While we write, I feel his eyes move from the screen to my hands folded in my lap. I know what he’s noticing, not for the first time. Just like I recognized Nathan was so strikingly similar to how I remembered him, he would’ve done the same. He would have seen how little I’ve changed from the Katrina he knew, despite the enormity of the upheavals in our relationship. My hair is long, my skin pale from my indoor workdays.
Except for the ring.
The engagement ring I’ve worn for two years now is the one outward sign of what’s changed in the years Nathan and I have spent pretending each other didn’t exist. To be honest, the ring is not the one I would have chosen for myself. But it’s very Chris, for which, I have reminded myself, I’m grateful in other ways. It’s princess-cut, with strands of diamond and platinum sweeping up the sides of the square stone. Which is huge. I have small hands—comes with being five foot four—and I remember how weird typing was with the noticeable extra weight on one finger. With time, I’ve gotten used to the feeling.
Chris proposed to me on New Year’s Eve. He’d told me we could celebrate at one of our favorite hotel bars, and he’d booked us a suite in the hotel for the night. We went. We had fun. It was predictable fun, uncomplicated. I remember feeling grateful for this. Everything in my life for too long had been hard. Working with Nathan, fretting over Only Once, escaping my subconscious in a maze I sometimes suspected had no ending. I wanted something comfortable, ordinary, comprehensible. Enjoying music and drinks with my boyfriend in the company of strangers was perfect.
With minutes until midnight, Chris gently insisted we head up from the crowded bar to check out the room. He walked me to the balcony, the night stretching lavishly below us. Chris handles his liquor well— though there was some pink in his cheeks, his eyes were bright and intense and his speech emotional and clear when he asked me to marry him.
It was easy saying yes. Chris kissed me, drawing my face to his. While he snapped a photo of us, I closed my eyes for some reason. We had sex. I remember feeling happy getting into bed next to him past midnight on what was officially New Year’s Day. I was loved. I was okay. I was moving forward. The future in front of me was welcoming and sure.
Maybe Chris wasn’t the love story I’d imagined for myself. Our romance wasn’t pining and fanfare and fated flourishes. But it was better because it was real. I didn’t need to be in a love story—I only needed to be in love.
In general, I couldn’t care less what Nathan feels when he sees my engagement ring. Right now, however, I doubt it’s helping our progress into the day’s scene. The first page is finished—we’ve written the opening without incident. It’s a flashback, one where Evelyn and Michael have just returned home, exhausted from the long day they spent driving down the coast. A spark between them leaps into flame.
It’s as far as we’ve gotten. They exchange one heated look, and now we can’t push the cursor forward.
“What if we just don’t do the flashbacks?” Nathan proposes, his voice halfway to pleading.
“The book doesn’t work without them,” I say gently. “We have to show the height of their passion.”
Nathan unfolds his leg, putting his other foot on the floor. “Okay, well, what if the height of their passion is . . . gardening, or making pasta? Why does it have to be sex?”
I smother a laugh. Pasta? “Are you listening to yourself right now?” I ask. If Nathan Van Huysen is suggesting something so obviously counterproductive to the book’s interests, then he’s as uncomfortable as I am.
I don’t examine the reasons because they’re not worth examining. When we first started working together, writing physical romance was awkward. Writing anything is vulnerable. It’s stripping yourself bare for your reader even when your content has nothing to do with sex. Nathan and I blushed and averted our eyes and covered over our discomfort with laughter in those early days. Getting to know each other better didn’t make it easier. It made it worse. I didn’t want to think about how my friend liked to undress a woman or how he liked to be touched. I didn’t want him to know what I liked, either. It doesn’t even matter if the things I write don’t reflect my personal preferences. I’ve chosen them, which means enough.
Of course, back then, we were trading pages. It was the only thing that made the process bearable. Now, we’re both forced to perform under the watchful gaze of a partner. It’s the difference between whispering something in your lover’s ear beneath the sheets and saying it out loud in the middle of the afternoon. Nathan and I could never have the intimacy that would make this endurable.
Nathan, whose ears have reddened, has the good grace to smile. “Fine,” he says, his voice strangled with surrender. He dumps the computer in my lap. “Care to get things started?” Hearing his own word choice, he winces.
Nathan’s laptop resting on my thighs, I promptly panic. When I stare down, the screen stares up, like it’s planning on swallowing me and every creative skill I have. “How, um, descriptive should we get?” I stammer out. “Like, body parts, or—”
“Not descriptive,” Nathan replies decisively. Or desperately.
“Says the guy who labored on one whole page of setting description yesterday.”
I swear he nearly laughs. Instead, he sits up straighter. “Katrina,” he says with new formality. “You’re a bestselling author. I trust you to make this choice. I’ll follow your lead.”
I roll my eyes. Placing my fingers on the MacBook’s flat keys, I start to type. I lead us into Michael and Evelyn’s first embrace—writing faster and faster, not letting savage self-consciousness slow me down. I pretend I’m in a bedroom, that I’m writing this for someone else. Anyone else. I finish a passage and pause, certain my cheeks have gone fire-engine red, and we haven’t even made it to the bed yet.
Nathan reads over my shoulder. He inhales deeply, and I watch his discomfort war with whatever idea he’s having. Finally, he reaches over my hands to add more.
He lends new imagery and new passion, his words spilling onto the crisp white background. In a couple of sentences, he makes me feel Michael’s wonder at how much he could want this woman he spends every day with. How he could never have enough of her. While I read, Nathan finishes and leans away from the computer.
I crack my knuckles and start undressing Michael. We’re in a rhythm now, Nathan and me. I describe each place their skin touches, each searing kiss. The computer is hot in my lap. When I finish the paragraph, I slant the screen in Nathan’s direction.
He clears his throat. “I . . . have nothing to add to that,” he grinds out.
I keep going, fingers flying over the keys. I reach the point where Evelyn and Michael slip naked into the sheets. Then . . . I stop. Not even inspiration or every learned instinct I have can help me now. I can’t write this. Not with Nathan one foot away. “Can we please write this part separately?” I ask.