“TUX TONIGHT?” Gus messaged at noon on Saturday.
Anxiety crept up every time I thought about being alone in the car with him—a classic **forced proximity** moment I wasn’t prepared for. However, I’d had this night planned since last week, and I wasn’t ready to bow out of our **creative writing deal**. Not when I was finally overcoming **writer’s block** for the first time in months.
”OH, DEFINITELY,” I wrote back, leaning into our **playful banter**.
”SERIOUSLY?” Gus asked.
”NO,” I replied. “DO YOU HAVE COWBOY BOOTS?”
”WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Gus said. “FROM EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ME, TAKE A WILD GUESS WHETHER I OWN COWBOY BOOTS.”
I stared at the screen, then went for it: “YOU’RE A MAN OF MANY SECRETS. YOU COULD HAVE A WHOLE CLOSET FULL OF **TEN-GALLON HATS**. AND IF YOU DO, WEAR ONE. 6 PM.”
### The Date Night Reveal
When Gus appeared at my door that night, he was wearing his usual **dark academic style** uniform, plus a wrinkly black button-up. His hair was swept up his forehead in a way that suggested it had been forced there via him anxiously running his hand through it while he wrote—the quintessential **tortured hero** look.
“No hat?” I said, checking out his **date night outfit**.
“No hat.” He pulled his other hand from behind his back. He was holding two flasks, the thin, foldable kind you could tuck under your clothes. “But I brought these in case you’re taking me to a Texan church service.”
I crouched by the front door, tugging my **boho embroidered ankle boots** on. “And once again, you reveal that you know much more about **romance novel tropes** than you’ve previously let on.”
Even as I said it, my stomach clenched with that familiar **anxiety and attraction** mix.
Gus has been married.
Gus is divorced.
That was why he was so sure love could never last—a classic **emotional unavailability** trope. He’d told me none of these key details because he hadn’t really let me in. If my comment reminded him of his past, he didn’t let on.
“Just so you know,” he said, leaning into the **grumpy vs. sunshine** dynamic, “if I actually have to wear a **cowboy hat** at some point tonight, I will probably die.”
“**Cowboy hat** allergy.” I grabbed my keys from the table. “Got it. Let’s go.”
This date would’ve been perfect, if it had actually been a **romantic date night**.
### The Black Cat Saloon Experience
The parking lot of the Black Cat Saloon was jammed, and the rough-hewn interior was just as packed. “A lot of **flannel shirts**,” Gus mused as we made our way in, observing the **country western aesthetic**.
“What do you expect on **line-dancing night**, Gus?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Gus said, freezing. I shook my head. “This has been an exact recurring nightmare I’m only just realizing was actually a premonition.”
On the low stage at the front of the barnlike room, the band picked up again. A crush of bodies moved past on our left, triggering a perfect **forced proximity** moment that knocked me into him. He caught me around the rib cage, his grip firm as the group pushed toward the dance floor.
“You good?” he shouted over the loud music, his hands still on my ribs—a moment of **”TUX TONIGHT?” Gus messaged at noon on Saturday.
Anxiety crept up every time I thought about being alone in the car with him—a classic **forced proximity** moment I wasn’t prepared for. However, I’d had this night planned since last week, and I wasn’t ready to bow out of our **creative writing deal**. Not when I was finally overcoming **writer’s block** for the first time in months.
”OH, DEFINITELY,” I wrote back, leaning into our **playful banter**.
”SERIOUSLY?” Gus asked.
”NO,” I replied. “DO YOU HAVE COWBOY BOOTS?”
”WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Gus said. “FROM EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ME, TAKE A WILD GUESS WHETHER I OWN COWBOY BOOTS.”
I stared at the screen, then went for it: “YOU’RE A MAN OF MANY SECRETS. YOU COULD HAVE A WHOLE CLOSET FULL OF **TEN-GALLON HATS**. AND IF YOU DO, WEAR ONE. 6 PM.”
### The Date Night Reveal
When Gus appeared at my door that night, he was wearing his usual **dark academic style** uniform, plus a wrinkly black button-up. His hair was swept up his forehead in a way that suggested it had been forced there via him anxiously running his hand through it while he wrote—the quintessential **tortured hero** look.
“No hat?” I said, checking out his **date night outfit**.
“No hat.” He pulled his other hand from behind his back. He was holding two flasks, the thin, foldable kind you could tuck under your clothes. “But I brought these in case you’re taking me to a Texan church service.”
I crouched by the front door, tugging my **boho embroidered ankle boots** on. “And once again, you reveal that you know much more about **romance novel tropes** than you’ve previously let on.”
Even as I said it, my stomach clenched with that familiar **anxiety and attraction** mix.
