“If it’ll help you write faster, feel free to remove your shirt,” I offer.
He barks out a laugh, and I know we’re both remembering the moment we shared this morning.
“Excuse me,” Harriet says indignantly from beside me. “I do not consent to seeing Nathan shirtless. Take that shit back to your bedroom.”
“Bedrooms!” I reply immediately, emphasizing the plural.
Harriet rolls her eyes. I check Nathan’s reaction furtively, wanting to know if he’s bothered by Harriet’s comment. He’s already returned to writing in the margins of my pages, lost in thought. Shaking off the question, I return to my screen. It’s just how Harriet is, I remind myself. She makes innuendos about me and Nathan every now and then, just a running joke. Nothing more. If there were even the hint of feelings between me and Nathan, they’d never progress past hidden unanswered questions. Nathan is married, which I respect—or I would if his marital status was even relevant to me. Which it is not.
I force myself to focus. Rereading my previous lines, I continue working on the scene I was writing until I feel Nathan’s eyes on me. When I look up, he’s staring. He smiles sheepishly when I catch him. His gaze returns to his page, mine to my computer. Yet, fingers on the keys, I can’t think of what to write. Nothing comes. Minutes pass, and once again I feel Nathan’s eyes on me. This time, I don’t look up.
Finally, Nathan stands. “Done,” he says. “Swap?” I nod eagerly, and he walks over with the pages he was working on. When he holds them out, I grab them with curiosity I don’t hide, passing over my computer in exchange without complaint. He returns to his chair, and with the immediate ease of years of writing every day and years of writing with me, he picks up the scene where I left off.
I feast my eyes on what he’s written for me. His scrawl is everywhere, lively, insistent, leaping from line to line with unmistakable passion.
What he’s done with the scene steals my breath. There’s new yearning in Jordan’s perception of Jessamine. Nathan’s colored his every description of her like he’s drinking in the details.
Yet it’s not Nathan’s prose I find breathtaking, not this time. It’s how he’s written Jessamine sitting just like I am, one leg folded beneath her, wearing exactly what I’m wearing. Desperately, I rationalize his choices. It’s just easier to describe something you’re looking at rather than inventing it. It doesn’t mean anything more than that.
As for what he’s written at the bottom of the page, I don’t have a convenient rationalization. Nathan praises me all the time. My word choices, my dialogue, my poise and professionalism. The pair of short sentences he’s written shouldn’t surprise me. Never, though, has Nathan’s praise looked like this.
Sorry to steal your dress, he’s scrawled. But you look nice.
16
Nathan
• PRESENT DAY •
When Katrina slams open my door, the sun is shining. I wake, disoriented, realizing it’s morning. It is the only information I know with certainty.
I feel horrendous. Checking the clock on the nightstand near my pillow, I read 7:12 a.m. The early hour explains why I feel hungover, emotionally and physically, my head a painful lump of chewing gum and my eyes stinging. When I last looked at the clock, I recall it displaying almost four a.m. I rustle self-consciously in my sheets, shifting onto my elbows. I’m shirtless, I remember, and I’m sure the state of my hair is criminal.
Katrina does not look hungover. She’s freshly showered, her eyes shining with morning-person energy. In her slender hands, she holds a mug, steam rising invitingly from the mouth. She walks into the room, her posture sharp.
“What are you doing?” I ask, honestly unable to understand what the fuck is happening right now. Katrina is in my room. She’s voluntarily putting herself within fifteen feet of me. With—
“Made your favorite.” She holds up the mug.
The smell hits me. My hangover cure of choice, whether alcoholically or emotionally inflicted. The spicy, woodsy scent of coffee fills my room, and momentarily I forget it’s Katrina Freeling holding the cup. I know without knowing she’s made it exactly right. No cream, no sugar, using the French press downstairs. Which she learned to use for me. Katrina hates coffee herself.
She gestures to the nightstand. Warily, I nod.
While she approaches, I find myself making mental notes of her appearance, her demeanor, filing away details I’ll later spin into prose. The way she’s pushed her damp hair behind her ear, the gentle curve of her eyebrows. Her lips, a shade past pink and shy of magenta. I don’t make a habit of drawing inspiration from real people’s physical characteristics. Katrina is the exception. I can’t help reaching for her hands, her eyes, her smile when writing.
She puts the coffee down.
“Is it poisoned?” I ask.
Her lips quirk in what couldn’t have been a smile. I feel a flash of victory then chasten myself. Smiles from Katrina are points in a game I no longer follow. Without prelude or explanation, she sits on the foot of the bed, her hand resting just inches from my leg, still under the cover. I shift slightly, reestablishing distance. We used to hang out this way, easy early mornings of discussing the day’s pages or where we would walk for lunch. I don’t know how I ever managed being this close to her on a daily basis.
“I’d like to propose a truce,” she says.
I straighten up, not even pretending the suggestion doesn’t shock me. The movement is unconscious, and I don’t realize until it’s happened the comforter has slid six inches farther down my shirtless chest. Katrina notices. I catch the split-second dip her eyes make. When she lifts her hand, I feel how hard she’s working not to stand up and resume our stiff separation. She doesn’t budge.
“What would a truce look like?” My voice comes out skeptical.
“Neither of us wants to be here,” Katrina explains calmly. “But here we are. There’s no escape except a finished book. Every day for the next month you and I will be creating fiction together. So let’s embrace it. Let’s live a fiction.”
It’s a clever speech, one I have the feeling she’s prewritten, crafting dialogue for herself the way she would for our characters. However, Katrina is nothing if not skillful. I have to concede I’m intrigued. I sip my drink, Katrina’s white flag of black coffee. Even over the scent, I can smell her hand cream.
“And which fiction would that be, exactly?” I permit myself to ask.
“The one where we’re reconciled writing partners eager to collaborate again.” Katrina’s voice doesn’t waver. “For two months, we can tell ourselves this story.”