Beach Read

GUS’S HANDS TRACED down the sides of my body, feeling every exposed line and curve.

“You’re so beautiful, January,” he whispered, kissing me more tenderly. “You’re so fucking beautiful, you’re like the sun.”

His mouth moved down my body, tasting all the places he’d touched. It wasn’t enough. My fingernails dug into his back and he jerked me away from the rack and guided me onto the freezer beside it, fumbling with the button on my shorts. I lifted myself so he could slide them down my thighs, and as he straightened, his hands crawled back up my legs, slipped under the sides of my underwear to burrow into my skin. I arched against him and he pulled my thighs up against his hips, his mouth moving hard against mine. “God, January,” he said.

My want throttled my voice into a breathy gasp when I tried to reply. I ground myself against him and his touch sharpened.

We stopped being gentle with each other. I couldn’t slow myself down enough to be careful with him, and I didn’t want him to be careful with me. I undid his pants and jerked them down. One of his hands slid between my legs and he groaned. The other dug into my hip as his mouth trailed down my stomach. His hands squeezed my thighs, and I gripped the sides of the freezer as he lowered himself between my legs. My breaths came faster, his fingers sank into the creases of my hips and his name slipped between my lips. He cupped my hips harder. It wasn’t enough. I wanted him. I only realized I said it aloud when he said it back to me—“I want you, January.”

He straightened and yanked me to the edge of the freezer, lifting my hips against him as I tightened my thighs against the sides of his body.

“Gus,” I gasped and his gaze rolled up me, heat pulsing under my skin. “Do you have a condom?”

It took him a minute to answer, like his brain was translating from a second language. His eyes were still dark and hungry, his hands wrapped tight around my thighs. “Here?” he said. “In your father’s spare house’s basement?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of in your pocket,” I said, still out of breath.

He laughed, a throaty rattle. “How would you feel if I’d brought condoms with me to tell you about the potato salad?”

“Thankful,” I said.

“I didn’t know this was going to happen.” Gus ran a hand through his hair in distress as the other maintained its nearly painful grip on me. “Next door. I have some.”

We stared at each other for a moment, then started grabbing our clothes off the floor and pulling them on. As we ran up the stairs, Gus grabbed my ass. “God,” he said again. “Thank you for this day, Lord. Also Jack Reacher.”

We didn’t bother with shoes, just ran out the door and across the yard. I reached his front door first and turned back just as Gus was coming up the steps. He let out a gruff laugh at the sight of me and shook his head as he seized me by the hips and kissed me again, flattening me against the door.

I threaded my fingers through his hair, forgetting where we were, forgetting everything but his hands sliding over me, dipping into my clothes, his tongue coaxing my lips apart as I touched as much of him as I could get to. A small, dissatisfied noise slipped out of me, and he reached around my hip to twist the doorknob, leading me backward into the house.

We barely made it three feet before he pulled my shirt off and peeled off his again. In a flash, I was on his console table, his hands undoing my shorts, sifting down over my hips and thighs as he pulled them down me and let them fall to the floor. He walked in between my knees.

I lifted myself against him as he dragged his hands down my breasts, catching my nipples, massaging me until everything in me pinched tight. He scooped me off the table as I wrapped my legs around him and spun to pin me against the bookcase. His hands twisted into my thighs, and I arched against the bookcase to work my hips against his.

Not enough, not even close.

He undid his pants and pulled them down from right under me. My hand scraped down his front to push ineffectually at his briefs. He adjusted me against the shelf and pushed them down.

It was almost too much feeling him against me. A gasp escaped me as I rolled my hips on him. He clutched me with one broad hand and groaned into my skin, “Fuck, January.”

The rumble of his voice sent goose bumps racing over me. His free hand reached along the shelf at my shoulder level until it met a blue jar in my peripheral vision.

He fished a condom out of it, and I laughed, despite myself. “Oh my God,” I murmured against his ear. “Do you always have sex against your bookshelves? Are your books behind me right now? Is this an ego thing?”

He drew back, smiling wryly as he tore the wrapper with his teeth. “It’s for on my way out the door, smart-ass.” His grip loosened and he drew back a few inches. “This is a first for me, but if it’s not doing it for you, we can always wait until we stumble across a good beach cave on a rainy day.”

