Beach Read

I’D HAD SATURDAY planned for three days, which freed me up to spend the morning working on the book. It was slow going, not because I didn’t have ideas, but because it required such painstaking research to confirm that each scene was historically possible.

I’d started working at eight and had managed to write about five hundred words by the time Gus came to sit at his kitchen table, facing mine. He wrote his first note of the day and held it up. I squinted to read.

SORRY I GOT WEIRD LAST NIGHT.

My notebook and marker were already ready. They always were. I didn’t know exactly what he meant, but I imagined it had something to do with being adults who weren’t dating but were holding hands under a table at Olive Garden. I fought a sinking feeling in my stomach. Yes, it had been weird.

I had also loved it.

From watching Shadi’s love life, I knew how relationship-phobes like Gus Everett reacted when boundaries broke down, when things went from friendly to intimate, or from sexual to romantic. Guys like Gus were never the ones to pump the brakes when the emotional-entanglement train started moving, and they were always the ones to jump out and roll clear of the tracks once they realized they’d reached top speed.

I needed to keep my head straight and eyes clear—no romanticizing allowed. As soon as things got complicated, Gus would be gone, and in this moment, I was realizing how not ready for that I was. He was my only friend here. I had to protect that. Besides, there was the bet, which I couldn’t fully benefit from if he ghosted me before I even won.

I wrote back:

DON’T BE RIDICULOUS, GUS. YOU WERE ALWAYS WEIRD.

The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. He held my gaze for a beat too long, then turned his focus back to the notebook. When he held it up next, it showcased a series of numbers. I recognized the first three as the local area code.

My stomach flipped. I scribbled the numbers down small at the top of the page, then wrote my own phone number much larger beneath it, followed by, I’M STILL GOING TO WRITE THESE NOTES.

Gus replied, GOOD.

I wrote another five hundred words by three thirty in the afternoon, at which point I drove over to Goodwill to drop off the load of boxes I’d filled from the upstairs guest room and bath. When I got back, I scrubbed the upstairs bathroom clean, then padded back downstairs to shower in the bathroom I’d been using for the past two weeks. The picture of my dad and Sonya still hung on the wall, photo facing inward.

I’d felt too guilty to destroy it, but I figured it was only a matter of time until I worked up the courage. For now it was a bleak reminder that the hardest work was still ahead of me: the basement I hadn’t even peeked into and the master bedroom I’d thoroughly avoided.

I still hadn’t really been down to the beach, which seemed like a shame, so after I’d made a pot of macaroni to tide me over until tonight, I picked my way down the wooded trail to the water. The light bouncing over the waves from the setting sun was incredible, all reds and golds blazing over the lake’s back. I slipped out of my shoes and carried them to the edge of the water, gasping out a swear as the icy tide rushed over my feet. I scrambled back, laughing breathlessly from the sheer shock of it.

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.”

Gus cupped his hand over his mouth and gagged.

“Kidding! I won’t puke. At least not until you take me to that six-hour reading. Now come on. I’ve spent all week looking forward to eating something other than cold Pop-Tarts.”

“I don’t think this is going to be the vitamin- and nutrient-rich smorgasbord you seem to be imagining.”

“I don’t need vitamins. I need nacho cheese and chocolate sauce.”

“Ah, in that case, you planned the perfect night.”

Because I’d bought the tickets, Gus paid for the popcorn and the Ice Cream Surprises ($6 each, decidedly un-worth it), and he tried to buy us sodas before I completely indiscreetly cut him off, doing my best to signal that we had other options in the car.

When we got back, I opened the tailgate and put the middle seats flat, revealing the setup of pillows and blankets I’d packed earlier, along with the cooler full of beer. “Impressed?” I asked Gus.

“By your car’s trunk space? Absolutely.”

“Har-har-har,” I said.

“Har-har-har,” Gus said back.

We climbed through the open trunk and I turned the car on, tuning the radio to the right channel to pick up the movie’s audio before settling in beside Gus just as the opening credits began. Despite what he’d said about trunk space, the Kia wasn’t exactly big. Lying on our stomachs, chins propped up on our hands, we were very nearly touching in several places, and our elbows were touching. This position wouldn’t be comfortable for long, and rearranging with both of us in the car was going to be a challenge. Being this close to him was also going to be a challenge.

