Page 31 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

“What’s on your agenda for today?” Josh asks a minute after walking through the door and tossing his keys in the basket on the new entryway table.

This is his favorite question to ask almost every morning.

He acts like it’s to plan out his day around my schedule, but I secretly think he just likes hearing what I’m up to.

“Lots. Today’s schedule is a little wonky.

I’m going to Canopy Books the minute they open to buy books for the shelves you’re about to build,” I say, raising my eyebrows quickly in excitement but with a hint of evil genius.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me: go into a bookstore, buy a ton of my favorite books, and then get to bring them home. All in the name of homemaking.”

“You are, like, really amped up about this. Not sure I’ve seen someone so happy about shelving before,” he teases.

“A house isn’t really a home unless it has books inside. This is going to really make the house feel like mine.”

He nods his head in acknowledgment. The repartee Josh and I have flits back and forth between funny, serious, sarcastic, and utterly ridiculous. There’s a small expression of excitement on his face now, too, as he realizes that today’s project is going to bring me so much joy.

“I know you said you’re busy today, but later on—at your usual old-lady dinnertime—my friends and I have a standing Friends’ Night Out at a bar in town. You should come. You’ll meet some new people.”

Josh has been on me to be even more social, and to be honest, I haven’t hated his little assignments. But today is jam-packed, and I’m not sure another to-do is in the cards for me.

“My schedule is all flipped around today. I’ve got a virtual working lunch with my publicist, and then I need to try to write in the afternoon. If I hit my writing quota in time, I’ll swing by. When do things start?”

“Five thirty. It’s super casual, so people come and go as they can. We get together every other Thursday night. I’ll text you the location.”

—

When I come back ninety minutes later, the shelves are almost done, and I squeal in delight.

The wall was painted a mossy green a few days ago, and now the walnut shelves look spectacular against the new paint color.

My expression of pure joy makes Josh smile, which is a change from the look of frustration he had before.

The building instructions left a bit to be desired.

“My trunk is full of books just waiting for a new home, Josh,” I say, putting down the first box in the living room. I’m about to head back out to grab another, when Josh interrupts.

“Since it sounds like you’ll probably be too busy for an interview today, what if I throw some pop-quiz questions at you now? It’ll cheer me up from the hellscape that is putting these shelves together.”

“Seems fair. What’s up first?”

“How would your friends describe you?”

“Loyal, great at giving advice, lover of dirty jokes, spicy-margarita connoisseur. What about you?”

“We’re doing two-way interviews now? All right, well, before I let work take over, they would say I am a good listener, occasional life of the party, a logical thinker that you take your problems to,” he answers. “Recently…who’s Josh?”

We both laugh at his self-deprecating joke, and I head outside for another box of books. When I get back inside, it’s another question that indicates he’s going to sneak tough ones in on me. I know his style now.

“How would Ben describe you?”

“Also loyal but silly and open-minded, too. Lover of deep conversations. Unexpectedly adventurous.”

“It’s interesting how our friends and family see different versions of us, isn’t it?”

“It’s wild. To be honest, one of the hardest things immediately after Ben died was realizing that not only was the person who knew me the best just gone, but in a lot of ways a version of me went with him. No one knew me like he did.”

Over the past few weeks, I’ve learned to map Josh’s expressions to his emotions. The slight frown and direct, piercing eye contact I’m getting right now is his way of telegraphing that he quietly acknowledges the depth of my pain and grief.

He doesn’t speak these feelings out loud anymore.

Early on, he heard me start comforting him after I shared a particularly sad story—“It’s not a big deal, don’t feel bad”—and it’s like he decided that he didn’t want to put me in a situation where suddenly I felt the need to provide him solace.

He just lets the feelings and emotions float in the air for a bit.

I like it. It’s new for me, just sitting with my feelings like this. I’m used to tucking them away.

When I come back inside with the next box, he’s ready with the next question.

“Do you ever wonder about the version of Gracie that readers concoct in their minds?”