I greedily grabbed for him, catching his bottom lip with my teeth, before he could pull away any further. He closed the gap between us, kissing me hungrily as he worked the condom on. His hands came back to my waist, tender and light this time, and he coaxed me into a slow, sensual kiss as I trembled with anticipation.

His first thrust was mind-meltingly slow, and everything in my body pulled taut around him as he sank deep into me. My breath caught, stars popping behind my eyes and the wave of pleasure racing through me.

“Oh, God,” I gasped as he rocked into me.

“Are you praying to me?” he teased against my ear, sending a tingle down my spine. I couldn’t take going this slow. I pushed against him, fast, eager, and he matched my intensity.

He pulled me away from the bookshelves and spun around to sit on the couch, drawing me on top of him as he lay back. I gasped his name as he pushed into me again, his hands spanning my ribs. I leaned over him, my hands splayed against his chest as I tried to keep from coming undone. His mouth roved over my breast, and an intoxicating pulse of heat and want went through me.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he hissed, hands tightening on my ass.

A thrill rippled through my chest at the rasp of his voice. “I have too,” I admitted in a hush. “Since that night at the drive-in.”

“No,” he said firmly. “Before that.”

My chest fluttered like there was a box fan blowing glitter around in it, and everything in me mounted—tightrope-taut and quivering—as Gus went on whispering into my skin: “Before you answered the door in that black dress with those thigh-high boots, and before I saw your hair all wet and frizzy at that book club.”

Gus looped an arm around my waist and flipped us over, and I wrapped my leg around his hip, my other foot sliding down the back of his calf as he murmured against my cheek, his husky voice shimmering through me like electric current.

He brushed a kiss across my jaw. “And before that goddamn frat party.”

My stomach somersaulted, and I tried to say it back, but one of Gus’s hands had wound around the back of my neck and the other was trailing down my center, lancing through my thoughts like a warm knife through butter. We undulated against each other, lost ourselves in each other, everything else blurry and unnecessary around us.

“Oh,” I bit out as he thrust harder, deeper, and all at once, I came undone, rush after rush of pleasure rippling out through me as I clutched tight around him. He braced himself over me, burying his mouth into my neck as we unraveled together, breath hitching, muscles shivering.

He collapsed beside me, breathing hard, but kept one arm draped over me, fingers curled against my ribs, and a faint, gruff laugh rose out of him as he threw his other arm over his eyes and shook his head.

“What?” I asked, still catching my breath. I turned onto my side and Gus did the same, his hand falling from in front of his face to race up the side of my thigh and hip. He leaned forward and kissed my sweat-sheened shoulder, nuzzling his face into that side of my neck now.

“I just remembered what you said about the bookshelf,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You can’t even stop roasting me when I’m losing my mind over your body.”

Warmth flooded through me—embarrassment and giddiness and something softer and harder to name. Before that, I heard him whisper in my mind. I lay back, dropping my head onto a throw pillow. Gus’s hand trailed from my hip bone to my stomach, spreading wide as he leaned over and pressed a slow kiss to it.

My limbs felt exhausted and limp but my heart was still racing. Even if I’d known something had to give between Gus and me, I never would have imagined him like this, keeping his hands on me at all times, his eyes on my mouth and body and eyes, kissing my stomach and laughing into my skin as we lay naked, wrapped together like we’d done this a hundred times.

What does it mean? I thought, followed by, Stop trying to make everything mean something! But my chest was pulling tight as the full force of everything that had just happened settled on me. I had loved touching Gus, being touched by him, like I’d known I would, but this … this was unexpected, and it was possible I loved it even more.

He rested his head on my chest, his hand tracing a lazy, featherlight path back and forth in the slight valley between my hip bones. He kissed the gap between my breasts, the side of my ribs, and even in my state of near-total relaxation, a shiver went through me. “I love your body,” his voice thrummed against me.

“I’m a fan of yours too,” I said. I prodded the scar on his lip. “And your mouth.”

He broke into a smile and propped himself up on his elbow, hand still splayed across my belly button. “I really didn’t show up to your sex dungeon to seduce you.”

I sat up. “How do you know I didn’t seduce you?”

His smile crooked higher. “Because you wouldn’t have had to.”

