The Roughest Draft(37)

“Wait, seriously?” I say. “You’re going to do my word just because four people in this café raised their hands?”

“I said I would, and so I shall,” he replies with mock gravitas. His eyes sparkle.

I laugh again, unable to help myself. “You’re ridiculous.”

“This surprises you?” he returns immediately.

I only shake my head, chiding, and return to the computer. The hint of my smile lingers on my lips. Focus fails me—I reread our last sentence over and over until I feel Harriet’s eyes on me. When I look up, she’s staring. There’s no mistaking what she’s thinking, and now, I have no defense. This time, I didn’t just look like I was having fun. I was.





21





Nathan


We leave the café around sunset. Harriet headed out an hour ago, shaking her head while Katrina and I discussed the scene we were working on.

It was a good day, in every way I measure a day. Katrina and I finished the scene we had scheduled, and what we wrote was excellent. What’s more, we enjoyed ourselves. Harriet wasn’t wrong—when Katrina and I collaborate well, finishing each other’s sentences isn’t the half of our synchrony. We finish each other’s phrases, motifs, nuances. My uncle, who rowed for Harvard, would describe the feeling of the whole crew finding their collective rhythm, gliding over the water with flawless force. It’s how I feel on Katrina’s and my good days.

We walk home, enjoying the first cool of the evening. I wish I could bask in the orange and pink sky or the pride in what we wrote. Instead, my stomach is knotted. The day was too pleasant. It scares me. I know where patterns of days like today lead, and I won’t return there.

Katrina walks next to me, the hem of her white cotton dress fluttering in the breeze, revealing glimpses of her calves. She looks contentedly down the road, her eyes drifting like she’s lost in her imagination, her lips half open. The silence is comfortable, which is why I need to ruin it.

“Why are you marrying him?”

I know immediately I’ve shattered our growing camaraderie. It eases the tension in my stomach. Katrina’s eyes slant to me. She doesn’t slow her steps, her sandals crunching on the sandy pavement.

“I love him.” Her voice is frigid.

Good. I need to remember this is here, always under the surface of our performed friendship. I can fake it however long I need if I don’t forget what’s real. It’s not like I believe her, of course, which I don’t say. It’s reassuring, the idea we might lie to each other again.

Because she is lying. Some people wear relationships like cozy sweaters. Others wear them like chains, others like armor. Katrina wears hers like a heavy coat, restrictive, even uncomfortable, if protective from the cold outside world. It’s not quite love, even though it’s not quite the lack thereof.

Pursing her lips, she doesn’t let me respond. “Why’d you get divorced?” she asks, clearly wanting to level the playing field. “Did Melissa leave you because of the rumors?”

She doesn’t specify which rumors she means. There’s no need. “No,” I reply curtly, enjoying the combativeness. “She didn’t leave me. I ended it.”

Katrina is silent. For a reckless second, I want her to ask why. I want the question dangling in front of me like a garish pi?ata. I want the chance to give in to every impulse, to completely wreck everything between us, to destroy even the possibility of finishing this book. To quit pretending we could ever be friends.

She doesn’t ask why. She doesn’t say anything the rest of the way, and neither do I.





22





Katrina


Since our walk home from the café, it’s been five figurative degrees colder in the house. I know what Nathan was doing, and furthermore, I get it. I’d fallen into old feelings, old emotional cracks I thought I’d paved over. Watching him up on his chair, I felt like I was watching the Nathan who lit up our festival panel events or made our workshop friends laugh. I won’t pretend I’m not a little grateful he pushed us apart.

I’m hopelessly conflicted—I don’t want to be here, writing with Nathan in our house, and I do want to, because returning home would mean facing Chris’s and my poor financial picture and the probable ruin of my relationship.

I have so much practice wanting and not wanting at once.

On Sunday, we give ourselves the day off from writing, the way we used to. We’ve always insisted we need the time to rest and do research. In the past, that looked like outings to the beach, but neither of us broached that possibility today.

While I was reading on the porch in the morning, Nathan had jogged out in running shorts, hardly pausing long enough to wave goodbye before starting off down the block. I tried to settle back into reading, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be cooped up in this house, waiting for Nathan to return. I grabbed my bag, and I started walking.

Harriet’s house is fifteen minutes from ours. When I march up the front steps, I’m sweating from the humidity. I knock on the white wood and wait. I would have texted, except I deleted Harriet’s number in a rage years ago, and if I’d asked Nathan for it, I would’ve had to endure his prying questions on why I no longer had it.

Right when I’m starting to turn around, Harriet answers the door.