As soon as Meg Ryan appeared onscreen, he leaned a little closer and whispered, “Her face really doesn’t bother you?”

“I think you should see a doctor,” I hissed. “That’s not a normal reaction.” As soon as I got my first book advance, I’d bought Shadi and myself both like twenty Meg Ryan movies so we could watch them together long-distance whenever we wanted, starting them at the same exact moment so we could text about what was happening in real time and pausing whenever one of us had to pee.

“Just wait until you hear how Meg Ryan pronounces horses when she sings ‘Sleigh Ride,’” I whispered to Gus. “Your life will be irrevocably changed.”

Gus gave me a look like I wasn’t helping my case. “She just looks so damn smug,” he said.

“A lot of people have told me I look like her,” I said.

“There’s no way that’s true.”

“Okay, they haven’t, but they should have.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “You look nothing like her.”

“On the one hand, I’m offended. On the other, I’m relieved you probably don’t loathe my face.”

“There’s nothing to loathe about your face,” he said matter-of-factly.

“There’s nothing to loathe about Meg Ryan’s face either.”

“Fine, I take it back. I love her face. Does that make you happy?”

I turned toward him. His head was propped in his hand, his body angled toward me, and the light from the screen just barely caught his eyes, drawing liquidy slivers of color in them. His dark hair was as messy as ever, but his facial hair was back under control, and that smoky smell still hung on him.

“January?” he murmured.

I maneuvered onto my side, facing him, and nodded. “It makes me happy.”

His knee bumped mine. I bumped his back.

A shadow of a smile passed over his serious face, there and gone so fast I might’ve imagined it. “Good,” he said.

We stayed like that for a long time, pretending to watch the movie from an angle where neither of us could possibly see more than half the screen, our knees pressed into one another.

Whenever one of us rearranged, the other followed. Whenever one of us could no longer bear the discomfort of one position, we both shifted. But we never stopped touching.

We were in dangerous territory.

I hadn’t felt like this in years—that almost painful weight of wanting, that paralyzing fear that any wrong move would ruin everything.

I glanced up when I felt his gaze on me, and he didn’t look away. I wanted to say something to break the tension, but my mind was mercilessly blank. Not the blinking-cursor-on-a-white-screen blank of trying to concoct a novel from thin air. The color-popping-in-darkness blank of scrunching your eyes shut. Of staring at flames too long.

The pulsing blank of feeling so much you’re incapable of thinking anything.

The staring contest stretched an uncomfortable distance without either of us breaking it. His eyes looked nearly black, and when the light from the screen hit them, the illusion of flames sparked in them, then vanished.

Somewhere deep in my mind, a self-preservation instinct was screaming, THOSE ARE THE EYES OF A PREDATOR, but that was exactly why nature gave predators eyes like that. So dumb little rabbits like me wouldn’t stand a chance.

Don’t be a dumb bunny, January!

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said abruptly.

Gus smiled. “You just went to the bathroom.”

“I have a really tiny bladder,” I said.

“I’ll go with you.”

“That’s okay!” I chirped and, forgetting I was in a car, sat up so fast I slammed my head into the roof.

“Shit!” Gus said at the same time I hissed out a confused, “WHAT?”

He bolted up and shuffled on his knees toward where I sat, clutching my head. “Let me see.” His hands cradled the sides of my face, tilting my head down so he could see the crown of my skull. “It’s not bleeding,” he told me, then angled my face back up into his, his fingers threaded gently through my hair. His eyes wandered down to my mouth, and his crooked lips parted.

Oh, damn.

I was a bunny.

I leaned toward him, and his hands went to my waist, drawing me onto his lap so that I was straddling him where he knelt. His nose brushed the side of mine, and I lifted my mouth under his, trying to close the gap between us. Our slow breaths pressed us into each other and his hands squeezed my sides, my thighs tightening against him in reaction.

One time one time one time was all I could think. That was his policy, right? Would it really be so bad if something happened between us, just once? We could go back to being friends, neighbors who talked every day. Could I do casual, this one time, with my college crush turned nemesis, seven years after the fact? I couldn’t think clearly enough to figure it out. My breathing was shaky and shallow; his was nonexistent.