His words reverberated through me again: I’ve wanted you for so long. No. Before that. My heart leapt in my chest, then jolted again at the sudden sound of a phone ringing.

“Shit.” Gus groaned and kissed my stomach one last time before rolling off the couch. He snatched his pants from the floor and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

The smile melted off his face as he stared at it, lines of consternation rising between his dark brows.

“Gus?” I said, sudden worry coursing through me.

When he looked up, he seemed a little off balance. He jammed his mouth shut and jerked his gaze back to the phone. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I have to take this.”

“Oh.” I sat up, immediately aware of how thoroughly naked I was. “Okay.”

“Shit,” he said, this time under his breath. “This will only take a few minutes. Can I meet you at your house?”

I stared back at him, fighting the hurt building in my chest.

So what if he was kicking me out right after sex to take a mysterious call?

This was fine. It had to be. I had to be fine.

He was out of my system now. That was how it was supposed to work anyway. It had never been the plan to lie naked with him while he catalogued every piece of me with slow, careful kisses. Still, my stomach was sinking as I stood and gathered my clothes.

“Sure,” I said. Before I’d gotten my shirt on, Gus was halfway down the hall.

“Hello?” I heard him say, and then a bedroom door closed, shutting me out.

It was eleven when I walked back into my house. Gus and I were supposed to leave for the cookout soon. Pete had told Gus that Sonya couldn’t make it until later anyway so our best bet was to come for the first half of the day-to-night affair (pun unintended) and leave long before dessert wine and fireworks. When Gus had told me, I’d suggested I drive separately so he could stay until the bitter end.

“Are you kidding?” he’d said. “You can’t possibly imagine how much cheek-pinching you’re saving me from by coming. I’m not going to be alone with that crowd for more than thirty seconds.”

“What if I have to use the bathroom?” I’d asked.

Gus had shrugged. “I’ll make a getaway and leave you behind if I have to.”

“Aren’t you like four hundred years old?” I’d replied. “That seems a little old for both cheek-pinching and such a deep-seated fear of cheek-pinching.”

“I may be four hundred, but they’ve got at least a thousand years on me, and the talons of vultures.”

It was strange that that conversation had only happened about twelve hours before what had happened just now. More goose bumps rose along my spine.

The thought of never being with him again sent a new ache pinballing through my body, hitting every part of me he’d studied with his eyes and mouth and hands. The thought of never seeing him like that, naked and vulnerable and without any walls, whispering secrets straight into my bones, made my stomach drop.

One time, that was Gus’s rule. And this would definitely count.

He just had an important phone call, I told myself. It’s not about the rule or you or anything. But I couldn’t be sure.

I didn’t hear from Gus again until 11:45, when he texted me, Ready in 5?

Hardly. Even burning off energy walking back and forth, I was still thrumming with the memory of what had happened and anxiety about what came next. I hadn’t expected him to just drop it, text me like it had never happened, but probably I should have.

I sighed and texted back, sure, then hurried into the bedroom to change into a white sundress and a pair of red sandals I’d gotten during my last Goodwill run. I threw my hair up, then took it back down before putting on as much makeup as I could in the two minutes I had left.

Gus had cleaned up a bit. His hair was the same matted mess, but he’d put on a reasonably wrinkle-free blue button-up, the sleeves rolled up around his rigid-veined forearms. A nod was my only greeting before he climbed into the driver’s seat.

I got in beside him, feeling at least twice as awkward as I’d worried I would when I’d imagined some version of this scenario. Dumb bunny, dumb bunny, dumb bunny! I chastised myself.

But then I thought about the way he’d kissed my stomach, so tenderly, so sweetly. Were there really one-night—one-morning stands that felt that … real?

I looked out the window and put on my best (horribly inaccurate; 0/10) carefree voice. “Everything okay?”

“Mhm,” Gus answered.

I tried to read his features. They told me enough to know I should be worried but no more.

By the time we reached Pete and Maggie’s street, it was already crowded with cars. Gus parked around the corner and led the way through a side gate that opened onto one of the paths through their garden.

We bypassed the front door, instead winding around the house to the backyard.

