Beach Read

January awakes without a hangover. She learns through a text that Shadi went home with the guy she was interested in. January makes coffee and realizes that instead of regretting the bet she made with Gus, she’s excited about it. She steps out onto her deck to write. Just before settling in, she glances to Gus’s house and spots him pulling on his shirt through the window. She is reminded of how attractive he is and must stop herself from staring. Before beginning her work, she spares one last glance towards Gus’s house and spots him at his back door. He lifts his mug to her as if to toast, then retreats to the interior of his house.

Despite her concerns about disappointing Anya, January finds the words come easily. She finds herself writing a thinly veiled autobiography about her situation with her dad and Anya. Between pieces of writing, she thinks about how her outlook has changed and recalls memories with her mother’s cancer diagnoses. She always had to be strong and parade her happiness and success in front of her parents to make them feel as though everything would be okay. She recalls how she first fell in love with reading and writing romance when she picked up a romance book in the waiting room of her mother’s oncologist. She also thinks about the fight she had with her mother immediately after her dad’s funeral, when January was done being strong, but her mother just sobbed saying she couldn’t talk about it.

January finds the words pour out of her as she taps into the negative emotions she’s carried. The chapter ends with her speculating that “love simply didn’t exist” (91).

January finally investigates the upstairs guest bedroom and begins to pack up unneeded items and sell the furniture over the course of a few days. She reminisces about the good times when her dad was present for all the hardships with her mom, uplifting the family with dancing and music.

She notices that Gus doesn’t stay in one spot while drafting. She loses focus when she sees him because she’s imagining what he could be writing about. On Friday afternoon, the two end up facing one another through their windows. They lift their glasses once again in acknowledgement. Gus writes, “LIFE IS MEANINGLESS, JANUARY. GAZE INTO THE ABYSS” on his notebook and holds it up for January to read (95). She does the same, writing in response, “THIS REMINDS ME OF THAT TAYLOR SWIFT VIDEO” (95). Their notebook conversation ends there, but they continue to write facing one another until Gus comes to the door to pick up January for a research outing.

January answers the door in the same dress she wore for the book club, and Gus tells her she’ll need to change, then happily comes inside to help her pick out a change of clothes. They head way out of town to a dive bar off a winding path through the woods, talking along the way about technique, plots, and character building. Gus explains how he’s moved to the area to work on his story about a cult since there was a cult in the area in the 1990s. He explains he’s been working on this story for five years, doing mostly research to make his characters and situations seem natural. They are heading to meet a woman whose sister was a victim of the cult. January jokingly asks how Gus will make this into a romance book, and he replies that he had the interview set up long before they made the bet.

They meet the woman, Grace, inside the bar. While Gus tries to stick to his research-based questions, January finds herself sympathizing with Grace and attempting to comfort her. Grace tells them she didn’t know anything was off about her sister when she joined the cult because all the while her sister was still laughing.

On the way home, they discuss the merits of taking on someone else’s darkness for a story. Gus says everyone’s got problems and sometimes it’s nice to deal with someone else’s instead of your own. They stop for gas, and January gets out to stretch her legs while Gus pumps. She pushes him to tell her some of his own problems, stating that he just took her on the worst date ever. He replies that it wasn’t a date but agrees only if she tells him why she moved here. January finally tells him that her dad died and left her the lake house but doesn’t reveal everything about the situation. She blocks Gus’s door to the car, waiting for him to reveal his own baggage. He leans in close, puts his hands on her hips, and whispers in her ear that he lied: He has read her books. Then he spins her away from the car and gets in quickly.