Compared with the veiled war Nathan and I have waged recently, Harriet’s characteristic directness is almost comforting. I sit down heavily. I have an answer, just not one I want to say in present company. When Harriet and I last spoke, the night was uncannily like this one, except without Nathan. We were in the living room, fifteen feet from here. I was pacing the hardwood while Harriet sat with her feet up. When she walked out of the house after, I shut the door on her in more ways than one.
“She’s nervous about having people read her writing.” I lift my head when Nathan speaks. Something strange has entered his voice, something strangled and conflicted. Is he . . . helping me? He won’t meet my eyes.
“Funny how you don’t count,” Harriet replies to Nathan immediately.
I inhale and exhale, fighting the itch to leave the room. “No, I should work on it,” I force out. “What did you think of the pages?”
Harriet studies me. “They’re not bad,” she says hesitantly.
“But?” Nathan prompts.
Harriet stands. She picks up her bag and pulls out yellowed pages paper-clipped together. I catch sight of a printed sentence and know instantly what Harriet’s holding.
It’s an early draft of a scene from Only Once. The product of Nathan’s and my old process was hundreds, even thousands of draft pages we worked and reworked together—a paper trail of us pushing each other for endless tiring, wonderful hours.
The presence of those pages hits me like a punch to the chest. Handwriting dances over them. Nathan’s, straight and slim. Mine, long and slanted. They’re letters from old, practically forgotten versions of ourselves.
I glance involuntarily at Nathan, who looks as wrecked as I feel.
Harriet drops the pages on the table. “Here’s my opinion,” she says. “You two have been assholes to me and to each other for too long. Unsurprisingly, your characters are also assholes. Generally, that’s fine, except it’s impossible to imagine they were ever in love.” She looks between us. “Sure, they’re getting divorced, they hate each other, et cetera. Still, we need to believe there was ever love in their relationship. We need to see it in glimpses. Otherwise, there’s no anguish to this divorce and the story collapses.”
She shoulders her bag and heads for the door. I follow her, hating what I’m hearing and needing to hear more.
“I know you won’t want to,” Harriet goes on, “but I encourage you to look at those pages. You might find them inspiring. Or something.” She pauses, hand on the door. “Or, consider some, like, serious therapy. The way you two are working through your shit is, frankly, weird. Well, this was a blast,” she says, smiling. “Let’s do it again in four years. Sooner, if you’re done being dicks.”
She swings the door wide and leaves into the night.
Processing, I can do nothing but return to the kitchen. I find Nathan hasn’t moved nor have the incriminating pages in the center of the table. We say nothing, eyes fixed not on each other. Finally, Nathan heads for the stairs.
“I’m too tired for reading,” he says over his shoulder.
13
Nathan
I’ve had no difficulty sleeping the past few nights. I expected I would, what with living for the month in the house my estranged cowriter’s fiancée purchased for her to celebrate the most calamitous occasion in my private and professional life. Instead, sleep has come easy. I guess it’s—oh, I don’t know—the exhaustion of writing with Katrina for eight hours, then running six miles. I hit the crisp white sheets, and I’m out.
Not tonight. I’m restless, wide-eyed in the dark. I shift under the comforter, performing my helpless one-person dance of discomfort, pretending I’m searching for the perfect position of knees and elbows when, really, I know exactly what the problem is.
The pages Harriet left are still in the dining room. They’re exposed, documents of my deepest secrets for anyone to see. I don’t want to look at them, I don’t. They’re not just pages of prose. The handwritten edits, the notes we left each other—they’re direct evidence of the way Katrina and I once worked. The way we drew our ideas together, the passion of the process. It’s not Only Once I can’t stand seeing. It’s the us in every edited page downstairs.
I destroyed all the drafts I had. I’m certain Katrina did as well.
Knowing something survived, I’m unable to settle myself. The questions plague me. Which scene is it, festering on the dining table? What moment of our lives was preserved?
Head on the pillow, I negotiate with myself. I have to know which pages Harriet kept. I won’t read them. I swear I won’t.
With my deal struck, I swing my legs out of bed. I don’t check the clock when my feet hit the floor. I know I wouldn’t like the three numbers—I’m certain it’s three—staring up into the darkness. Walking lightly downstairs, I wince with each creak of the floorboards. The last thing I want is for Katrina to know this kept me up.
I feel my way into the kitchen, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. When I reach the table, I search for the pages.
There’s only smooth wood under my fingertips, cool to the touch.
Instantly, I know. They’re gone.
It’s calming, I realize. Katrina surely trashed them. I’m oddly comforted, knowing I’ll never have to face whatever memories were woven into our handwriting. My chest lighter, I head for the stairs, feeling like I’ll finally be able to sleep.
But when I reach my room, I’m forced to a halt. Down the hallway, past my door, there’s light under Katrina’s.
I feel pulled. Hands of a frustrating force I would hesitate to deem fate drag me down the hallway, putting me in front of her room. With every footstep I war with myself and lose. I wait in front, conscious of the intimacy of standing outside a woman’s door in the middle of the night.
After anguished minutes, I fight to draw up my courage. Eventually, I win, my knuckles rapping on her door. In the ensuing pause, I recognize my victory will be Pyrrhic. What could I hope to gain from a conversation with Kat at one in the morning?
Finally, Katrina opens the door. In the uneven light coming from the only lamp on in her bedroom, I note she’s wearing striped shorts and a tank top, which hangs on her lithe frame with grace I wouldn’t have imagined possible for pajamas. Her hair is the way I remember from early mornings years ago, the brown waves wound over one shoulder, brushing her collarbone and below. Her eyes are wary, questioning.
Past her, the pages are splayed open on her bed.
“You took them,” I say.
It’s a stupid observation, the kind I wouldn’t permit my characters to speak because it moves nothing forward, reveals nothing. I’m trapped here now, though. Trapped here with my words, trapped here with the woman who can see through them.