A chorus of voices rose up, calling his name. When it ended, Pete sang, “Jaaaanuary!” and the rest of her guests followed suit. There were at least twenty people crowded around a couple of card tables under an ivy-draped trellis. Beer bottles and red cups littered the star-spangled paper tablecloths and, as promised, a long table at the edge of the patio was not only crowded but stacked with aluminum trays of food and cans of beer.

“Now there’s my handsome nephew and his lovely companion.” Pete was standing at the barbecue, flipping burgers in a KISS THE COOK apron. She’d added in Sharpie (JK! Happily married!) and Maggie was wearing her own white apron, whose message was entirely handwritten: KISS THE GEOLOGIST. Guests were crowded around a card table on the cedar-stained deck in the center of their whimsical garden, and past the edge of the deck, a few more were splashing around in the giant blue swimming pool.

“Hope you kids brought your suits!” Pete told Gus as he bent to hug her around her spatula. She loudly kissed his cheek and pulled back. “Water’s just perfect today.”

I glanced Gus’s way. “Does Gus own a bathing suit?”

“Technically speaking,” Maggie said, drifting forward to kiss her nephew on the cheek, “no, he does not.” She turned to plant one on me next, then went on, “But we keep one here for him all the same—he was an absolute fish when he was little! We’d take him to the YMCA and have to set a timer to drag him out of the pool, to keep him from peeing in it. We knew he’d never get out of his own volition.”

“This story’s completely made up,” Gus said. “That never happened.”

“Cross my heart,” Maggie said in her wistful, airy way. “You couldn’t have been more than five. Remember that, Gussy? When you were a little guy, you and Rose would come to the pool with us once or twice a week.”

Gus’s face changed, something behind his eyes, like he was sliding a metal door closed behind them. “Nope. Doesn’t ring any bells.”

Rose? Pete’s real name was Posey, a little bouquet. Rose must’ve been her sister, Gus’s mom.

“Well, the fact remains,” Maggie went on. “You loved to swim, whether you do it now or not, and your suit’s just waiting in the spare room.” Maggie looked me up and down next. “I’m sure we could find something that would fit you too. It’d be long in the upward direction. And the across direction. You’re a tiny thing, aren’t you?”

“I never thought so until this summer.”

Maggie rubbed my arm and smiled serenely. “That’s what living among the Dutch will do to you. We’re hardy stock out this-a-way. Come meet everyone. Gussy, you say hi too.”

And with that, we were spirited through Pete and Maggie’s back garden. Gus knew everyone—mostly faculty and the partners and children of faculty from the local university, along with two of Maggie’s sisters—but seemingly had very little to say to any of them beyond a polite greeting. Darcy, Maggie’s youngest sister, was a good three inches taller than Maggie with yellow, straw-like hair and giant blue eyes, while Lolly was a good foot shorter than Maggie with a blunt gray bob. “She’s got horrible middle child syndrome,” Maggie whispered to me as she guided me and Gus to another nook in the garden where they’d set up a beanbag toss. Two of the Labradors ran amiably back and forth, making half-assed attempts to catch the beanbags as the kids threw them.

“I’m sure they’d let you join in,” Maggie told us, waving toward the game.

Gus’s smile split wide in that rare, unrepentant way as he turned toward her. “I think we’ll just start with a drink.”

She patted his arm gently. “Oh, you’re Pete’s godson all right, Gussy. Let’s get you two some of my world-famous blue punch!”

She went on ahead, and as we followed, Gus cast a conspiratorial look my way that warned the drink would be terrible, but after our strained drive over, even that was enough to send heat down through my body, all the way to my toes. “World-infamous,” he whispered.

“Hey, do you know what kind of stone this path is made of?” I whispered back.

He shook his head in disbelief. “Just so you know, asking that question is the one thing I can never forgive you for.”

We’d stopped walking on the path, in a nook formed by lush foliage, out of view of both the beanbag toss and the deck.

“Gus,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

For a moment, his gaze was intense. He blinked and the expression vanished, a careful indifference replacing it. “Yeah, it’s nothing.”

“But there is an ‘it,’” I said.

Gus shook his head. “No. There’s no ‘it’ except the blue punch, and there will be a lot of that. Try to pace yourself.”

