The Sceptic and the Sweetheart(beach read)

I HAVE A FATAL flaw.
‎I like to think we all do. Or at least that makes it easier for me when I’m
‎writing—building my heroines and heroes up around this one selfsabotaging trait, hinging everything that happens to them on a specific
‎characteristic: the thing they learned to do to protect themselves and can’t
‎let go of, even when it stops serving them.
‎Maybe, for example, you didn’t have much control over your life as a
‎kid. So, to avoid disappointment, you learned never to ask yourself what
‎you truly wanted. And it worked for a long time. Only now, upon realizing
‎you didn’t get what you didn’t know you wanted, you’re barreling down the
‎highway in a midlife-crisis-mobile with a suitcase full of cash and a man
‎named Stan in your trunk.
‎Maybe your fatal flaw is that you don’t use turn signals.
‎Or maybe, like me, you’re a hopeless romantic. You just can’t stop telling
‎yourself the story. The one about your own life, complete with
‎melodramatic soundtrack and golden light lancing through car windows.
‎It started when I was twelve. My parents sat me down to tell me the
‎news. Mom had gotten her first diagnosis—suspicious cells in her left
‎breast—and she told me not to worry so many times I suspected I’d be
‎grounded if she caught me at it. My mom was a do-er, a laugher, an
‎optimist, not a worrier, but I could tell she was terrified, and so I was too,frozen on the couch, unsure how to say anything without making things
‎worse.
‎But then my bookish homebody of a father did something unexpected.
‎He stood and grabbed our hands—one of Mom’s, one of mine—and said,
‎You know what we need to get these bad feelings out? We need to dance!
‎Our suburb had no clubs, just a mediocre steak house with a Friday night
‎cover band, but Mom lit up like he’d just suggested taking a private jet to
‎the Copacabana.
‎She wore her buttery yellow dress and some hammered metal earrings
‎that twinkled when she moved. Dad ordered twenty-year-old Scotch for
‎them and a Shirley Temple for me, and the three of us twirled and bobbed
‎until we were dizzy, laughing, tripping all over. We laughed until we could
‎barely stand, and my famously reserved father sang along to “Brown Eyed
‎Girl” like the whole room wasn’t watching us.
‎And then, exhausted, we piled into the car and drove home through the
‎quiet, Mom and Dad holding tight to each other’s hands between the seats,
‎and I tipped my head against the car window and, watching the streetlights
‎flicker across the glass, thought, It’s going to be okay. We will always be
‎okay.
‎And that was the moment I realized: when the world felt dark and scary,
‎love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the
‎pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear. I decided then that my
‎life would be full of all three. Not just for my own benefit, but for Mom’s,
‎and for everyone else around me.
‎There would be purpose. There would be beauty. There would be
‎candlelight and Fleetwood Mac playing softly in the background.
‎The point is, I started telling myself a beautiful story about my life, about
‎fate and the way things work out, and by twenty-eight years old, my story
‎was perfect.
‎Perfect (cancer-free) parents who called several times a week, tipsy on
‎wine or each other’s company. Perfect (spontaneous, multilingual, six foot
‎three) boyfriend who worked in the ER and knew how to make coq au vin.
‎Perfect shabby chic apartment in Queens. Perfect job writing romantic
‎novels—inspired by perfect parents and perfect boyfriend—for Sandy
‎Lowe Books.
‎Perfect lifeBut it was just a story, and when one gaping plot hole appeared, the
‎whole thing unraveled. That’s how stories work.
‎Now, at twenty-nine, I was miserable, broke, semi-homeless, very single,
‎and pulling up to a gorgeous lake house whose very existence nauseated
‎me. Grandly romanticizing my life had stopped serving me, but my fatal
‎flaw was still riding shotgun in my dinged-up Kia Soul, narrating things as
‎they happened:
‎January Andrews stared out the car window at the angry lake beating up
‎on the dusky shore. She tried to convince herself that coming here hadn’t
‎been a mistake.
‎It was definitely a mistake, but I had no better option. You didn’t turn
‎down free lodging when you were broke.
‎I parked on the street and stared up at the oversized cottage’s facade, its
‎gleaming windows and fairy tale of a porch, the shaggy beach grass dancing
‎in the warm breeze.
‎I checked the address in my GPS against the handwritten one hanging
‎from the house key. This was it, all right.