Gus has been married.
Gus is divorced.
That was why he was so sure love could never last—a classic **emotional unavailability** trope. He’d told me none of these key details because he hadn’t really let me in. If my comment reminded him of his past, he didn’t let on.
“Just so you know,” he said, leaning into the **grumpy vs. sunshine** dynamic, “if I actually have to wear a **cowboy hat** at some point tonight, I will probably die.”
“**Cowboy hat** allergy.” I grabbed my keys from the table. “Got it. Let’s go.”
This date would’ve been perfect, if it had actually been a **romantic date night**.
### The Black Cat Saloon Experience
The parking lot of the Black Cat Saloon was jammed, and the rough-hewn interior was just as packed. “A lot of **flannel shirts**,” Gus mused as we made our way in, observing the **country western aesthetic**.
“What do you expect on **line-dancing night**, Gus?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Gus said, freezing. I shook my head. “This has been an exact recurring nightmare I’m only just realizing was actually a premonition.”
On the low stage at the front of the barnlike room, the band picked up again. A crush of bodies moved past on our left, triggering a perfect **forced proximity** moment that knocked me into him. He caught me around the rib cage, his grip firm as the group pushed toward the dance floor.
“You good?” he shouted over the loud music, his hands still on my ribs—a moment of **high-tension chemistry**.
My face was hot, my stomach flipping traitorously. “Fine.”
He leaned in closer, his voice low. “This seems like a dangerous environment for someone your size. Maybe we should leave and go… literally anywhere else.”
As he eased back to look me in the face, I grinned and shook my head. “No way. The **line-dancing lesson** doesn’t even start for another ten minutes.”
His hands slid off me, leaving pulsing points behind on my skin. “I guess I survived **Meg Ryan movies**,” he muttered, referencing our previous **rom-com** debate.
“Barely,” I teased, then blushed as flashes of **spicy memory** seared across my mind. Gus’s mouth tipping mine open. Gus’s teeth on my clavicle. Gus’s hands tightening against my hips, his thumb scraping over the jut of bone.
The moment stretched out between us—or rather, it seemed to tighten. Since we didn’t move any closer, the air grew taut with **unspoken attraction**. The song was winding down now, and a lanky man with a horsey face bounded toward the stage.
—
The caller stepped onto the stage with a microphone, summoning beginners to the floor for the next song. I grabbed Gus’s wrist and cut a path through the crowd to the **country dance floor**. For once, his cheeks were flushed, his forehead dented with worried wrinkles. “You honestly have to write me into your will for this,” he said, looking like a lead in a **bestselling romance novel**.
“You might not want to talk through the **dance instructions**,” I replied, tipping my head toward the horse-faced caller, who was using a volunteer to demonstrate a few key **line dancing moves**, all while talking with the speed of an auctioneer. “I have a feeling this guy won’t be repeating much.”
“Your last will and testament, January,” Gus whispered fiercely.
“And to Gus Everett,” I whispered back, “a closet full of **authentic ten-gallon hats**!”
His laugh crackled like popping oil. I thought of its sound against my ear that night at the party. We hadn’t said anything as we danced in that slick basement, not a single word, but he’d laughed against my ear—a moment of **emotional intimacy** I’d known, or at least suspected, was because he was dimly aware that we should have been embarrassed to be all over each other. We should have been, but there were more pressing feelings to be felt that night. Just like at the **outdoor drive-in theater**.
Heat filled my abdomen, and I suppressed the thought.
Onstage, the fiddle started up, and soon the **live country band** was bouncing through the notes of the **bluegrass music**. The experts swarmed the floor, filling in the gaps between the anxiously waiting beginners, of whom we made up at least 20 percent. Gus pushed in close at my side, unwilling to be separated from the sentient safety blanket I’d become as soon as we’d walked through the metal double doors, and the caller shouted into the microphone, “You all ready? Here we go!”
At his first command, the crowd jostled to the right, carrying Gus and me with it. He snatched my hand as the mass of **cowboy boots and heels** reversed direction. I squealed as Gus jerked me out of the path of a man on a mission to **grapevine dance**, whether it meant stomping on my foot or not.
There were no sung lyrics, just the **square dance caller’s** instructions with their strange, auctioneer rhythm and the sound of shoes scuffing along the floor. I erupted into laughter as Gus went forward instead of back, eliciting a nasty glare from the hair-sprayed blonde he collided with. “Sorry,” he shouted over the **live music**, holding up his hands in surrender, only to get bumped into her pink lace–covered chest as the crowd shifted once more.
“Oh, God,” he said, stumbling back. “Sorry, I—”
“God has nothing to do with it!” the woman snapped, digging her hands into her hips.