He started toward the deck again, leaving me to follow. When we reached it, Maggie already had two full-to-the-brim cups ready for us. I took a sip and did my best not to cough. “What’s in this?”

“Vodka,” Maggie said airily, ticking the ingredients off on her fingers. “Coconut rum. Blue curaçao. Tequila. Pineapple juice. A splash of regular rum. Do you like it?”

“It’s great,” I said. It smelled like an open bottle of nail polish remover.

“Gussy?” she asked.

“Wonderful,” he answered.

“Better than last year, isn’t it?” Pete said, abandoning her post at the grill to join us.

“At least more likely to strip the paint from a car if spilled,” Gus said.

Pete guffawed and smacked his arm. “You hear that, Mags? I told you this stuff could power a jet.”

Maggie smiled, unbothered by their teasing, and the light caught Gus’s face just right to reveal his secret dimple and lighten his eyes to a golden amber. Those eyes cut to me and his mild smile rose. He didn’t look like a different person. He looked more at ease, more sure, like all this time I’d only ever come face-to-face with his shadow.

Standing there in that moment, I felt like I’d stumbled on something hidden and sacred, more intimate even than what had passed between us at his house. Like Gus had pulled back the curtains in the window of a house I’d been admiring, whose insides I’d been dreaming about but even so, underestimated.

I liked seeing Gus like this, with the people he knew would always love him.

We’d just had sex like the world was burning down around us, but if I ever got to kiss Gus again, I wanted it to be this version of him. The one who didn’t feel so weighted down by the world around him that he had to lean just to stay upright.

“… Maybe that first weekend in August?” Pete was saying. She, Maggie, and Gus were all looking right at me, awaiting an answer whose question I hadn’t heard.

“Works for me,” Gus said. “January?” He still seemed relaxed, happy. I weighed my options: agree to something without having any concept of what that something was, admit that I hadn’t been listening, or fish for more information with some (possibly damning) questions.

“What … what time?” I said, hoping I’d chosen the right option. And a question that made any sense.

“On weeknights, we usually do seven, but given that it’s a weekend, we could do whatever time we like. Evening might still be best—this is a beach town, after all, and people might read, but they do it on their bellies in the sand.”

“I think this could just be so interesting,” Maggie said, clapping her hands together softly. “What you two do seems—externally—to be so different, but I imagine the internal mechanics are still very similar. It’s like labradorite and—”

“Bless you,” Gus said.

“No, Gussy, I wasn’t sneezing,” Maggie offered helpfully. “Labradorite is a stone—just beautiful—”

“It really is,” Pete agreed. “Looks like something from outer space. If I were to make a sci-fi movie, I’d have the whole world made out of labradorite.”

“Speaking of,” Gus said. His eyes flicked toward mine and I knew he’d found a way to divert the conversation from rocks. “Have any of you seen Contact with Jodie Foster? That’s a batshit fucking movie.”

“Everett,” Pete said. “Language!”

Maggie chortled behind her hand. Her nails were painted a creamy off-white speckled with light blue stars. Today, Pete’s were painted dark red. I wondered if manicures were something Maggie had gotten her into, a bit of her wife that had rubbed off on her over the years. I always liked that thought, the way two people really did seem to grow into one. Or at least two overlapping parts, trees with tangled roots.

“Back to the event,” Pete said, turning to me again. “Maybe seven would be good, so we’re not cutting into too much beach time.”

“Sounds great,” I said. “Would you mind emailing me all the details to confirm? I can double-check my calendar when I get home.”

“I don’t know about details. All you really need to know is what time to show up! Maggie and I will come up with some good questions,” Pete said.

My hesitancy must’ve shown, because Gus leaned in a bit. “I’ll email you.”

“Gus Everett, I’ve seen even less proof that you have email than I’ve seen that you own a bathing suit,” I said.

He shrugged, his eyebrows flicking upward.

“Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one,” Pete said. “You can only send so many unanswered dog videos before you start wondering if the addressee is trying to tell you something with his silence!”

Gus hooked an arm around Pete’s neck. “I’ve told you. I don’t check my email. That doesn’t mean I’m incapable of sending one when asked. In person. For a good reason.”

“Dog videos are a good reason for just about anything,” Maggie mused.

“What do we need with those, with your own dogs running around?” Gus asked.