We hovered there for a minute, like neither of us wanted to accept the blame.

You touched me first! I’d say.

You leaned in! he’d fire back.

And then you scooped me into your lap!

And you lifted your mouth toward mine!

And then—

His mouth dragged warm breath across my jaw and then up to my lips. His teeth skated across my bottom lip, and a small hum of pleasure went through me. His mouth quirked into a smile even as it sank hot and light against my mouth, coaxing it open. He tasted like vanilla and cinnamon left over from the Ice Cream Surprise, only better than the dessert itself had. His heat rushed into my mouth, into me, until it was flooding through me, racing like a river current baked hot by the sun. Want dripped through me, pooling in all the nooks that formed between our bodies.

I reached for a handful of his shirt, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thin material. I needed him closer, to remember how it felt to be pressed against him, to be wrapped around him. One of his hands swept up the side of my neck, his fingers curling under my hair. I sighed into his mouth as he kissed me again, slower, deeper, rougher. He tipped my mouth up to him for more, and I grabbed for his ribs, trying to get closer. He leaned into me until my back met the side of the car, until he pressed hard against me.

A stupid gasp escaped me at the feel of his chest unyielding against mine, and I ground my hips against his. He braced one hand on the window behind me, and his teeth caught my bottom lip again, a little harder this time. My breaths came fast and shaky as his hand swiped down the car window to my chest, feeling me through my shirt.

I raked my hands through his hair, arched into the press of his hand, and a low, involuntary groan lifted in his throat. He leaned away and flipped me onto my back, and I greedily pulled him over me. A pulse went through me at the feeling of him hard against me, and I tried to will him closer than clothes allowed. That sound rasped out of him again.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this turned on.

Actually, I could. It was seven years ago in a frat house basement.

His hand slipped up beneath my shirt, his thumb scraping up the length of my hip bone and seeming to melt it as he went. His mouth grazed hot and damp down my neck, sinking heavily against my collarbone. My whole body was begging him for more without any subtlety, lifting toward him as if pulled by a magnet. I felt like a teenager, and it was wonderful, and it was horrible, and—

He tightened over me as light hit us, as cold and sobering as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on us. We sprang apart at the sight of the surly middle-aged woman with the flashlight aimed our way. She had a frizzy triangle of gray hair and a bright blue track jacket screen printed with the BIG BOY BOBBY’S logo.

She cleared her throat.

Gus was still propped up over me with one hand tangled in the hem of my shirt.

“This is a family establishment,” the woman hissed.

“Well, you’re doing a great job.” Gus’s voice was thick and husky. He cleared it again and gave the woman his best Evil smile. “My wife and I were just saying we should bring the kids here sometime.”

She folded her arms, apparently immune to the charms of his mouth. Must be nice.

Gus knelt back onto his heels, and I tugged my shirt down. “Sorry about that,” I said, mortified.

The woman jerked a thumb down the dark, grassy aisle between cars. “Out,” she barked.

“Of course,” Gus said quickly and jerked the tailgate closed, shutting us off from her. I burst out in humiliated, deranged laughter, and Gus turned toward me with a faint smile, his lips bruised and swollen, his hair disastrous.

“That was such a bad idea,” I whispered helplessly.

“Yeah.” Gus’s voice slipped back into its dangerous rasp. He leaned forward through the dark and caught me in one last viciously slow, dementedly hot kiss, his fingers spanning the side of my face. “Won’t happen again,” he told me, and all the sparks awake in my bloodstream fizzled out just a bit.

One time. That was his rule. But did this count? My gut twisted with disappointment. It couldn’t. It had done nothing to satisfy me. If anything, it had left me worse off than before, and from the way Gus was staring at me, I thought he must feel the same way.

The woman banged on the back window, and we both jumped.

“We should go,” Gus said.

I scrambled from the back of the car into the front seat. Gus got out the back door and back into the passenger seat.

I drove us home, feeling like my body was a heat map and everywhere he’d touched, everywhere he looked when he glanced over from the passenger seat, was glowing red.

GUS DIDN’T APPEAR at the kitchen table at noon on Sunday. I figured that was a bad sign—that what had happened had destroyed the only friendship I had in this town. Really, one of only several friendships I had the world over, since Jacques and my couple of friends, it had turned out, had no use for Just Me.