“Sorry,” I interceded, grabbing Gus by the hand. “Can’t take him anywhere.”
“Me?” he cried, half laughing. “You knocked me into—”
I pulled him through the crowd to the far side of the **country dance floor**. When I looked over my shoulder, the woman had resumed her **boot-scoot-boogying**, her face as stony as a sarcophagus’s.
“Should I give her my number?” Gus teased, his mouth close to my ear, a classic move from a **contemporary romance novel**.
“I think she’d rather have your **insurance card**.”
“Or a good **police sketch**.”
“Or a crowbar,” I shot back.
“Okay.” Gus’s smile spread enough for a laugh to slip out. “That’s enough from you. You’re just looking for an excuse not to dance.”
“I’m just looking for an excuse?” I said. “You grabbed that woman’s boobs to try to get kicked out of here.”
“No way.” He shook his head, caught my arm, and tugged me along as he clumsily fell back into the **line dancing steps**. “I’m in this for the long haul now. You’d better clear your **Saturday schedules** from here until eternity.”
I laughed, tripping along with him, but my stomach was fighting a series of concurrent rises and dips. I didn’t want to feel these things. It wasn’t fun anymore, now that I was thinking it all through, wondering where it would end up—with me attached and jealous and him having shared about as much about his life with me as you might with a **professional hairdresser**.
But then he would say things like that, *Clear your Saturday schedules from here until eternity*. He would grab me around the waist to keep me from smashing into a support beam I hadn’t noticed in my **dancing fugue state**. Laughing, he would twirl me into him—a perfect **romantic date idea**—and spin me around while the rest of the crowd was walking their feet into their bodies and back out, far wider than their hips, thumbs hooked into real and imagined **leather belt loops**.
This was a different Gus than I’d seen (The one who’d played **college soccer**? The Gus who answered one third of his aunt’s phone calls? The Gus who’d been through a **divorce settlement**?), and I wasn’t sure what to make of it or its sudden appearance.
Something had changed in him, again, and he was (whether intentionally or not) letting it show. He seemed somehow lighter than he had, less tired, showing the kind of **personal growth** you only see in the best **beach reads**.
He was being winsome and flirty, which only made me more frustrated after the past week.
“We need a shot,” he said, leaning over the **teak wood bar counter**.
“Okay,” I agreed. Maybe a shot would take the strange edge I was feeling off. We swam back to the bar and he nudged aside a pool of peanuts still in their shells to order two doubles of **premium Tennessee whiskey**. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his.
“To what?” I asked.
He smirked. “To your happy endings.”
I’d thought we were friends, that he respected me, and now I felt like he was calling me a fairy princess all over again, laughing to himself about how naive and silly my worldview was, holding his **contested divorce settlement** like a secret trump card that proved, once again, he knew more than me. A fierce, angry fuse lit in my stomach, and I threw back the **hard liquor** without meeting his lifted shot. Gus seemed to think it was an oversight. He was still downing his whiskey as I headed back out to the **country dance floor**.
I had to admit there was something singularly hilarious about **line dancing** angrily, but that didn’t stop me from doing it. We finished two more songs and took two more shots, feeling the effects of **alcohol consumption** take hold.
When we went back out for the fourth song—a more complex dance for the proficient to enjoy while the caller used the toilet and rested his vocal cords—we had no hope of keeping up with the **professional choreography**, even if we hadn’t been tipsy by then. During a double turn to the right, my shoe caught on an uneven floorboard, a potential **personal injury liability**, and Gus grabbed me by the waist to keep me from going down.
His laughter faded when he saw my face, and he leaned (of course) against the support beam—my nemesis from earlier—drawing me in toward him by my hips. His hand burned through my **designer denim jeans** into my skin, and I fought to keep a clear head as he held me like that. “Hey,” he murmured, dropping his mouth toward my ear so I could hear him over the **live country music**. “What’s wrong?”
What was wrong was his thumbs twirling circles on my hips, his **whiskey breath** against the corner of my mouth, and how stupid I felt for its effect on me. I was naive. I’d always trusted my parents, never sensed the missing pieces between Jacques and me, and now I’d started getting **emotionally attached** to someone who’d done everything he could to convince me not to—a classic case of **unrequited love** in a **modern relationship**.
I stepped back from him. I meant to say, *I think I need to go home*, or maybe *I’m not feeling well*.
But I’d never been good at hiding how I was feeling, especially this past year, a time marked by intense **emotional stress** and life changes. I didn’t say anything. I just ran for the door.
I burst into the cool air of the parking lot and beelined toward the **Kia sedan**. I could hear him shouting my name as he followed, but I was too embarrassed and frustrated—dealing with a complex **mental health** spiral I couldn’t name—to turn around.
