Well, she’d been looking for an answer to the question of what to do about her job, whether to stay and fight or give up and go. Beau Towers had just given her a way to figure that out, once and for all. If she really managed to do this—coach him through writing his book by the time she had to go back to New York—then she would stay at TAOAT and keep fighting for that dream. But if she couldn’t do it, or gave up, or if he did, that was it: She was done with all this. Beau Towers, and his book, would make this decision for her.
Beau returned to the kitchen, a bottle of wine in one hand and a set of keys in another.
“I got the wine.” He handed her the keys. “And these are for you.”
One looked like a house key, but the other…She looked up at him, not sure what this meant.
“The car’s parked in the garage; use it whenever you want,” he said. “I should have given you the keys on your first day here. I’m sorry you had to walk all the way up the hill in the rain, that’s my fault.”
She hadn’t expected him to do this. “Thank you, but are you sure…?”
He nodded. “Yes, of course. I don’t use the car that much anyway. And I don’t want you to feel like you’re a prisoner here. If you’re going to stay here and help me with this, I want you to feel free to come and go, and go to the beach and the coffee shop and wherever you went today—”
“The bookstore,” she said.
“The bookstore, sure, there, too. I mean, if you’re stuck in California babysitting me, you might as well get to enjoy being in California, you know?”
She looked up at him, an apology on her lips about that babysitting crack, but he had a grin on his face. It made him look different—younger, more relaxed, a little playful. And very attractive.
She pushed that last thought out of her mind.
“It’s definitely been nice to be in sixty-three-degree and sunny weather all week when it was in the twenties in New York, that’s for sure.” She looked outside. “I guess that’s why it didn’t even occur to me that it could rain here.”
He pulled out a tray from the side of the fridge and put their bowls of soup on it. “We do have weather in Southern California,” he said. “It’s just within a much smaller range of possibilities than you have in New York.” He picked up the tray and nodded at the wine bottle. “Can you get the wine and wineglasses?”
She took a corkscrew out of a drawer and grabbed the bottle and glasses. She followed him down the hall to the TV room, a room that she’d still never stepped inside. When Beau pushed open the door with his shoulder, Izzy stopped and stared.
The TV in this room was larger than any TV she’d ever seen in person. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t seen any other TVs in this house; there had originally been five or six, and this TV had just eaten them all.
Beau set the tray on the coffee table in front of the couch and then turned around to see Izzy still staring at the TV.
“I know, it’s a little absurd.” He looked embarrassed. “When I moved in here, it was kind of sudden. I’d only planned to come for a long weekend, to kind of…clear my head. And then I just stayed. It used to be my grandparents’ house.”
Oh. A few things made more sense now.
Izzy sat down on the couch and reached for her bowl of soup. It tasted as good as it smelled. She was glad there was more in the kitchen, since she had a feeling she’d eat this entire bowl and then some.
Beau picked up the corkscrew and reached for the bottle of wine.
“A lot of the furniture and stuff here is still theirs, but they had a really old TV, the picture was terrible, it barely got cable, and I knew I needed something else.” He laughed. “I told Michaela I needed a new TV, and when she asked what I wanted, I said I didn’t care, I just wanted the biggest TV they had. And so, well, that’s what she got me.”
Izzy laughed, partly at the story, but also at how chatty Beau suddenly was. It was like he’d been bottling up all his conversation for months and was letting it all out at once.
“Michaela seems very reliable that way.” Izzy took the glass of wine that Beau handed her.
He laughed again. “She definitely is. That’s also sort of how the snack cabinet came to be: She kept asking me what I wanted her to get for me at the store, and finally I just told her to get me every snack she could think of. And so she decided to take me literally.”
Yes, that sounded like a thing Michaela would do.
“Well, I fell in love with the snack cabinet immediately, it’s the love of my life, and we’re getting married in a few weeks,” Izzy said.
Beau tore off a hunk of bread and dipped it in his soup. “Sorry, no, I can’t allow that, you’re not taking my snack cabinet away from me.”
They grinned at each other.
“I think Michaela really has fun with it,” he said. “At first it was just chips and pretzels and crackers and beef jerky and stuff, but then she started stocking it with stuff from the Mexican grocery store, and then the different Asian grocery stores, and now there’s so much good stuff in there. I’m obsessed with these spicy veggie straws, I don’t even know what they’re called or where they came from, but I love them.”
Beau reached for the remote, but Izzy knew there was something she had to say before he turned the TV on.
“Um, I want to apologize, too,” she said. He sat back and looked at her. “I kind of…I just assumed you were being a jerk last night and today. I think you just pushed my buttons, and I got mad. I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I was an ass when you got here, of course you would take everything I said the wrong way.” He picked up the remote. “Anything you’re in the mood to watch?”
How should she answer? This always seemed like a test question, especially from guys—like you were supposed to answer something “smart” and tell them about the documentary you’d been dying to see, or the TV show about the angry man that you just love, or that superhero movie you couldn’t wait to watch again. But it had been a long day. She might as well just be honest.
“Obviously, with the rain outside and with this bowl of very cozy soup, all I want to watch is some sort of luxurious period drama with lots of sweeping views of the countryside in England or Italy or somewhere like that, and people drinking tea and eating tiny sandwiches and scones. Do you know the kind of thing I mean?”
To her surprise, Beau nodded. “Good idea.” He flipped through his many streaming services, and landed on something. “What about this one?”
“This Provincial Life,” Izzy read on the screen. “I don’t even need to read the description, the title is enough for me. Sold.”
So for the rest of the night, they sat there, at opposite ends of the couch, eating soup and bread and drinking wine and watching a period drama. At one point, Izzy heated up more soup for both of them, another time, Beau made them popcorn, and right when Izzy was thinking about going to bed, Beau brought out a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies, so Izzy had no choice but to stay for one more episode.
They didn’t talk much, but that was okay. Izzy was surprised by how comfortable it was to be here with Beau Towers. She didn’t feel like she had to fill the silence with conversation. She didn’t feel awkward, sitting here with him.
She still had no idea why he’d been shut away from the rest of the world for the past year, or why he was struggling so much with his book. He’d hinted at some realizations he’d made about himself, but she didn’t want to ask about that, at least not yet. But if they were really going to work on his book together, she’d have to push him to write about those things, whether he actually shared any of it with her or not.
Could she really do this? She’d offered to help him, because the pain in his voice and the look on his face had made her want to reach out, want to do something to help. But did she know how to do this? Did she have enough knowledge, enough experience, to coach Beau through writing a memoir?
She had no idea. But she knew she had to try her best. If this was going to be her test to decide whether to stay in publishing, she was going to give it her all, and if her all wasn’t good enough, then that would be her answer.
But, she realized, she wanted this for Beau’s sake, too.
The episode ended, and Beau turned to her. “It’s getting late. Do you want to pick this back up another night?”
Izzy nodded. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “And also, about your book.”
Beau sat back, midway through reaching for the plate of cookies. “Yeah?” He looked away. He did that when he was nervous, she realized.
“Maybe we should start working together on Monday? I have to do my other work from nine to six, New York time, so I’m done around three. How about we meet then, just to talk through some stuff. Nothing big yet, just ease into it, if that works for you?”
He bit his lip, then nodded. “Okay. That…that makes sense.” He smiled at her. “Three sounds like snack time—we can meet in the kitchen and raid the snack cabinet and go from there?”
She laughed. “Perfect. See you at snack time on Monday. Good night.” She turned to leave the room.
“Good night, Isabelle. And…thanks.”
She turned back around and smiled at him. “You’re welcome.”