, and when I shifted away from him to reach for the phone, he rolled over, still asleep, to follow me, nestling his face into the side of my boob, his hand sprawled out across my bare stomach.
My heart began to race both from the still-new thrill of his body and from Anya’s text. I couldn’t send her the incomplete book. It was miraculous she hadn’t dumped me yet, and I couldn’t put her in a less-than-ideal situation with Sandy Lowe without something to soften the blow. I slid out from under Gus, ignoring his grumbles, and grabbed my robe as I headed into the kitchen, texting Anya as I went: I can do it. Promise.
September 1, she replied. Hard deadline this time.
I didn’t mess with the coffee. I was wide awake as it was.
I sat at the table and began to write. When Gus got up, he put the kettle on, then walked back to the table and took a swig from the beer bottle he’d left there last night.
I looked up at him. “That’s disgusting.”
He held it out to me. “Do you want some?”
I took a swig. “Even worse than I imagined.”
He smiled down at me. His hand grazed my clavicle and skimmed down me, parting my robe as he went. His fingers caught on the tie, and he tugged it loose, letting the fabric fall open. He reached through to touch my waist, drawing me onto my feet.
He turned me against the table and eased me onto it as he walked in between my legs. He caught the collar of my open robe and slid it down my arms, leaving me bare on the table. “I’m working,” I whispered.
He lifted one of my thighs against his hip as he pushed in closer. “Are you?” His other hand rolled across my breast, catching my nipple. “I know you have a bet to win. This can wait.”
I dragged him closer. “No. It can’t.”
FOCUS WAS A problem. Or rather, focusing on anything but Gus was a problem. We decided to go back to writing in our separate houses during the day, which might’ve been a more successful solution if either of us had enough self-control to not write notes back and forth all day.
I want you, he once wrote.
When did writing get so hard? I wrote back.
Hard, he wrote.
He wasn’t always the instigator. On Wednesday, after resisting as long as I possibly could, I wrote, Wish you were here and drew an arrow down toward myself.
You’re not the only one, he wrote back. Then, Write 2,000 words and then we can talk.
This proved to be the key to getting anything done. We changed the goalposts. Two thousand words and we could be in the same room. Four thousand words and we could touch.
Our whole arrangement was seeming less like a sprint and more like a three-legged race, full of teamwork and encouragement. Ultimately, I was still determined to win, though I was no longer sure what I was trying to prove, or to whom.
At night, we went out sometimes. To the Thai restaurant we’d ordered from so many times, a cute little place where everything was gilded and you sat on cushions on the floor and ordered from a menu whose cover was mock papyrus. To the pizza place we’d ordered from so many times, a less cute little place with plasticky red booths and interrogation-room lighting. We went to the Tipsy Fish, a bar in town, and when someone Gus knew from town walked in, he nodded hello without jerking his hand away from me.
Even as we played darts and, later, pool, we stayed connected, visibly together, Gus’s hand curled casually around my hips or resting gently under my shirt at the small of my back, my fingers laced through his or snagged on his belt loop.
The next night, when we were leaving Pizza My Heart, we walked past Pete’s Book Shop and saw her and Maggie inside, having a glass of wine in the armchairs in the café.
“We should say hi,” Gus said, and so we ducked inside.
“It’s our anniversary,” Maggie explained airily.
“With North Bear,” Pete added. “The day we moved here. Not our anniversary—our anniversary’s January thirteenth.”
“No kidding,” I said. “That’s my birthday.”
“Really?!” Maggie seemed delighted. “Well, of course it is! The best day of the year—it only makes sense God would pull that.”
“A perfectly good day,” Pete agreed.
Maggie nodded. “And so is today.”
“I’d move here all over again,” Pete said. “Best thing we ever did, apart from falling in love.”
“And adopting the Labradors,” Maggie added thoughtfully.
“And extending a certain invitation to book club, which seems to have worked out all right,” Pete added with a wink.
“Tricking us, you mean,” Gus said, smiling.
He looked at me, and I wondered if we were thinking the same thing. It might not’ve been the best thing I ever did, moving here, showing up at Pete’s house that night for book club. But it was a good one. The best in a few years at least.
“Just stay for one quick glass, Gussy,” Maggie insisted, already pouring into the clear plastic cups they used for iced coffee.
One glass grew to two, two grew to three, and Gus pulled me onto his lap in the armchair across from them. Their hands were draped loosely between their chairs, knotted together, and Gus’s were rubbing idle circles on my back as we talked and laughed into the night.
We left at midnight, when Pete finally pronounced that they should be getting home to the Labradors and Maggie started whisking around to clean up, but we were too tipsy to drive, so we walked through the heat and mosquitoes.
And as we did, I thought over and over again, I almost love him. I’m starting to love him. I love him.