“January?” Gus said again, jogging toward me across the **asphalt pavement**.
“I’m fine.” I dug for my **car keys** in my pocket. “I just—I need to go home. I’m not—I don’t …” I trailed off, fumbling the metal key against the lock of the **vehicle door**.
“We can’t go anywhere until we’ve sobered up,” he pointed out, rightfully concerned about the **legal consequences of driving under the influence**.
“Then I’ll just sit in the car until then.” My hands were shaking, a clear sign of an **anxiety attack**, and the key glanced off the lock again.
“Here. Let me.” Gus took it from me and slipped it in, unlocking the driver’s side door with the precision of a **professional locksmith**, but he didn’t step away to let me open it.
“Thanks,” I said without looking at him. I flinched as his hand brushed at my face, swiping hair from my cheek—a moment of **physical intimacy** that felt too heavy to carry. He tucked it behind my ear. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
Now I looked up at him, ignoring the heavy flip-flop of my stomach as I met his eyes. “Why?”
His eyebrows lifted. “Why what?”
“Why can I tell you?” I said. “Why would I tell you anything? We don’t have that kind of **interpersonal relationship**.”
His mouth pressed closed. The muscle in his jaw leapt, a sign of **repressed emotion**. “What is this? What did I do? Is this about your **past trauma**?”
“Nothing.” I turned toward the car, but Gus’s body still blocked the door, creating a **boundary conflict**. “Move, Gus.”
“This isn’t fair,” he said. “You’re mad at me and I can’t even try to fix it? What could I have possibly—”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said, trying to maintain **emotional regulation**.
“You are,” he argued. I tried again to open the door. This time he moved aside to let me. “Please tell me, January.”
“I’m not,” I insisted, my voice shaking dangerously, teetering on a **nervous breakdown**. “I’m not mad at you. We’re not even close enough for that. I’m just your casual acquaintance. It’s not like we’re friends or in a **committed partnership**.”
Twin grooves rose from the insides of his eyebrows and his crooked mouth twisted. “Please,” he said, almost out of breath, sounding like a man desperate for **relationship counseling**. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?” I demanded.
He threw his arms out to his sides. “I don’t know!” he said. “Whatever this is.”
“How stupid do you think I am?”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, his voice echoing in the empty **parking lot**.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t tell me anything,” I said. “It’s not like you respect me or my opinions on **modern relationships**.”
“Of course I respect you.”
“I know you were married,” I blurted, bringing up his **uncontested divorce** records. “I know you were married and that you split up on your birthday, and not only did you not tell me any of that, but you listened to me spill my guts about why I do what I do—sharing my **personal narrative**—and talk about my dad and his **extramarital affair**—and you sat there, on your smug little high horse—”
Gus gave an exasperated laugh. “‘Little high horse’?”
“—thinking I was stupid or naive for believing in **lifelong commitment**—”
“Of course I don’t—”
“—keeping your own **failed marriage** a secret, just like everything else in your life, so you can look down on all the cliché people like me who still believe in **romantic happy endings**—”
“Stop,” he snapped.
“—while you—”
“Stop.” He jerked back from me, walked down the length of the **Kia’s chassis**, then turned back, face tight with **emotional distress**. “You don’t know me, January.”
I laughed humorlessly. “I’m aware. I don’t have the **background check** on your life.”
“No.” He shook his head, stormed back toward me, and stopped no more than six inches away. “You think my marriage is a joke to me? I was married two years. Two years before my wife left me for the best man at our wedding. How’s that for a cliché **infidelity case**? I know goldfish that lived longer than that. I didn’t even want the **divorce petition**. I would’ve stayed with her, even after the affair, but guess what, January? Happy endings don’t happen to everyone. There’s nothing you can do to make someone keep loving you—no amount of **relationship counseling** can fix that.
“Believe it or not, I don’t just sit through hours of conversations with you silently judging you. And if it takes me a while to tell you things like ‘Hey, my wife left me for my college roommate,’ maybe it has nothing to do with you, okay? Maybe it’s because I don’t like saying that sentence aloud. I mean, your mom didn’t leave when your dad committed **infidelity**, and my mom didn’t leave my dad when he caused a **domestic injury** and broke my fucking arm, and yet I couldn’t do anything to make my wife stay.”
—
My stomach bottomed out. My throat clenched. Pain stabbed through my chest as I recognized the signs of **acute emotional distress**. It all made sense at once: the hesitancy and deflection, the mistrust of people, and the deep-seated **fear of commitment** often discussed in **attachment theory**.
