Beach Read

Gus comes over to January’s house on Sunday, and the two spend time on January’s deck recovering from their hangovers. The next day, Gus invites January over through window notes and texts, asking if she can make margaritas. They enjoy their drinks and spend the rest of the day working on their books together on Gus’s front porch. Night falls, and January asks Gus again about his tattoo. This time, he explains that it was a matching tattoo with his ex-wife and finally uses her name, Naomi.

January asks what Naomi was like. Gus explains that she was tough but hard to know—that she was unbreakable. This is important to Gus because he feels he would break someone soft. He compares that to his parents, saying, “This black hole and this bright light he was always just trying to swallow whole” (204). January assures Gus he isn’t a black hole and that he’s nothing like his dad. She also tells him that he’s plenty gentle and remarks again how amazed she is that he got a marriage tattoo, complimenting the black blob that it now resembles after the cover job.

Gus holds January’s hand and shifts the conversation to Jacques. She explains how she felt like they were two romantic leads in a movie, but in calm moments, with the metaphorical cameras off, they were just okay together. She took comfort in knowing that her parents liked Jacques and that if her mother died from cancer, her mother would’ve met the person January planned to marry. January goes on to explain how, when her dad died, it was more like a weight off her chest. His opinion meant less to her, and she realized she didn’t feel like Jacques was her favorite person in the tough times.

During their conversation, January realizes that Gus isn’t so much critical as he is analytical, and times where she thought he was criticizing her—going all the way back to his happy-ending remark in college—he was actually just working her out. January goes on to tell a story about being out with Jacques but texting Shadi, wishing she were with Shadi instead. Gus says he remembers Shadi, and January says Shadi remembers him, too, leading to a discussion about how both Gus and January talk about each other with the people they’re close to.

They begin to spend their evenings together, sometimes on Gus’s porch and sometimes on January’s. Gus tells January that he moved here after his divorce because Pete offered to help him put a down payment on the house and that she’d always been in his life. January finally tells Gus that she’s here because the lake house was her dad’s second home with Sonya.

Without meaning to, she breaks down crying at the thought of it all. Gus pulls her onto his lap and holds her close. When she finishes crying, they remain like that. They begin to hold each other more intimately but are interrupted by the doorbell signifying that their takeout has arrived.

January and Gus are called to Dave’s house for another interview, this time because his mom wanted to explain her side. She says she felt like her life had been bad because she wasn’t living right and that the cult made everything feel okay. She explains that Dave’s dad was a good man who got swept up in feeling like he had a purpose and that things were okay in the cult after he had sacrificed his future plans to help raise Dave.

January thinks about her dad and Sonya and how her mother stayed after knowing about the affair. She recalls when she was in seventh grade and her dad left for a while. She thought her parents were getting divorced, but he came back, and everything was better. January thinks this is when the affair began and wonders if her mom was fine because she felt like things were okay again. January also thinks about her relationship with Jacques and reading and writing romance because all of those things made her feel okay during the bad times with her mother’s cancer. Before they leave Dave’s house, January texts her mother that she loves her and hopes they can talk about her dad eventually, but it’s okay if not. Her mother texts back that she feels the same.

That Saturday, January takes Gus to walk the beach. Gus tells her about how he would come to town to visit Pete during winter breaks. Pete wanted Gus to come live with her and Maggie, but Gus was his dad’s only caretaker, reminding him to take vital heart medications and dropping out of high school to help pay for prescriptions. He goes into a little more detail about his dad’s physical abuse and how his mother was always apologizing. When January expresses sympathy for Gus, he becomes disconcerted by the attention. He doesn’t like seeing himself as a broken person. January assures him everyone is different, and her life isn’t perfect either. He explains that he’s not oblivious to her problems, but it’s the way she handles them and herself in the face of adversity that differentiates them.

January pulls him into an embrace, and they stay there for a while. January silently acknowledges that she cares about him a lot and feels genuinely happy for the first time in a while.