I tried to put Gus out of my mind, to work on the book with singular focus, but I went back to jumping every time my phone buzzed.

A text from Anya: Hey, love! Just wanted to check in. The house would really like to see some initial pages, to give some input.

An email from Pete: Hello! Good news! Your books will be in stock tomorrow. Is there a day this week you could stop by to sign?

An email from Sonya, which I did not open but whose first sentence I could see: Please, please don’t let me scare you off from book club. I’m totally happy to stay home on Monday nights if you’d like to keep …

A text from Shadi: January. Help. I cannot get ENOUGH of that haunted hat. He’s come over the last THREE nights and last night I let him STAY.

I texted her back, You know exactly where this is going. You’re INTO him!!

I HATE falling in love, she replied. It’s always ruining my bad-boy reputation!!

I sent her a sad face. I know, but you must persevere. For the good of the Haunted Hat and so I can live vicariously through you.

Memories from last night flashed across my mind as bright and hot as fireworks, the sparks landing and burning everywhere he’d touched. I could feel the ghost of his teeth on my collarbone, and my shoulder blade was a little bruised from the car door.

Hunger and embarrassment raced through me in one twisted braid.

God, what had I done? I should have known better. And then there was the part of me that couldn’t stop thinking, Am I going to get to do it again?

It didn’t have to mean anything. Maybe this was it: I would finally learn how to have a casual relationship.

Or maybe the deal was off and I would literally never hear from Gus Everett again.

I was out of both cereal and ramen, so after I’d painfully churned out three hundred words, I decided to break for a grocery trip and, on my way out the door, saw that Gus’s car wasn’t in its usual spot on the street. I forced the thought from my head. This didn’t have to be a big deal.

At the grocery store, I checked my bank account again, then wandered the aisles with my phone calculator open, adding up the price of Frosted Mini-Wheats and cans of soup. I’d managed to put together a decent haul for sixteen dollars when I rounded the corner to the checkout and saw her there.

Curly white hair, willowy frame, that same crocheted shawl.

Panic coursed through me so fast I felt like I’d gotten an adrenaline shot in the heart. I abandoned my cart right there in the aisle and, head down, booked it past her toward the doors. If she saw me, she didn’t say anything. Or if she did, my heart was pounding too loud for me to hear it. I jumped back into my car feeling like I’d robbed a bank and drove twenty minutes to another grocery store, where I was so shaken up and paranoid about another run-in that I barely managed to get anything.

By the time I got home, I was still shaky, and it didn’t help that Gus’s car hadn’t reappeared. It was one thing to have to dodge Sonya in my bimonthly grocery trips. If I wound up having to avoid my next-door neighbor, I was pretty sure Plan B: Move to Duluth would have to take effect.

Before I crawled into bed that night, I peeked out the front windows one more time, but Gus’s car was still missing. Dread inflated in my chest like the world’s least fun balloon. I’d finally found a friend, someone I could talk to, who’d seemed to want to be around me as much as I wanted to be around him, and now he was just gone. Because we’d kissed. Anger reared up in me, forcing my humiliation and loneliness out of the way for just a while before they buoyed to the surface again.

I thought about texting him, but it seemed like the weirdest possible time to start, so instead I went to sleep, a sick, anxious feeling coiled in my stomach.

By Monday morning, he still wasn’t back. Tonight, I decided. If his car wasn’t along the curb tonight, I could text him. That wouldn’t be weird.

I put him out of my mind and pounded out two thousand fresh words, then texted Anya: Going well (actually (seriously (I mean it this time!))) but I’d like to get a little more done before anyone reads the partial. I think it’s going to be hard to tell where I’m going with this without the complete picture and I’m afraid if I jump forward to outline it will kill all momentum I’ve finally built up.

Next, I replied to Pete: Great! How does Wednesday work? The truth was, I could’ve come in on Sunday when I got the email, or on Monday when I sent the reply. But I didn’t want another invitation to the Red Blood, White Russians, and Blue Jeans Book Club. Putting off my stop at the bookstore until Wednesday eliminated one more potential week of that whole experience without having to reject the invitation.

By eleven that night, Gus’s car still wasn’t back, and I’d talked myself into and out of texting him five times. Finally, I put my phone in the drawer of the side table, clicked off the lamp, and went to sleep.

