Katrina opens her mouth. I’m ready to rise to whatever vitriol she has for me.
Right then, instead, all the fans in the room click off.
In the quiet absence of their hum, I look over my shoulder, checking the clock on the microwave. It’s dark. Power outage. “Well, balls,” I say. The fans were our lifeline. Without them, the heat is stifling. I face Katrina, expecting war, and I’m surprised when I find her smiling.
Just like that, I smile back.
I can’t help myself. My anger slips through my fingers like sand.
“Balls?” Kat repeats incredulously.
I laugh. “Yes, Katrina. Balls.”
Her grin cracks into a giggle, and the sound brightens the whole room. Standing, she sets her computer on the coffee table. “Time for a very frigid shower,” she says enthusiastically.
“Good thinking,” I reply.
She shoots me another small smile before heading for the stairs, all her anger forgotten. I could leave it there, sweep the fight under the rug like it never happened.
I don’t, though. I’m a married man, and in ways I’ve learned to treat Katrina like I would my wife. “Katrina.” She stills, turning to me. “Sorry for cutting the conversation,” I say. “If it’s important to you, we’ll put it back.”
Katrina softens, and I feel a weight lifted from my chest. “Apology accepted,” she says. “It’s fine. You can cut it.”
“Thanks,” I reply.
The pressure is gone. Despite the heat, the room feels like it’s opened up, offering room for fire to kindle. As my cowriter reaches the top of the stairs, she calls down to me. “When I’m out, let’s eat all our ice cream before it melts.”
“I love that plan,” I call back immediately. Returning to my computer, I smile. We’ll have many more fights before this book is finished, and each time, we’ll find our way through. Back to each other.
11
Nathan
• PRESENT DAY •
For the next few days, our fights fuel our writing. Or really, the fights we’re not having. We give them to our characters, letting our own endless discord feed what Michael and Evelyn fling at each other. We put everything onto the page.
I don’t object to the method writing. It’s been my process pretty much forever. When I first started writing, I would craft my stories out of the stuff of prep-school stress, parental dissatisfactions, girls I couldn’t date, how the liveliness and liberation of college would feel. I just kind of went from there, writing my hopes and fears into fiction. Not only did it make for relatable prose, I knew deep down it helped me process. It was easier to channel my feelings into writing. Safer.
It was a lesson I learned early in life—speaking out when my father pressured me to be an investment banker only led to hours-long arguments that ended with him and me like bloodied boxers in our respective corners without a winner. Even with friends, saying the perfect stinging comeback out loud just felt mean. In writing, though? Perfection.
While perhaps not psychologically healthy, the process is productive. Katrina and I pour page after page of the book into our laptops, making remarkable progress even for us. We’ve produced thirty pages in the past three days.
We lead strangely luxuryless lives for people holed up in a gorgeous Florida cottage. We wake on the far ends of the house, listening—or I know I do—with embarrassing intensity for the sounds of each other rustling bedsheets, opening bathroom doors, turning on showers. There’s intimacy we no longer permit in seeing each other unshowered. We used to, on our retreats. I don’t let myself miss seeing Katrina’s pillow-creased cheeks, sleepy eyes, and the unruly shock of her hair spilling over her neck.
In the kitchen, we crunch down toasted bagels, unspeaking. Then we write for eight hours. The dining room is the war room. In the evenings, I pound frustration into the pavement on nightly runs through the quiet, palm-treed streets of Key Largo. It’s my only respite from Katrina, from overthinking the plot points and dialogue we’ve thrown at each other like barbs.
There’s only one potential problem with our new working routine, one Katrina and I have chosen to ignore. We don’t write the flashback romantic scenes. It’s an unspoken agreement. Whenever we reach one, we move right on to the next scene instead. While I know we have to write them eventually, I’m daunted by the prospect. If we’re drawing from our relationship in the scenes where the characters argue, what will we draw from in the scenes of their romance?
I’m contemplating the question while I read the vitriolic passage in front of me, open on Katrina’s rose-gold MacBook. Katrina watches me, her eyes hawkish, sitting with one foot curled under her the way she does. Her expression neutral, she’s pretending she’s impassively waiting for my reaction. I know better. I notice her gaze hasn’t left me.
“The parallels to me are a little heavy-handed,” I finally say.
Katrina is writing Michael to be selfish, full of himself, and rash. In fairness, I’ve written Evelyn petty and fearful. I know exactly what I’m doing. Katrina obviously does, too.
She shrugs. “Only someone who knows you like I do would notice.”
It’s a surprisingly intimate statement. While it’s not untrue, it reflects a closeness neither of us is comfortable with. The room goes quiet, except for the unchanging overture of the ceiling fan and the restless ocean. For the first time since she passed the computer over, Katrina’s eyes flit from mine.
I’m spared having to reply by someone knocking on the door.
Katrina stands up and starts for the entryway, her brow furrowed. “Did you order takeout?”
In the heat of the day’s writing, I’ve lost track of time. Katrina’s guess is reasonable. The past three nights we’ve ordered from various restaurants in town, eating our dinners out of plastic containers while we read what we’ve written. Not tonight, however. “No,” I say. “It’s—”
Katrina opens the door. “Harriet,” she says.
I hear Harriet’s voice, flippantly easygoing like usual. “Katrina. So nice of you to invite me over for dinner after not speaking to me in years.”
She walks in the door, holding a bottle of the pinot noir the three of us used to drink on our retreats. Her heavy-soled boots thud on the floorboards.
Harriet is cool. There’s no other way to describe her. Even when we were young writers coming up in New York, I was conscious of her being cool in ways I could never learn or master. Nothing’s changed about her. She’s dressed in shades of black and gray and wearing an oversized floppy hat.
“I didn’t invite you,” Katrina says slowly, frowning at me.