Chapter Text
The longer you know someone, the more difficult it is for them to surprise you. I’ve known my aunt Pete my entire life, and I think I’ve jammed in more to my thirty-odd years than some other people my age. So I feel like it’s understandable that, prior to last night, I didn’t really think that Pete would be able to shock me.
I was wrong.
I absolutely thought that Pete’s book club would be discussing my book yesterday, and I absolutely did not think that January Andrews would be there. I was mistaken on both counts.
As soon as I walked into Pete and Maggie’s house, I could tell that something was off. There was a tangible sense of discomfort in the air. Maggie shifted nervously on the couch, and January Andrews was digging in a piece of carry-on luggage she claimed was a purse, looking a bit… dazed, I supposed.
Something was up with January. I wouldn’t claim to have known her intimately in college, conventionally or biblically (either way much to my chagrin), but I did think we had achieved some kind of understanding then, a level of knowledge that you really only find when you spend a lot of time reading the feelings someone holds closest to their chest in real life spilled onto a page for anyone to read. In college, January had been optimistic and idealistic - but not naive. No, January believed so deeply in the fundamental goodness of people that it was almost like she was daring the universe to prove her wrong. Try me, she seemed to be saying in her stories, because I’ve seen a thing or two and it hasn’t been enough to convince me otherwise so far.
Now, though, January looked as though her worldview hadn’t just been shifted - she looked like someone had come around to inspect it and found fundamental flaws, like termites had been gnawing away at the foundation upon which she’d built her understanding of the universe and she’d found out years into the damage. Could she salvage the beams? Or was the damage too bad? Did the whole thing have to be knocked down and rebuilt?
“Girls,” Pete said. “I believe you all know the one and only Augustus Everett?”
It’s important to remember, I think, that at this point I was still under the misapprehension that my aunt and her book club were discussing one of my books. I wanted to sink into the floor. I hated being the focus of attention, and I hated it even more when January was here to witness the embarrassment. “January,” I nodded in her direction, unwilling to try and make eye contact before what was sure to be an excruciating hour or two of discussing my book.
In retrospect, I should have been certain something was up when I walked in and saw January there. Pete loved few things more than taking someone under her wing like a lost duckling, easing them into the insular North Bear Lake community and helping them make a few friends. But while Pete could be ruthless, she wasn’t heartless, and it should have struck me as odd that she’d invited another author to a bookclub to discuss a book they didn’t write with the person that did.
I was too distracted by January to really think things through, though, and suddenly I had a White Russian in hand, January had pulled an open bottle of wine out of her Mary Poppins bag, and Pete brought the book club to order. For a minute, I felt like I was in a fever dream: Maggie was talking about spies, and then a Black woman I thought I’d met at one of Pete and Maggie’s many dinner parties said something about twins, and my White Russian was somehow almost immediately gone, and then everything was clicking into place as I made eye contact with January.
They weren’t discussing my book. They sure as hell weren’t discussing one of January’s, either - even if I hadn’t read all of them, which I had, I would have known by the similarly confused expression on her face. No, Pete had set us up. And for some reason, January looked absolutely victorious as she passed me the mostly-consumed and very warm Chardonnay out of her purse.
I couldn’t tell you the rest of what happened at that meeting. I was distracted by the fact that I had misread the entire situation and what that meant for and about my ego, by the several smelly Labradors vying for attention, and mostly, by my proximity to January. Somehow, the night drew to a close faster than I expected, three hours of the sharp-sweet sensation of seeing her across the coffee table speeding things along. January had been surprisingly quiet for the rest of the meeting. Of course she hadn’t read the book, but the January I knew in college would have had some insights all the same - a funny but scathing remark about the author’s decision to set a novel about Russian spies in Green Bay, Wisconsin, perhaps, certainly a bustling hub for Soviet infiltration, or about his partner clearly being a woman written by a man, made clear by the fact that the character once recorded a key conversation using a listening device planted in a tampon she was actively using.
Instead, she’d sat there all night, following the conversation and occasionally looking at me with a vaguely devilish gleam in her eyes, but overall subdued. Something about the way she held herself twisted my heart. The girl who dared the universe to prove her wrong about people being fundamentally good was gone. In her place was a woman who instead dared it to prove her right: that people could and would hurt you. I’d already admitted to myself that I was still wildly attracted to January, purse wine and glittery tennis shoes and all. Now, though, I was realizing that it was deeper than just still thinking she was beautiful.
No, the feelings January resurrected in me were those of a 21 year old and a 32 year old all at the same time. Some part of me still wanted to white-knight for her, to cast myself as her (admittedly cranky) bodyguard and fight off whatever might make her fairy princess forehead crease, just like I had in college. But I was older now, and hopefully a bit wiser, and January was too. I knew that whatever had changed her outlook so deeply wasn’t something I could wipe away for her, just like the bad feelings working on eating me alive weren’t things anyone could wipe away for me, either. So instead, I found myself hoping she’d let me in so we could work through all our hurts together.
And then I found myself with January Andrews in my car.