Tuesday I awoke soaked in sweat. I’d forgotten to set my alarm, and the sun was streaking through the blinds in full force, baking me in its pale light. It had to be close to eleven. I slid out from under the thick duvet and lay there for another minute.

I still felt a little sick. And then a little furious that I felt sick. It was so dumb. I was a grown woman. Gus had told me exactly how he operated, exactly what he thought about romance, and he’d never said or done anything to suggest he’d changed his mind. I knew that no matter how attracted to him I occasionally felt, the only place our relationship could go was through a revolving door in and out of his bedroom.

Or the back of my deeply uncool car.

And even if things had gone further that night, it wouldn’t have precluded him from disappearing for days. There was exactly one way that I could theoretically have Gus Everett, and it would leave me feeling sick like this as soon as it was over.

I needed to get him out of my head.

I took a cold shower. Or, at least, I took one second of a cold shower, during which I screamed the f-word and almost broke my ankle lunging away from the stream of water. How the hell were people in books always taking cold showers? I turned the water back to hot and fumed as I washed my hair.

I wasn’t mad at him. I couldn’t be. I was furious with myself for wandering down this path. I knew better. Gus wasn’t Jacques. Guys like Jacques wanted snowball fights and kisses at the top of the Eiffel Tower and sunrise strolls on the Brooklyn Bridge. Guys like Gus wanted snarky banter and casual sex on top of their unfolded laundry.

In the back of your deeply uncool car at a family establishment.

Although I couldn’t be sure that hadn’t been my idea.

It was conceivable that I’d thrown myself at him. It wouldn’t be the first time I was seeing through rose-colored glasses, assigning meaning where there was none.

I was being stupid. After everything with my dad, I should have known better. I’d just barely started to heal, and I’d run right out and gotten a crush on the one person who was guaranteed to prove right every single fear I had about relationships.

I needed to let this go.

Writing, I decided, would be my solace. It was slow going at first, every word a decision not to think about Gus disappearing, but after a while I found a rhythm, almost as strong as yesterday’s.

The family circus wound up back in Oklahoma, close to where Eleanor’s father’s secret second family lived. A week, I decided. The bulk of this book was going to take place over the week the circus was parked in Town TBD (Tulsa?), Oklahoma. Writing in a different era presented a completely new challenge. I was leaving a lot of notes to myself like Find out what drinks were popular then or Insert historically accurate insult.

What mattered, though, was that I had a vision.

All the secrets were going to come to the surface, almost win out, and then they’d be packed back down neatly. That was how an Augustus Everett novel would go, wouldn’t it? He would say it had a nice cyclical quality when I told him.

(If I got the chance to tell him.)

I wanted the readers to be cheering, begging for Eleanor’s found family to tell the truth by the end, while watching through their fingers, afraid of how the situation would implode. Someone needed a gun, I realized, and a reason to have a hair-trigger reaction. Fear, of course. I needed to pressure-cook the situation.

Build and build, only to tamp it back down in time for the characters to move along to their next destination.

Eleanor’s father would owe money to dangerous men back in his hometown—ostensibly the reason he’d left in the first place, why he’d abandoned his family.

Eleanor’s mother would have the gun. It seemed only fair to give her something to fight with. But with it, she’d have to shoulder the weight of some PTSD, remnants of an old employer who liked to get violent with the girls who worked for him. She needed to be wound tight, ready to snap, like I’d been feeling this past year.

Like I wanted Mom to be after the full extent of Dad’s lies came to light.

Eleanor, for her part, was going to fall in love with a local. Or at least fancy herself having done so, the night of their first performance in Tulsa. She would spend the week moving closer to escaping the life she’d grown up in, only to have a horrible last-minute revelation that no matter how she might sometimes despise this world, it was the only one in which she belonged.

Or maybe she would realize the world she’d lusted after, the one she’d watched from behind circus tents and atop tightropes, that filtered past while she was hard at work, was as much an illusion as the one she knew.

The boy would fall in love with someone else, just as quickly as he had with her.

Or the boy would leave for college, the military.

Or his parents would find out about Eleanor and persuade him of his recklessness.

It would be an anti-romance. And I was entirely capable of writing it.