‎For a minute, I stalled, like maybe a world-ending asteroid would take
‎me out before I was forced to go inside. Then I took a deep breath and got
‎out, wrestling my overstuffed suitcase from the back seat along with the
‎cardboard box full of gin handles.
‎I pushed a fistful of dark hair out of my eyes to study the cornflower blue
‎shingles and snow-white trim. Just pretend you’re at an Airbnb.
‎Immediately, an imaginary Airbnb listing ran through my head: Threebedroom, three-bath lakeside cottage brimming with charm and proof your
‎father was an asshole and your life has been a lie.
‎I started up the steps cut into the grassy hillside, blood rushing through
‎my ears like fire hoses and legs wobbling, anticipating the moment the
‎hellmouth would open and the world would drop out from under me.
‎That already happened. Last year. And it didn’t kill you, so neither will
‎this.
‎On the porch, every sensation in my body heightened. The tingling in my
‎face, the twist in my stomach, the sweat prickling along my neck. I
‎balanced the box of gin against my hip and slipped the key into the lock, a
‎part of me hoping it would jam. That all this would turn out to be an
‎elaborate practical joke Dad had set up for us before he died.Or, better yet, he wasn’t actually dead. He’d jump out from behind the
‎bushes and scream, “Gotcha! You didn’t really think I had a secret second
‎life, did you? You couldn’t possibly think I had a second house with some
‎woman other than your mother?”
‎The key turned effortlessly. The door swung inward.
‎The house was silent.
‎An ache went through me. The same one I’d felt at least once a day since
‎I got Mom’s call about the stroke and heard her sob those words. He’s gone,
‎Janie.
‎No Dad. Not here. Not anywhere. And then the second pain, the knife
‎twisting: The father you knew never existed anyway.
‎I’d never really had him. Just like I’d never really had my ex Jacques or
‎his coq au vin.
‎It was just a story I’d been telling myself. From now on, it was the ugly
‎truth or nothing. I steeled myself and stepped inside.
‎My first thought was that the ugly truth wasn’t super ugly. My dad’s love
‎nest had an open floor plan: a living room that spilled into a funky, bluetiled kitchen and homey breakfast nook, the wall of windows just beyond
‎overlooking a dark-stained deck.
‎If Mom had owned this place, everything would’ve been a mix of
‎creamy, calming neutrals. The bohemian room I’d stepped into would’ve
‎been more at home in Jacques’s and my old place than my parents’. I felt a
‎little queasy imagining Dad here, among these things Mom never would’ve
‎picked out: the folksy hand-painted breakfast table, the dark wooden
‎bookshelves, the sunken couch covered in mismatched pillows.
‎There was no sign of the version of him that I’d known.
‎My phone rang in my pocket and I set the box on the granite countertop
‎to answer the call.
‎“Hello?” It came out weak and raspy.
‎“How is it?” the voice on the other end said immediately. “Is there a sex
‎dungeon?”
‎“Shadi?” I guessed. I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder as I
‎unscrewed the cap from one of my gin bottles, taking a swig to fortify
‎myself.
‎“It honestly worries me that I’m the only person who might call you to
‎ask that,” Shadi answered.“You’re the only person who even knows about the Love Shack,” I
‎pointed out.
‎“I am not the only one who knows about it,” Shadi argued.
‎Technically true. While I’d found out about my father’s secret lake house
‎at his funeral last year, Mom had been aware much longer. “Fine,” I said.
‎“You’re the only person I told about it. Anyway, give me a second. I just
‎got here.”
‎“Literally?” Shadi was breathing hard, which meant she was walking to a
‎shift at the restaurant. Since we kept such different hours, most of our calls
‎happened when she was on her way into work.
‎“Metaphorically,” I said. “Literally, I’ve been here for ten minutes, but I
‎only just feel that I have arrived.”
‎“So wise,” Shadi said. “So deep.”
‎“Shh,” I said. “I’m taking it all in.”
‎“Check for the sex dungeon!” Shadi hurried to say, as if I were hanging
‎up on her.
‎I was not. I was simply holding the phone to my ear, holding my breath,
‎holding my racing heart in my chest, as I scanned my father’s second life.