I stare at him. What made him ask this? It’s quite literally one of the biggest struggles I’ve had with my quasi-fame so far and the thing I’m most nervous about going forward.

“All the time and not just a little bit, either. There are some days it consumes me. The public-persona side of this is really hard. A few weeks ago, Felicity, my agent, told me that we were already getting requests for the movie rights to the book. Can you imagine? My life in movie form.”

“I can make guesses about why that’s tough, but keeping my journalist hat on, what scares you about that?”

“I’ve so far controlled my story and narrative.

The truth is that essays are just a small sliver of me and how I feel.

Same goes for social media—it’s all carefully curated.

The memoir goes much deeper, but it’s still me and my perspective on this crazy, mixed-up year I’ve had.

A movie? I wouldn’t write the script and, frankly, wouldn’t have much involvement in the process at all.

That scares me—there would be a version of me out there that is an artistic creation that people might interpret as real.

It’s a fine line between fact and fiction. ”

“Follow-up: Who would play your dashing but underpaid handyman in this movie?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Josh, but the book is likely to end right before we met. You’ll have to wait for your moment onscreen.”

To be completely honest, I’m not quite sure when the memoir will really “end.” I wrote a bit yesterday about arriving in Canopy and how I feel hopeful for the first time in a long while, but I’m not sure it’ll make the cut.

I do give Josh’s comment a second thought and then raise my hands to mimic a video camera with him in the frame. “But now that I think about it, you would give Harry Connick Jr. a run for his money in Hope Floats .”

He pauses, looking at me with his head tilted. “Is that a good thing?” he asks. “I’ve never seen it.”

It’s a very good thing , I think, recalling late-nineties Harry in those denim shirts and cowboy hats as he flitted around town playing Mr. Fix It. Every preteen girl who managed to sneak into the movie theater had a crush on him, including me.

“It is indeed a compliment, Josh,” I admit, trying not to picture him in a cowboy hat. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

He tosses a piece of foam from the furniture packaging at me and rises to lift up the last remaining shelf.

I reach down to start grabbing books, and he shakes his head at me, telling me to be patient.

The shelves need to get secured to the wall first. I perform a dramatic pout and head out for the last box of books.

“I think my next question might be a big one for you,” he says when I’m back through the door with the final box. “How will you organize your books on the shelves?”

“So many options. I’ve always wanted a book wall organized by color because it looks so pretty, but it doesn’t sit well with my inner librarian—you grow up with the Dewey decimal system, and it shapes your entire worldview.

I think I’ll group them by genre and then be as close to alphabetical as possible. ”

“My very first crush was on the school librarian.” He’s blushing big-time as he says this. I’m not surprised, though. Josh is the most process-oriented, methodical guy I’ve ever met. A librarian is exactly the sort of person I would expect him to be into.

“If I ever need to be evil and distract you, at least I know what costume to wear,” I say, trying to make a joke and also to invite some flirtatious banter.

He bites his lip and shakes his head but doesn’t take the bait.

It’s like I told Dr. Lisa—he’s just not interested in me that way.

Or maybe I’m just bad at flirting? All the possibilities are on the table at this point.

The only thing I’ve succeeded in doing is making things feel weird again, so I decide to remove myself to the writing room upstairs and brainstorm essay ideas for a little bit before my meeting with Lucia.

“Don’t rush,” I say. “The books can wait until tomorrow.”

—

Lucia and I have been hard at work for an hour straight.

We spent the first half covering early ideas and planning for the book tour next year.

Lucia will be my stand-in to work with the publisher on the book tour.

I’m thrilled to outsource that job to her.

She’ll be more direct when it comes to my preferences and the pace that I want to take.

It’s important to me to have a variety of engagements on the book tour.

I want big bookstores that can hold two hundred people, small independent shops where I can speak to a group of twenty, virtual book readings, and the ability to stop by actual book club meetings where my memoir is the selection of the month.

It’s going to be a lot of work, but I can already sense it will be worth it.