15: The Past

January enters Pete’s coffee shop, orders green tea, and worries about dwindling funds while reminding herself her new manuscript is taking shape. Pete leads her into the bookstore, unveiling a local-authors display and asking January to sign copies. As they work, Pete hints that January and Gus have been spending time together.

January learns Pete frequently checks on Gus, who only sometimes answers, and that they are each other’s only local family. When January expresses surprise, Pete reveals she is Gus’s aunt—his mother’s sister—and explains she still calls him “Everett” from coaching his childhood soccer team.

Seeing January’s confusion, Pete urges patience and says Gus likes January. Pete then mentions Gus’s birthday is difficult since “the split,” and that his friend Markham throws a big party each year to distract him, which Gus tolerates despite hating parties. January presses for clarity and discovers Gus is divorced, his wife having left him on his birthday.

The revelation disorients January. She reflects on how Gus never shared basic personal history despite their growing closeness, while she had been open with him. Hurt and frustrated, January wrestles with her conviction that marriage is sacred and lasting, resenting both Gus’s cynicism and her own inability to stop believing in enduring love.

January also resents that Gus once loved someone enough to marry yet has now vanished after a single heated kiss with her. Pete gently reassures January, acknowledging her feelings. The chapter closes with January unsettled but newly informed about Gus’s past and the context for his earlier rudeness on the night she moved in.