The Roughest Draft(67)

Nathan and I are speaking in code. It would be completely outlandish to think anyone else would understand what we’re saying in this discussion of what sounds like our writing career. But I’m not having this conversation with anyone else. I’m having it with Nathan.

And Nathan and I have been speaking in code for years.

The messages may have started innocently, the ways we would say I’m grateful for you or I’m proud of you in every “good line” we’d scratch onto each other’s pages, or every check mark I learned to recognize meant Nathan liked something I’d written. Then they started to change. Started to deepen. They became the kind of messages only fit for code. Edits intertwining like embraces. Dreams on and off the page. Sorry to steal your dress. But you look nice.

I hold Nathan’s gaze in the space separating us. Watching his eyes light up, I see the moment it happens. The fantasy in my head merges with the one forming in his. Suddenly we’re filling in each other’s hopes, detailing each other’s dreams with devotion like I never would have thought myself capable of feeling. It’s impossible for me to read his mind, to know his heart. But I do. Because we’ve had years of practice. Imagining together is what Nathan and I do.

It’s how I know he hears everything I’m not saying. He confirms it when he speaks next.

“I’ll need a couple weeks to . . . resolve things at home,” he says. “Then, I’m yours.”

More code, though not the sort only cowriters could decipher. When I felt the first flickers of something in my heart for Nathan, I wondered if I wanted him to leave his wife for me. I decided I didn’t. It sickened me. I knew I needed to hide my feelings until they faded.

Except they never did. This veiled dialogue, this dance of intimations and looks, is the only way I could possibly imagine communicating this. The truth. The one I couldn’t imagine speaking out loud.

I’m in love with you, Nathan Van Huysen.

It’s been true for longer than I’ve wanted to recognize. Weeks, maybe. Maybe more, subconsciously. In the space of writing Only Once, something has shifted. I’d hidden it even from myself, especially from Nathan, until this one wild moment, when I could hide it no longer.

Now, Nathan resolving things at home still gives me no pleasure, but I know it’s what’s fair for everyone. Not that he’s ever told me out loud his feelings have changed. If they have, though, we can’t continue this way. Can’t continue pretending we have two lives—with different homes, different relationships, different futures—when really, we’ve begun living one.

Nathan stands. This time, I let him. My skin still feels hot from where my hand rested on his thigh.

I don’t know when it will stop.





47





Katrina



? PRESENT DAY ?

Nathan didn’t go for his run. It’s past midnight, and we’re still writing. My vision stings from the searing white of my computer screen and the halogen glow of the overhead lights. Pink has started to spread on the skin of my pained knuckles.

Nathan, sitting on the couch, has made no move to head for bed. I have the sense he would stay here writing with me through the night if I wanted, which part of me does. I’m dreading returning to the bed I woke up with Chris in just this morning, slipping under sheets with his scent still on them. I know I’ll have to, of course. I just don’t want to. Here with Nathan, words spilling out from my fingers and into the story we’re building together, is the only place I feel like I belong.

I’m writing scenes from Evelyn and Michael’s divorce. I do so with the joyful recklessness I’ve felt coursing through me since I called off my engagement. For years, I was trying so hard to want only the things I thought were safe enough to have. But it wasn’t wanting, I’ve realized. It was hiding. Hiding from myself, from what my heart craved so desperately it terrified me.

I’m not terrified now.

Seeing my computer’s battery is displaying four percent, the flat metal underside hot on the skin of my knees, I close the screen instead of getting my charger. Straightening up in my armchair, I say, “Nathan.”

He looks up. For someone who’s obviously exhausted, he really is unfairly good-looking. I let myself enjoy the sight for a moment—why shouldn’t I? Nighttime stubble shades the hard line of his jaw. His blue eyes gleam with lingering inspiration.

He notices my closed computer. “Done for the night?” he asks.

“You haven’t said anything about what I admitted in the interview. I apologize if it was . . . a shock. I kind of figured you knew,” I say. “Nevertheless, it wasn’t the right way to tell you.”

He slides his computer onto the cushion next to him and focuses on me. “I haven’t said anything not because I didn’t want to. But . . .” His eyes dart from mine for a second and return. “Shit, Kat, you’ve had a huge day. I didn’t want to make it about me.”

“I wouldn’t mind if it were about you,” I reply.

In the silence while Nathan studies me, I’m left with the whisper of the ocean. “Okay,” he says.

He takes a breath. I know he’s composing his thoughts, writing them out in his head, imagining them solid on crisp white pages.

“I’m not very good at speaking my feelings,” he finally says. “I’ve known since I was young how much better I am on the page. In life I’m . . . less. I’m not the man I want to be.”