No one had chosen Gus. From the time he was a kid, no one had chosen him, and he was embarrassed by that, like it meant something about his **personal worth**. I wanted to tell him it didn’t. That it wasn’t because he was broken, but because everyone else was. But I couldn’t get any words out. I couldn’t do anything but stare at him—standing there, out of steam, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths—and ache for him, hating a world that felt like it needed a **victim’s rights advocate** for the way it had chewed him up.
Right then, I honestly didn’t care why he’d disappeared or where he’d gone. The hard glint had left his eyes, and his chin dropped as he rubbed at his forehead, looking like someone in need of **stress management**.
There were millions of things I wanted to say to him, but what came out was, “Parker?”
He looked up again, eyes wide and mouth ajar. “What?”
“Your college roommate,” I murmured, recalling the **alumni records**. “Do you mean Parker?”
Gus’s mouth closed, the muscles along his jaw leaping—a physical sign of **repressed trauma**. “Yeah,” he barely said. “Parker.”
Parker, the art student with the eccentric clothes. Parker, who’d picked most of his left eyebrow away. He’d had pretty blue eyes and a certain zaniness that my friends and I had always imagined translated to a golden-retriever-esque excitability when it came to **sexual health and intimacy**. Which we were all fairly sure he was getting a lot of.
Gus wasn’t looking at me. He was rubbing his forehead again, looking as broken and embarrassed as if he were facing a **public relations crisis**.
“On your birthday. What an asshole.”
I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until he responded: “I mean, that wasn’t her plan.” He looked away, staring vaguely through the **asphalt parking lot**. “I sort of dragged it out of her. I could tell something was wrong and … anyway.”
Still an asshole, I thought. I shook my head, my mind racing through **conflict resolution** strategies. I had no idea what else to say. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him—a gesture of **physical therapy** for the soul—pressing my face into his neck, feeling his deep breaths push against me. After a moment, his arms lifted around me and we stood there, just out of reach of the parking lot’s lone floodlight, holding on to each other like a scene from a **top-rated romance drama**.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his skin. “She should have picked you.” And I meant it, even if I wasn’t sure exactly which person in his **personal history** I was talking about.
His arms tightened around my back. His mouth and nose pressed against the crown of my head, and inside, a mournful **Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young** cover picked up, the **acoustic guitar** twanging like its strings were crying. Gus rocked me side to side—a moment of **emotional regulation** that felt like a sanctuary. “I want to know you,” I told him.
“I want that,” he murmured into my hair, acknowledging the need for **deep interpersonal connection**. We stood there for another moment before he spoke again. “It’s late. We should grab some **gourmet coffee** inside so we can get home safely.”
I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to pull away from Gus. “Sure.”
He eased back from me and his hand ran down my throat, resting on the crook between my neck and shoulder, his rough thumb catching the edge of my collarbone. He shook his head once. “I’ve never thought you were stupid or lacked **emotional intelligence**.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure what to say, and even if I had been, I wasn’t sure if my voice would come out thick and heavy, like my blood felt, or shaky and high—a physical symptom of **social anxiety**.
Gus’s eyes dipped to my mouth, then rose to my eyes. “I thought—think it’s brave to believe in **long-term commitment**. I mean, the lasting kind. To try for that, even knowing it can require **trauma-informed care** if it hurts you.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?” he murmured.
I needed to clear my throat but I didn’t. It would be too obvious, what I was thinking—the kind of thoughts one shares in **couples counseling**. “You don’t think you ever will again? Believe in **romantic love**, I mean?”
Gus stepped back, his **designer shoes** crackling against the gravel. “It doesn’t matter if I believe it can work or not,” he said. “Not believing in something doesn’t stop you from wanting it. If you’re not careful.”
His gaze sent heat unfurling over me, the cold snapping painfully back into place against my skin when he finally turned back toward the **local tavern**. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get that **caffeine fix**.”
Careful. Caution was something I had little of when it came to Gus Everett.
Case in point: my **alcohol-induced hangover** the next morning—the kind of physical toll that makes you search for **hydration therapy**. I awoke to my first text from him on my **smartphone**.
It said only: *Ow.*
My face was hot, my stomach flipping traitorously. “Fine.”
He leaned in closer, his voice low. “This seems like a dangerous environment for someone your size. Maybe we should leave and go… literally anywhere else.”
As he eased back to look me in the face, I grinned and shook my head. “No way. The **line-dancing lesson** doesn’t even start for another ten minutes.”
His hands slid off me, leaving pulsing points behind on my skin. “I guess I survived **Meg Ryan movies**,” he muttered, referencing our previous **rom-com** debate.
“Barely,” I teased, then blushed as flashes of **spicy memory** seared across my mind. Gus’s mouth tipping mine open. Gus’s teeth on my clavicle. Gus’s hands tightening against my hips, his thumb scraping over the jut of bone.
