Audre & Bash are Just Friends

Bash Henry is Audre’s love interest and the novel’s other main character. He is 17 years old when the story opens. In the chapters told from Audre’s perspective, the narrator waxes poetic about his “deep bronzy-brown complexion” (40), “dark curls with blondish tips” (40), and “cupid’s bow mouth” (72), making her attraction to the handsome young man immediately clear.

Williams places great emphasis on Bash’s self-possessed, easygoing personality. He understands himself and his values and takes a relaxed approach to life that contrasts markedly with Audre’s anxiety about the future. These traits complement his love interest’s personality and allow him to model what it means to embrace authentic experience as her “fun consultant.” Bash’s creativity is another key component of his character. He values pursuing his passion for design over paths that would confer greater wealth and prestige, and his goal of becoming a tattoo artist is “the only thing keeping his heart beating” after he is disowned and sent to an unfamiliar city (88). 

Bash’s kindness is celebrated but also presented as a source of conflict. He’s reputed to be a heartbreaker because people fall for him even when he is simply trying to be thoughtful rather than flirtatious. Because Bash is considerate to everyone, Audre spends much of the narrative doubting that his actions toward her mean that he reciprocates her feelings. In addition, his kindness and gentleness make it all the more meaningful when he physically fights Ellison for Audre’s sake. Bash’s calmness, kindness, and creativity contribute to his chemistry with Audre.

As half of the focal couple and one of the story’s viewpoint characters, the dynamic Bash guides the story’s thematic meaning. Belying his wild reputation, he is “brand-new to being an impulsive, ‘adventurous’ teenager” and has spent the majority of his life as a micromanaged overachiever (86). Through the physically and psychologically damaging pressure that Milton puts on Bash to become an Olympic sprinter, Williams critiques the harm that unreasonable familial expectations inflict upon young people. After being disowned by his father, Bash demonstrates the liberating power of learning to embrace authentic experience by redefining success for himself and pursuing his passion for art. Through his relationship with Audre, Bash goes from being wracked with guilt to realizing that he deserves love and isn’t obligated to fix everything just because his father expected perfection from him. He also finds a sense of belonging and purpose: “[F]or once, Bash didn’t feel lost. He knew he had value” (334). These lessons advance the theme of first love as a source of self-discovery. Bash enters Audre’s life to teach her about authenticity, but she ultimately teaches him about love and healing.

Eva Mercy is Audre’s mother and the protagonist of Williams’s adult romance, Seven Days in June (2021). One of Eva’s primary traits is her creativity. She’s a bestselling novelist with legions of devoted fans, and she undertakes a new creative challenge in the form of a memoir in this story. She is a resilient woman who has recovered from a substance use disorder, lives with daily migraines, and has built a successful life that offers her children the stability she lacked growing up. 

At the same time, the author depicts Eva as human rather than superhuman. She is overwhelmed with the stress of juggling her career, planning a wedding, managing a chronic illness, and raising her daughters. She’s demanding of herself and sets exacting expectations for Audre as well: “I get that I’m putting pressure on you to step up, but, well, you have no choice. I need you right now” (141). Eva is highly secretive and hides her own traumas and her family’s complex past from Audre. Eva’s secrecy, stress, and exacting standards for her daughter lead to much of the novel’s mystery and tension.

Eva’s relationship with Audre plays a pivotal role in Williams’s exploration of the theme of family expectations. She teaches the protagonist an extremely idealized version of their family’s past because she is “terrified that if [Audre] knew the truth,” she would “repeat history” (324). Eva aims to instill pride and confidence in her daughter through the motto “Mercy girls do what can’t be done” (94). Instead, her expectations damage their mother-daughter bond and lead the teenager to experience feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. 

Near the end of the novel, Eva begins to build a closer, healthier relationship with her daughter after she dispels the well-intentioned mythos she created about their family. Eva facilitates the romantic comedy’s happy ending by recognizing that she placed unfair expectations on her child and by giving Audre and Bash her blessing: “How can I say that I’ve accepted my past if I’m so haunted by it that I’m keeping you from enjoying your present?” (362).) The novel’s resolution not only presents the young couple’s reunion but also provides reconciliation between Eva and her daughter.