‎And there, just when I could convince myself Dad couldn’t possibly have
‎spent time here, I spotted something framed on the wall. A clipping of a
‎New York Times Best Sellers list from three years ago, the same one he’d
‎positioned over the fireplace at home. There I was, at number fifteen, the
‎bottom slot. And there, three slots above me—in a sick twist of fate—was
‎my college rival, Gus (though now he went by Augustus, because Serious
‎Man) and his highbrow debut novel The Revelatories. It had stayed on the
‎list for five weeks (not that I was counting (I was absolutely counting)).
‎“Well?” Shadi prompted. “What do you think?”
‎I turned and my eyes caught on the mandala tapestry hanging over the
‎couch.
‎“I’m led to wonder if Dad smoked weed.” I spun toward the windows at
‎the side of the house, which aligned almost perfectly with the neighbor’s, a
‎design flaw Mom would never have overlooked when house shopping.
‎But this wasn’t her house, and I could clearly see the floor-to-ceiling
‎bookshelves that lined the neighbor’s study.
‎“Oh, God—maybe it’s a grow house, not a love shack!” Shadi sounded
‎delighted. “You should’ve read the letter, January. It’s all been amisunderstanding. Your dad’s leaving you the family business. That Woman
‎was his business partner, not his mistress.”
‎How bad was it that I wished she were right?
‎Either way, I’d fully intended to read the letter. I’d just been waiting for
‎the right time, hoping the worst of my anger would settle and those last
‎words from Dad would be comforting. Instead, a full year had passed and
‎the dread I felt at the thought of opening the envelope grew every day. It
‎was so unfair, that he should get the last word and I’d have no way to reply.
‎To scream or cry or demand more answers. Once I’d opened it, there’d be
‎no going back. That would be it. The final goodbye.
‎So until further notice, the letter was living a happy, if solitary, life in the
‎bottom of the gin box I’d brought with me from Queens.
‎“It’s not a grow house,” I told Shadi and slid open the back door to step
‎onto the deck. “Unless the weed’s in the basement.”
‎“No way,” Shadi argued. “That’s where the sex dungeon is.”
‎“Let’s stop talking about my depressing life,” I said. “What’s new with
‎you?”
‎“You mean the Haunted Hat,” Shadi said. If only she had fewer than four
‎roommates in her shoebox apartment in Chicago, then maybe I’d be staying
‎with her now. Not that I was capable of getting anything done when I was
‎with Shadi. And my financial situation was too dire not to get something
‎done. I had to finish my next book in this rent-free hell. Then maybe I could
‎afford my own Jacques-free place.
‎“If the Haunted Hat is what you want to talk about,” I said, “then yes.
‎Spill.”
‎“Still hasn’t spoken to me.” Shadi sighed wistfully. “But I can, like, sense
‎him looking at me when we’re both in the kitchen. Because we have a
‎connection.”
‎“Are you at all worried that your connection isn’t with the guy who’s
‎wearing the antique porkpie hat, but perhaps with the ghost of the hat’s
‎original owner? What will you do if you realize you’ve fallen in love with a
‎ghost?”
‎“Um.” Shadi thought for a minute. “I guess I’d have to update my Tinder
‎bio.”
‎A breeze rippled off the water at the bottom of the hill, ruffling my
‎brown waves across my shoulders, and the setting sun shot golden spears of
‎light over everything, so bright and hot I had to squint to see the wash oforanges and reds it cast across the beach. If this were just some house I’d
‎rented, it would be the perfect place to write the adorable love story I’d
‎been promising Sandy Lowe Books for months.
‎Shadi, I realized, had been talking. More about the Haunted Hat. His
‎name was Ricky, but we never called him that. We always spoke of Shadi’s
‎love life in code. There was the older man who ran the amazing seafood
‎restaurant (the Fish Lord), and then there was some guy we’d called Mark
‎because he looked like some other, famous Mark, and now there was this
‎new coworker, a bartender who wore a hat every day that Shadi loathed and
‎yet could not resist.
‎I snapped back into the conversation as Shadi was saying, “Fourth of July
‎weekend? Can I visit then?”
‎“That’s more than a month away.” I wanted to argue that I wouldn’t even
‎be here by then, but I knew it wasn’t true. It would take me at least all
‎summer to write a book, empty the house, and sell both, so I could
‎(hopefully) be catapulted back into relative comfort. Not in New York, but
‎somewhere less expensive.
