She nods. “Good,” she replies, sounding more certain than she looks. My hand is still outstretched, and finally, she passes over the pages. “I’m not cut out for this kind of writing,” she goes on with an uneasy laugh.
The errant urge catches hold of me to reach out for her, make some gentle gesture, caress her shoulder or squeeze her hand. The idea flees from my mind as quickly as it came. “This is why we have each other, right?” I say instead.
“Right.” She stands there for a moment longer, framed in the dark of the hallway, like she wants to say more. “Have, um, fun with it,” she says.
“Interesting choice of words.”
Katrina laughs. It relieves some of the stiffness of the conversation. “Good night, Nathan,” she says half sarcastically.
I shake my head, smiling with her. “Night, Kat.” When she heads down the hallway, her bare feet noiseless on the hardwood, I shut my door. Crossing the room, I close my computer on the unfinished paragraph I was working on. The pen I pick up is the one I use whenever I’m revising. It was my father’s college graduation gift to me, and while I know he wanted me to use it to sign contracts or patient charts, the pen was still the closest he’d come to implicit endorsement of my career choice. Uncapping the silver Montblanc, I climb into bed.
The scene Katrina’s written ignites immediately. It’s bold, getting right into the heat of the characters’ passion without hesitating. I’m sucked in.
Katrina was wrong. She’s very, very cut out for this.
Her writing is sensory and charged, wrapped up in conflicting emotions. Jessamine desires a man she can’t want, except here, ensconced in her unconscious. The freedom exhilarates her, and the pages run with naked passion. Katrina labors over the feelings, pushing them to their tipping points.
It’s not just wonderful writing captivating me, I know. Every word, every description is infused with perfect Katrinaness. It’s impossible not to see her fingerprints everywhere. She warned me this wasn’t her fantasy. Of course not, I remind myself.
But in the middle of the night, lying in my bed, with her words of yearned-for pleasures and forbidden embraces filling my head, I do what I know I shouldn’t. I invite the line between author and character to blur. I hear everything in Katrina’s voice, and it sets me on fire.
Working the waver out of my fingers, I put pen to paper. I read everything twice, three times. By the third, I’m complimenting what I like, contributing where I can. I feel it happening while I do—this fantasy is no longer just in her voice. It’s in ours. We’ve built it together. The opportunity dizzies me. Like a dream, these pages let my thoughts run wild, let me indulge in everything I shouldn’t.
Only when I finish do I wrestle down my wayward mind. I tell myself what I do whenever Jessamine and Jordan fall further in love. Getting swept up in their feelings is easy. It’s what good writing does. But it’s only their feelings. This isn’t my fantasy. It’s not a fantasy at all.
It’s fiction.
20
Katrina
• PRESENT DAY •
Our truce is working. Writing comes easier for Nathan and me over the next couple of days. It’s not the psychological roughhousing I’ve grown used to over the past weeks, either. Nathan and I don’t disgorge our grudges onto the page. We’re civil, even easygoing, pointing out questions with candor and understanding. It’s far from the morning we spent in Florence writing Connecting Flights where Nathan put ridiculous dialogue ideas into our characters’ voices while I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, but it’s something.
On Saturday, we decide we need to get out of the house. We used to be frequent café writers. When we weren’t on retreats, we’d hole up in the coffee shops of New York instead of working in each other’s living rooms. I found the rhythms of the background music and conversation invigorating, while Nathan—I think, though I never spoke my suspicions—got uncomfortable when Melissa could hear his creative process. Now that we’re not fighting constantly while we figure out each scene, I’m confident—well, more confident—we can write in public without disrupting our fellow patrons or embarrassing ourselves.
Nathan suggests inviting Harriet. Hiding my reluctance, I agree. Despite our temporary truce when she came over for dinner, there’s still too much bad history between us, more than we can ignore for long and more than I want to confront right now. Which I don’t want to explain to Nathan, especially since I’ve developed a distressing habit of saying more to him than I mean to.
The house isn’t far from town. We follow side streets heavy with greenery, palm fronds and high-canopied trees stretching far above the power lines, until we reach the café Harriet suggested. I grudgingly find myself glad we are here, in Florida. It’s the faintest echo of how Nathan and I felt on our other retreats, as if travel—unfamiliar streets, the ring of novelty in every rustle of trees, sidewalk conversation, or the scrape of shoes on pavement—was pushing open the gates of inspiration.
When we walk up to the café, the converted bungalow’s teal porch and pointed white roof stand out on the street. Inside, the place is perfect. They have everything conducive to daylong writing—wide windows, a large tea selection, lots of outlets. I sit next to Nathan while Harriet sits across from us, stealing inquisitive glances she thinks I don’t notice.
The afternoon has been jarringly pleasant. Harriet’s asked our advice on a syllabus she’s preparing, and I’ve managed to make conversation with the two people who months ago I never would’ve chosen to be in the same room with. Over his shoulder, I’m watching Nathan write. He’s in the middle of a sentence when I interject. “Wait, you need to—”
“Shit, you’re right,” he says.
He deletes.
“What about . . .” He refocuses the sentence.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just don’t forget to reference—”
He writes exactly what I was going to say.
Lifting his fingers from the keys, he smiles. “Not bad, right?” I roll my eyes and pull the computer in front of me.
“Wow,” Harriet says. I stop typing. When I look up, she’s staring, no longer hiding her interest. I realize she hasn’t worked on her syllabus for the past few minutes.
“What?” Nathan sounds uncomfortable, like he knows where Harriet’s comment is going.
“You two are . . . really getting along,” she replies. Her voice holds surprise verging on suspicion.
I feel Nathan stiffen next to me. “We’re trying,” I say, not knowing why my reply comes out defensive.
“Trying? Shit, you’re succeeding,” Harriet says. She narrows her eyes. “How?”