“Speaking of Labradors,” Maggie said. “What I was saying about labradorite …”

Gus looked at me, grinning. As it turned out, he was entirely right. We should have, at all costs, avoided the topic of rocks. I lost track of the conversation fairly quickly as she moved from one stone to the next, spurred by interesting tidbits of information that reminded her of other interesting tidbits. After a while, even Pete’s (mostly adoring) gaze seemed to glaze over.

“Oh, good!” she said, a bit indiscreetly, as someone else came around the side of the house. “I’d better greet the guests.”

“If you want to go say hi,” Gus told Maggie, “don’t let us stop you!”

Maggie made a face of exaggerated shock. “Never!” she cried, taking hold of Gus’s arm. “Your aunt may be fickle, but to me, no one is more important than you, Gussy! Not even the Labradors—don’t tell them, of course.”

I leaned into Gus and whispered, “Not even the labradorite.” His face turned an inch toward mine and he smiled. He was so close that most of his face looked blurry to me, and the smell of the blue punch on his blue lips made my blood feel like it was spiked with Pop Rocks.

“So I’m right after the Labradors?” a man at the table teased Maggie.

“No, don’t be silly, Gilbert,” Pete said, striding back with the newcomers and a beautiful bouquet in her hands. “You’re tied with the Labradors.”

Gus looked down at me and his smile faded into a crooked, thoughtful expression. I was watching him retreat into himself and felt a sudden desperation to scrabble for purchase, grab fistfuls of him to keep him there.

His eyes cut to me. “I’ve got to get some of this blue punch out of my body. You okay here by yourself?”

“Sure,” I said. “Unless you’re actually going inside to hide baby pictures of yourself. In which case, no, I am not okay here by myself.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Are you sure?” I pressed, trying to make him smile, to bring Happy Safe Gus back to the surface. “Because Pete will tell me. There’s no hiding them.”

The corner of his mouth hitched up, and his eyes sparked. “If you want to follow me into the bathroom to be sure, that’s your prerogative.”

My stomach sang up through my throat. “Okay.”

“Okay?” he said.

Already, heat was flooding my body under his sharp stare. “Gus,” I said, “would you like me to come to the bathroom with you?”

He laughed, didn’t move. His eyes skirted down me and back up, then flashed sidelong toward Pete. When he looked back to me, his smile had fallen, the gleam in his eyes gone without a trace. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

He touched my arm gently, then turned and went inside, leaving me more mortified than I’d been in a long time. Or at least than I’d been since the night I drank wine out of my purse at book club. Unfortunately, I imagined I would now be going that route again, trying to blot out the memory of what had just happened.

Gus had turned me down. Hours after he’d had me against a bookshelf, he’d turned me down.

This was somehow so much worse than the worst-case scenario my brain had concocted when I’d weighed the pros and cons of starting something with Gus.

Why did he say that thing about wanting me for so long? It had seemed so sexy in the moment, but now it made me feel like I was a loose end he’d finally gotten to tie up. My stupid fatal flaw had struck again.

I waited beside the sliding glass door, face burning and buried in my drink, for a few minutes. I jumped when my phone buzzed with an email from Gus. My heart began to race, then sank miserably when I opened it. There was nothing in it except: Event at Pete’s Books, Aug 2, 7 PM.

I thought back to what Maggie had said, about how what Gus and I did was so different externally that “this” would be interesting. I was fairly sure I’d just committed to doing a book event with him.

Dumb bunny, dumb bunny, dumb bunny. I’d spent a month in near-constant contact with Gus. If I’d spent a month solid with nothing but a blood-drenched volleyball, I imagined I too would be crying as the tide swept it out to sea.

But no, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t just loneliness and a tendency to romanticize that had gotten me here.

I knew Gus. I knew his life was messy. I knew that his walls were so thick it would take years to chisel through them and that his mistrust of the world went nearly core-deep. I knew I was not the Magical One who could fix it all just by Being Me.

When it came down to it, I knew exactly who Gus Everett was, and it didn’t change a thing. Because even though he would probably never learn to dance in the rain, it was Gus I wanted. Only Gus. Exactly Gus.

I had set myself up for heartbreak and now I suspected there was nothing I could do but brace myself and wait for it to hit.