The Roughest Draft(27)
I read over and over again everything he’s written in the margins. His handwriting is like a third character on the page. He rewrites the description of Jessamine, the onetime artist who’s settled for suburbia with the man she loves, or loved. I’m unable even now to resist conceding everything Nathan’s done enlivens the passage. He’s rendered her hair, her posture, particularly her clothing, with not only precision but devotion.
When I get to the bottom of the page, I know what I’ll find. In Nathan’s inimitable handwriting, he’s scrawled like a casual afterthought, Sorry to steal your dress. But you look nice.
Just reading the line, I’m wrenched into the moment when I first held this page, in hands no less wavering. It’s uncanny, how we’ve cycled over the past four years, ending up exactly where we were when we wrote Only Once.
The location isn’t the only similarity. In so many frustrating ways, what just happened was a hateful reprise of exactly how Nathan and I behaved when we were at our worst four years ago. Always wondering, never speaking except in writing, where we scream at each other from the comfortable distance of prose and characters.
Heat pounds in my head. I don’t even know what it is I want. Half of me aches for when everything wasn’t fucked-up with Nathan, the happier days when he and I would exchange ideas easily and, god forbid, laugh while writing. The other half wants to do nothing except be furious forever for the damage he did to our partnership. I’m desperate for whatever would cool me off. My writer’s imagination flits past everything I’d wish for. Winter weather, iced tea with no sugar, vanilla ice cream.
In the next moment, I’m pulling out my phone. I’m dialing a number I know as well as my own. It rings and rings, and I have a feeling I’m going to voice mail.
Instead, when Chris picks up, his voice is heavy with sleep. “Katrina,” he exhales. “What’s wrong?”
The words rush out of me. “Come to Florida.”
“Come to—” He repeats my words with incredulity. “Katrina”—he rustles like he’s checking his phone—“it’s midnight. For me. It’s three for you. Why are you even awake?”
I had no idea, which I don’t say. I’d lost track of time. The idea I’ve been rereading the pages for hours frustrates me. “Just—come,” I get out. “Stay with me.”
“What? I can’t just come to Florida.”
“Please.” I hate how plaintive I sound, how hungry. How defenseless I feel perching on the edge of my bed. “You can work remotely,” I tell him. This is important, I know. He would never consider coming if he’s not promised plenty of computer and phone flexibility.
“Katrina.” His voice has changed. He’s shaken off sleep, and I recognize the firm calm in his words. “You don’t need me to come to Florida. You can do this.”
“I do. I do need you.” My voice is stripped bare. Where Nathan and I can never be honest with each other, I can be with my fiancé. I grasp on to the idea with wild conviction. It’s why we’re together. It’s why I’m here. This whole conversation is strikingly reminiscent of how we fell in love in the first place. I called him needing help and he was there for me. He’s always been there for me. He’s picked me up every time I’ve needed him to.
In the long pause over the line, I imagine having Chris here. Yes, his presence would irritate Nathan, but he would temper the hostility that’s impossible to escape in this house. Instead of reading and rereading the same page stashed under my pillow, I could retreat into Chris’s arms every night.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he replies finally. I know every nuance and inflection of Chris’s voice like they’re the cross-streets on my drive home, and I recognize when decisiveness has won out over reassurance. “I’d only be a distraction. Why don’t we discuss this tomorrow, babe? It’s late, and I have a seven a.m. call with a publisher in London.”
Unbeknownst to Chris, I crumple, tears of rage filling my eyes. In the slanted shadow my lamp casts, my bedroom has never felt more like a cage. He’s not going to come, even after I prostrated myself asking him. I think it’s possible for people we love to quietly, even unknowingly, snap some tether holding us together. I wonder if it’s what Chris has done now. I want to feel like I’m speaking to the Chris who clasped one hand over my eyes while he walked me into the study in our home in LA, surprising me with towering white bookshelves holding my entire collection. The Chris who watched seasons of cooking shows with me when I got engrossed in them one summer, despite the fact that he couldn’t care less.
Somehow, I don’t feel like it’s the same Chris on the line with me now.
“Sure,” I say. “Fine.” I hang up, not giving him the chance to say I love you. Not caring if he was going to.
Returning my phone to the nightstand, I cast one final glance at the page of Only Once, my eyes lingering where they shouldn’t.
I give myself one second, two, before I shove the page into my dresser drawer.
15
Katrina
? FOUR YEARS EARLIER ?
We’re on Harriet’s expansive porch. The day is warm with the kind of breeze I could bask in forever, the gentle wind coming off the ocean like a greeting. I’m curled up on the porch swing, one leg folded under me, my sandals on the deck. Harriet’s beside me. Nathan’s in the Adirondack chair across from us, scribbling on the pages I wrote last night.