The moment stretched out between us—or rather, it seemed to tighten. Since we didn’t move any closer, the air grew taut with **unspoken attraction**. The song was winding down now, and a lanky man with a horsey face bounded toward the stage.
—
The caller stepped onto the stage with a microphone, summoning beginners to the floor for the next song. I grabbed Gus’s wrist and cut a path through the crowd to the **country dance floor**. For once, his cheeks were flushed, his forehead dented with worried wrinkles. “You honestly have to write me into your will for this,” he said, looking like a lead in a **bestselling romance novel**.
“You might not want to talk through the **dance instructions**,” I replied, tipping my head toward the horse-faced caller, who was using a volunteer to demonstrate a few key **line dancing moves**, all while talking with the speed of an auctioneer. “I have a feeling this guy won’t be repeating much.”
“Your last will and testament, January,” Gus whispered fiercely.
“And to Gus Everett,” I whispered back, “a closet full of **authentic ten-gallon hats**!”
His laugh crackled like popping oil. I thought of its sound against my ear that night at the party. We hadn’t said anything as we danced in that slick basement, not a single word, but he’d laughed against my ear—a moment of **emotional intimacy** I’d known, or at least suspected, was because he was dimly aware that we should have been embarrassed to be all over each other. We should have been, but there were more pressing feelings to be felt that night. Just like at the **outdoor drive-in theater**.
Heat filled my abdomen, and I suppressed the thought.
Onstage, the fiddle started up, and soon the **live country band** was bouncing through the notes of the **bluegrass music**. The experts swarmed the floor, filling in the gaps between the anxiously waiting beginners, of whom we made up at least 20 percent. Gus pushed in close at my side, unwilling to be separated from the sentient safety blanket I’d become as soon as we’d walked through the metal double doors, and the caller shouted into the microphone, “You all ready? Here we go!”
At his first command, the crowd jostled to the right, carrying Gus and me with it. He snatched my hand as the mass of **cowboy boots and heels** reversed direction. I squealed as Gus jerked me out of the path of a man on a mission to **grapevine dance**, whether it meant stomping on my foot or not.
There were no sung lyrics, just the **square dance caller’s** instructions with their strange, auctioneer rhythm and the sound of shoes scuffing along the floor. I erupted into laughter as Gus went forward instead of back, eliciting a nasty glare from the hair-sprayed blonde he collided with. “Sorry,” he shouted over the **live music**, holding up his hands in surrender, only to get bumped into her pink lace–covered chest as the crowd shifted once more.
“Oh, God,” he said, stumbling back. “Sorry, I—”
“God has nothing to do with it!” the woman snapped, digging her hands into her hips.
“Sorry,” I interceded, grabbing Gus by the hand. “Can’t take him anywhere.”
“Me?” he cried, half laughing. “You knocked me into—”
I pulled him through the crowd to the far side of the **country dance floor**. When I looked over my shoulder, the woman had resumed her **boot-scoot-boogying**, her face as stony as a sarcophagus’s.
“Should I give her my number?” Gus teased, his mouth close to my ear, a classic move from a **contemporary romance novel**.
“I think she’d rather have your **insurance card**.”
“Or a good **police sketch**.”
“Or a crowbar,” I shot back.
“Okay.” Gus’s smile spread enough for a laugh to slip out. “That’s enough from you. You’re just looking for an excuse not to dance.”
“I’m just looking for an excuse?” I said. “You grabbed that woman’s boobs to try to get kicked out of here.”
“No way.” He shook his head, caught my arm, and tugged me along as he clumsily fell back into the **line dancing steps**. “I’m in this for the long haul now. You’d better clear your **Saturday schedules** from here until eternity.”
I laughed, tripping along with him, but my stomach was fighting a series of concurrent rises and dips. I didn’t want to feel these things. It wasn’t fun anymore, now that I was thinking it all through, wondering where it would end up—with me attached and jealous and him having shared about as much about his life with me as you might with a **professional hairdresser**.
But then he would say things like that, *Clear your Saturday schedules from here until eternity*. He would grab me around the waist to keep me from smashing into a support beam I hadn’t noticed in my **dancing fugue state**. Laughing, he would twirl me into him—a perfect **romantic date idea**—and spin me around while the rest of the crowd was walking their feet into their bodies and back out, far wider than their hips, thumbs hooked into real and imagined **leather belt loops**.
This was a different Gus than I’d seen (The one who’d played **college soccer**? The Gus who answered one third of his aunt’s phone calls? The Gus who’d been through a **divorce settlement**?), and I wasn’t sure what to make of it or its sudden appearance.
