“Oh, it’s . . .” I want to get up, walk out of the room, tell Chris it’s horrible, it was a mistake and I feel sick and I’m a fraud and no one should ever want another book from me. Then I think of returning home, of Chris’s quiet disappointment, of the widening chasm dividing us. “Good,” I say. “Great, actually. We’re really getting somewhere.”
Nathan’s eyebrows rise. He’s no longer feigning discretion, his gaze glued to me. I turn away, facing the wall and the potted fern.
“Fantastic.” Chris pronounces the first two syllables emphatically. I’m reminded of politicians or football sportscasters. “I knew you could do it. You’re talented, Katrina. You’re goddamn talented.”
I wish I could tell him his confidence just makes me more uneasy. I run a damp hand down my shorts. Making matters worse, Nathan shifts in his seat. I have the feeling he’s reminding me he’s listening.
“Is there anything you need from me?” Chris asks.
“No. Nothing.”
“Well, then I won’t keep you,” Chris replies unhesitatingly. “Don’t want to interrupt the creative process.”
I laugh. It’s a laugh that shares more with the jerk of my knee under a doctor’s mallet than with genuine joy or humor. I regret it immediately. Chris, however, doesn’t notice. “Right,” I say.
“Love you.”
“Love you,” I repeat.
I hang up. When I face forward, Nathan is staring, not even making the faintest effort to hide his scorn. It’s the first time he’s looked me in the face today. I’m caught off guard once more, remembering he’s actually here with me, within arms’ reach, not in a photo online. The familiarity in his features is jarring. The way stubble shadows his face like it’s doing him a favor, the way his blue eyes glitter like the ocean outside. The brooding edge of his brow.
Then he smiles. “You lie to your fiancé often?” he asks.
I want to shove the question back at him, ask him how often he lied to Melissa. Unlike Nathan, however, I have a modicum of discretion. If I let myself fight with him—if I let this discussion spiral out of control, it would leave me nowhere I want to be. “My relationship is none of your business,” I say instead, curt and clipped. A conversational Caution—Wet Floor sign.
Which I should’ve known Nathan couldn’t resist. “Of course. I’m just curious,” he says, pontificating like fucking Socrates, “why did he push you to do this? He has to know you don’t want to. What’s in it for him? I mean, money, obviously,” he answers himself. “But I doubt even Chris is that selfish, and you certainly wouldn’t accept for that reason.”
He falls silent, mulling the question over. I hate him for it. I hate how close he’s coming to the truth.
“I honestly don’t know why you’d agree,” he says, “unless it’s to make him happy. Oh, Katrina.” He looks up, mock mortification in his eyes. “Tell me it isn’t that.”
My modicum of discretion flies furiously out the window. “Didn’t you ever do anything to make your wife—sorry, ex-wife—happy?”
The point lands. Nathan’s expression storm-clouds over. His jaw clenches, and he stares past me, cheeks flushing. It is enormously satisfying. Nevertheless, wounding him feels a little wrong. I know I’m only reacting out of my old instincts to not hurt Nathan or pry into his personal life. It’s not the relationship we have now. The memory is just hard to shake.
Suddenly, with the speed of inspiration, Nathan reaches forward. He seizes my computer without my having the chance to stop him.
The next instant he’s typing—a flurry of fingers and keys. I lean over his shoulder to read whatever’s possessed him, ignoring our new proximity. If his font size weren’t eleven, I wouldn’t have to leave only millimeters between my chest and the flat plane of his upper arm.
Nathan’s writing from the perspective of Evelyn, our main character. On her way home, she’s pulled over to the side of the road. Cars fly past her. It’s late at night. She’s just blown a tire, and she’s waiting for roadside assistance. She’s nervous, hands in her—
Hands in her lap, slick with sweat.
It hits me with the force of the cars hurtling past Evelyn what Nathan’s doing. He noticed me hiding my hands, and he’s chosen to write my discomfort into our first official page.
He keeps going. Evelyn’s phone rings in her hand. Her husband’s name displays on the screen. Michael. She laughs to herself—she hadn’t even thought to call him.
When Michael speaks, I know what he’s going to say.
“Hey, babe. How’s it going?”
I watch, helpless, while Nathan renders the conversation in excruciating detail. While the words are Chris’s and mine, the voice is Nathan’s. He’s good, horribly good. He writes with psychological insight and literary intensity, and I feel naked from how perfectly he portrays exactly how I felt in every moment. Evelyn deciding not to tell her husband what she’s dealing with, keeping her fears to herself, realizing she doesn’t want to share everything with him.
He nears the end of the conversation. Michael asks Evelyn if she needs anything from him, once again echoing Chris word for word. I hold my breath while Nathan writes.
Instead of, “No. Nothing,” like I said, Nathan deviates.
The night no longer felt unruly when Evelyn looked out her window. It felt welcoming, the anonymity of the empty sky almost comforting. Evelyn had the impression it was inviting her gently to do what she knew she had wanted to for a while. Into the quiet of the car she spoke four little words.
“I want a divorce.”
Nathan stops typing.
He turns the computer toward me, like I wasn’t reading over his shoulder. “It’s an improvement, right?” he asks, his voice like a loaded gun.
I don’t flinch. I don’t flush. My face is empty of expression. I wish I could say it’s because I’m impassive enough, self-possessed enough for Nathan’s provocations not to reach me. It’s not, though. I’m simply too shocked for emotion. Shocked he’s starting out this invasive, messing with me in pages we’re meant to produce together. From grade school, I remember the moment a pliant rubber dodgeball hit me in the face on the playground. It’s how I feel now.
But Nathan doesn’t get to write my relationship.
I hold on to this truth. I nurture it. I stoke the small fire it sets in me. It is, I realize, what infuriates Nathan. He could imagine Chris and me splitting dozens of times on the page. In reality, it would change nothing.
I grab the computer. Knowing he’s watching me, I carve into his prose, changing, rearranging, embellishing. On the empty canvas of Evelyn’s husband, Michael, I draw Nathan. I have Evelyn describe him as the kind of narcissist only generations of wealth and elite education can breed.