‎I imagined Duluth was affordable. Mom would never visit me there, but
‎we hadn’t done much visiting this past year anyway, apart from my threeday trip home for Christmas. She’d dragged me to four yoga classes, three
‎crowded juice bars, and a Nutcracker performance starring some kid I
‎didn’t know, like if we were alone for even a second, the topic of Dad
‎would arise and we’d burst into flames.
‎All my life, my friends had been jealous of my relationship with her.
‎How often and freely (or so I thought) we talked, how much fun we had
‎together. Now our relationship was the world’s least competitive game of
‎phone tag.
‎I’d gone from having two loving parents and a live-in boyfriend to
‎basically just having Shadi, my much-too-long-distance best friend. The
‎one blessing of moving from New York to North Bear Shores, Michigan,
‎was that I was closer to her place in Chicago.
‎“Fourth of July’s too far off,” I complained. “You’re only three hours
‎away.”
‎“Yeah, and I don’t know how to drive.”
‎“Then you should probably give that license back,” I said.
‎“Believe me, I’m waiting for it to expire. I’m going to feel so free. I hate
‎when people think I’m able to drive just because, legally, I am.”Shadi was a terrible driver. She screamed whenever she turned left.
‎“Besides, you know how scheduling off is in the industry. I’m lucky my
‎boss said I could have Fourth of July. For all I know, he’s expecting a blow
‎job now.”
‎“No way. Blow jobs are for major holidays. What you’ve got on your
‎hands is a good old-fashioned foot job quid pro quo.”
‎I took another sip of gin, then turned from the end of the deck and nearly
‎yelped. On the deck ten feet to the right of mine, the back of a head of curly
‎brown hair peeked over a lawn chair. I silently prayed the man was asleep
‎—that I wouldn’t have to spend an entire summer next door to someone
‎who’d heard me shout good old-fashioned foot job.
‎As if he’d read my mind, he sat forward and grabbed the bottle of beer
‎from his patio table, took a swig, and sat back.
‎“So true. I won’t even have to take my Crocs off,” Shadi was saying.
‎“Anyway, I just got to work. But let me know if it’s drugs or leather in the
‎basement.”
‎I turned my back to the neighbor’s deck. “I’m not going to check until
‎you visit.”
‎“Rude,” Shadi said.
‎“Leverage,” I said. “Love you.”
‎“Love you more,” she insisted and hung up.
‎I turned to face the curly head, half waiting for him to acknowledge me,
‎half debating whether I was obligated to introduce myself.
‎I hadn’t known any of my neighbors in New York well, but this was
‎Michigan, and from Dad’s stories about growing up in North Bear Shores, I
‎fully expected to have to lend this man sugar at some point (note: must buy
‎sugar).
‎I cleared my throat and pasted on my attempt at a neighborly smile. The
‎man sat forward for another swig of beer, and I called across the gap,
‎“Sorry for disturbing you!”
‎He waved one hand vaguely, then turned the page of whatever book was
‎in his lap. “What’s disturbing about foot jobs as a form of currency?” he
‎drawled in a husky, bored voice.
‎I grimaced as I searched for a reply—any reply. Old January would have
‎known what to say, but my mind was as blank as it was every time I opened
‎Microsoft Word.Okay, so maybe I’d become a bit of a hermit this past year. Maybe I
‎wasn’t entirely sure what I’d spent the last year doing, since it wasn’t
‎visiting Mom and it wasn’t writing, and it wasn’t charming the socks off my
‎neighbors.
‎“Anyway,” I called, “I’m living here now.”
‎As if he’d read my thoughts, he gave a disinterested wave and grumbled,
‎“Let me know if you need any sugar.” But he managed to make it sound
‎more like, Never speak to me again unless you notice my house is on fire,
‎and even then, listen for sirens first.
‎So much for Midwestern hospitality. At least in New York, our neighbors
‎had brought us cookies when we moved in. (They’d been gluten-free and
‎laced with LSD, but it was the thought that counted.)
‎“Or if you need directions to the nearest Sexual Fetish Depot,” the
‎Grump added.
‎Heat flared through my cheeks, a flush of embarrassment and anger. The
‎words were out before I could reconsider: “I’ll just wait for your car to pull
‎out and follow.” He laughed, a surprised, rough sound, but still didn’t deign
‎to face me.
‎“Lovely to meet you,” I added sharply, and turned to hurry back through
‎the sliding glass doors to the safety of the house, where I would quite
‎possibly have to hide all summer.
‎“Liar,” I heard him grumble before I snapped the door shut.
‎