Something had changed in him, again, and he was (whether intentionally or not) letting it show. He seemed somehow lighter than he had, less tired, showing the kind of **personal growth** you only see in the best **beach reads**.
He was being winsome and flirty, which only made me more frustrated after the past week.
“We need a shot,” he said, leaning over the **teak wood bar counter**.
“Okay,” I agreed. Maybe a shot would take the strange edge I was feeling off. We swam back to the bar and he nudged aside a pool of peanuts still in their shells to order two doubles of **premium Tennessee whiskey**. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his.
“To what?” I asked.
He smirked. “To your happy endings.”
I’d thought we were friends, that he respected me, and now I felt like he was calling me a fairy princess all over again, laughing to himself about how naive and silly my worldview was, holding his **contested divorce settlement** like a secret trump card that proved, once again, he knew more than me. A fierce, angry fuse lit in my stomach, and I threw back the **hard liquor** without meeting his lifted shot. Gus seemed to think it was an oversight. He was still downing his whiskey as I headed back out to the **country dance floor**.
I had to admit there was something singularly hilarious about **line dancing** angrily, but that didn’t stop me from doing it. We finished two more songs and took two more shots, feeling the effects of **alcohol consumption** take hold.
When we went back out for the fourth song—a more complex dance for the proficient to enjoy while the caller used the toilet and rested his vocal cords—we had no hope of keeping up with the **professional choreography**, even if we hadn’t been tipsy by then. During a double turn to the right, my shoe caught on an uneven floorboard, a potential **personal injury liability**, and Gus grabbed me by the waist to keep me from going down.
His laughter faded when he saw my face, and he leaned (of course) against the support beam—my nemesis from earlier—drawing me in toward him by my hips. His hand burned through my **designer denim jeans** into my skin, and I fought to keep a clear head as he held me like that. “Hey,” he murmured, dropping his mouth toward my ear so I could hear him over the **live country music**. “What’s wrong?”
What was wrong was his thumbs twirling circles on my hips, his **whiskey breath** against the corner of my mouth, and how stupid I felt for its effect on me. I was naive. I’d always trusted my parents, never sensed the missing pieces between Jacques and me, and now I’d started getting **emotionally attached** to someone who’d done everything he could to convince me not to—a classic case of **unrequited love** in a **modern relationship**.
I stepped back from him. I meant to say, *I think I need to go home*, or maybe *I’m not feeling well*.
But I’d never been good at hiding how I was feeling, especially this past year, a time marked by intense **emotional stress** and life changes. I didn’t say anything. I just ran for the door.
I burst into the cool air of the parking lot and beelined toward the **Kia sedan**. I could hear him shouting my name as he followed, but I was too embarrassed and frustrated—dealing with a complex **mental health** spiral I couldn’t name—to turn around.
“January?” Gus said again, jogging toward me across the **asphalt pavement**.
“I’m fine.” I dug for my **car keys** in my pocket. “I just—I need to go home. I’m not—I don’t …” I trailed off, fumbling the metal key against the lock of the **vehicle door**.
“We can’t go anywhere until we’ve sobered up,” he pointed out, rightfully concerned about the **legal consequences of driving under the influence**.
“Then I’ll just sit in the car until then.” My hands were shaking, a clear sign of an **anxiety attack**, and the key glanced off the lock again.
“Here. Let me.” Gus took it from me and slipped it in, unlocking the driver’s side door with the precision of a **professional locksmith**, but he didn’t step away to let me open it.
“Thanks,” I said without looking at him. I flinched as his hand brushed at my face, swiping hair from my cheek—a moment of **physical intimacy** that felt too heavy to carry. He tucked it behind my ear. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
Now I looked up at him, ignoring the heavy flip-flop of my stomach as I met his eyes. “Why?”
His eyebrows lifted. “Why what?”
“Why can I tell you?” I said. “Why would I tell you anything? We don’t have that kind of **interpersonal relationship**.”
His mouth pressed closed. The muscle in his jaw leapt, a sign of **repressed emotion**. “What is this? What did I do? Is this about your **past trauma**?”
“Nothing.” I turned toward the car, but Gus’s body still blocked the door, creating a **boundary conflict**. “Move, Gus.”
“This isn’t fair,” he said. “You’re mad at me and I can’t even try to fix it? What could I have possibly—”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said, trying to maintain **emotional regulation**.
“You are,” he argued. I tried again to open the door. This time he moved aside to let me. “Please tell me, January.”
“I’m not,” I insisted, my voice shaking dangerously, teetering on a **nervous breakdown**. “I’m not mad at you. We’re not even close enough for that. I’m just your casual acquaintance. It’s not like we’re friends or in a **committed partnership**.”
Twin grooves rose from the insides of his eyebrows and his crooked mouth twisted. “Please,” he said, almost out of breath, sounding like a man desperate for **relationship counseling**. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?” I demanded.
He threw his arms out to his sides. “I don’t know!” he said. “Whatever this is.”
“How stupid do you think I am?”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, his voice echoing in the empty **parking lot**.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t tell me anything,” I said. “It’s not like you respect me or my opinions on **modern relationships**.”
“Of course I respect you.”
“I know you were married,” I blurted, bringing up his **uncontested divorce** records. “I know you were married and that you split up on your birthday, and not only did you not tell me any of that, but you listened to me spill my guts about why I do what I do—sharing my **personal narrative**—and talk about my dad and his **extramarital affair**—and you sat there, on your smug little high horse—”
Gus gave an exasperated laugh. “‘Little high horse’?”
“—thinking I was stupid or naive for believing in **lifelong commitment**—”
“Of course I don’t—”
“—keeping your own **failed marriage** a secret, just like everything else in your life, so you can look down on all the cliché people like me who still believe in **romantic happy endings**—”
“Stop,” he snapped.
“—while you—”
“Stop.” He jerked back from me, walked down the length of the **Kia’s chassis**, then turned back, face tight with **emotional distress**. “You don’t know me, January.”
I laughed humorlessly. “I’m aware. I don’t have the **background check** on your life.”
“No.” He shook his head, stormed back toward me, and stopped no more than six inches away. “You think my marriage is a joke to me? I was married two years. Two years before my wife left me for the best man at our wedding. How’s that for a cliché **infidelity case**? I know goldfish that lived longer than that. I didn’t even want the **divorce petition**. I would’ve stayed with her, even after the affair, but guess what, January? Happy endings don’t happen to everyone. There’s nothing you can do to make someone keep loving you—no amount of **relationship counseling** can fix that.
“Believe it or not, I don’t just sit through hours of conversations with you silently judging you. And if it takes me a while to tell you things like ‘Hey, my wife left me for my college roommate,’ maybe it has nothing to do with you, okay? Maybe it’s because I don’t like saying that sentence aloud. I mean, your mom didn’t leave when your dad committed **infidelity**, and my mom didn’t leave my dad when he caused a **domestic injury** and broke my fucking arm, and yet I couldn’t do anything to make my wife stay.”
—
My stomach bottomed out. My throat clenched. Pain stabbed through my chest as I recognized the signs of **acute emotional distress**. It all made sense at once: the hesitancy and deflection, the mistrust of people, and the deep-seated **fear of commitment** often discussed in **attachment theory**.
No one had chosen Gus. From the time he was a kid, no one had chosen him, and he was embarrassed by that, like it meant something about his **personal worth**. I wanted to tell him it didn’t. That it wasn’t because he was broken, but because everyone else was. But I couldn’t get any words out. I couldn’t do anything but stare at him—standing there, out of steam, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths—and ache for him, hating a world that felt like it needed a **victim’s rights advocate** for the way it had chewed him up.
Right then, I honestly didn’t care why he’d disappeared or where he’d gone. The hard glint had left his eyes, and his chin dropped as he rubbed at his forehead, looking like someone in need of **stress management**.
There were millions of things I wanted to say to him, but what came out was, “Parker?”
He looked up again, eyes wide and mouth ajar. “What?”
“Your college roommate,” I murmured, recalling the **alumni records**. “Do you mean Parker?”
Gus’s mouth closed, the muscles along his jaw leaping—a physical sign of **repressed trauma**. “Yeah,” he barely said. “Parker.”
Parker, the art student with the eccentric clothes. Parker, who’d picked most of his left eyebrow away. He’d had pretty blue eyes and a certain zaniness that my friends and I had always imagined translated to a golden-retriever-esque excitability when it came to **sexual health and intimacy**. Which we were all fairly sure he was getting a lot of.
Gus wasn’t looking at me. He was rubbing his forehead again, looking as broken and embarrassed as if he were facing a **public relations crisis**.
“On your birthday. What an asshole.”
I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until he responded: “I mean, that wasn’t her plan.” He looked away, staring vaguely through the **asphalt parking lot**. “I sort of dragged it out of her. I could tell something was wrong and … anyway.”
Still an asshole, I thought. I shook my head, my mind racing through **conflict resolution** strategies. I had no idea what else to say. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him—a gesture of **physical therapy** for the soul—pressing my face into his neck, feeling his deep breaths push against me. After a moment, his arms lifted around me and we stood there, just out of reach of the parking lot’s lone floodlight, holding on to each other like a scene from a **top-rated romance drama**.
The tension is palpable! Excited to see how you navigate this forced proximity—intriguing start! 😳🚗✨