We walk home, enjoying the first cool of the evening. I wish I could bask in the orange and pink sky or the pride in what we wrote. Instead, my stomach is knotted. The day was too pleasant. It scares me. I know where patterns of days like today lead, and I won’t return there.
Katrina walks next to me, the hem of her white cotton dress fluttering in the breeze, revealing glimpses of her calves. She looks contentedly down the road, her eyes drifting like she’s lost in her imagination, her lips half open. The silence is comfortable, which is why I need to ruin it.
“Why are you marrying him?”
I know immediately I’ve shattered our growing camaraderie. It eases the tension in my stomach. Katrina’s eyes slant to me. She doesn’t slow her steps, her sandals crunching on the sandy pavement.
“I love him.” Her voice is frigid.
Good. I need to remember this is here, always under the surface of our performed friendship. I can fake it however long I need if I don’t forget what’s real. It’s not like I believe her, of course, which I don’t say. It’s reassuring, the idea we might lie to each other again.
Because she is lying. Some people wear relationships like cozy sweaters. Others wear them like chains, others like armor. Katrina wears hers like a heavy coat, restrictive, even uncomfortable, if protective from the cold outside world. It’s not quite love, even though it’s not quite the lack thereof.
Pursing her lips, she doesn’t let me respond. “Why’d you get divorced?” she asks, clearly wanting to level the playing field. “Did Melissa leave you because of the rumors?”
She doesn’t specify which rumors she means. There’s no need. “No,” I reply curtly, enjoying the combativeness. “She didn’t leave me. I ended it.”
Katrina is silent. For a reckless second, I want her to ask why. I want the question dangling in front of me like a garish piñata. I want the chance to give in to every impulse, to completely wreck everything between us, to destroy even the possibility of finishing this book. To quit pretending we could ever be friends.
She doesn’t ask why. She doesn’t say anything the rest of the way, and neither do I.
22
Katrina
Since our walk home from the café, it’s been five figurative degrees colder in the house. I know what Nathan was doing, and furthermore, I get it. I’d fallen into old feelings, old emotional cracks I thought I’d paved over. Watching him up on his chair, I felt like I was watching the Nathan who lit up our festival panel events or made our workshop friends laugh. I won’t pretend I’m not a little grateful he pushed us apart.
I’m hopelessly conflicted—I don’t want to be here, writing with Nathan in our house, and I do want to, because returning home would mean facing Chris’s and my poor financial picture and the probable ruin of my relationship.
I have so much practice wanting and not wanting at once.
On Sunday, we give ourselves the day off from writing, the way we used to. We’ve always insisted we need the time to rest and do research. In the past, that looked like outings to the beach, but neither of us broached that possibility today.
While I was reading on the porch in the morning, Nathan had jogged out in running shorts, hardly pausing long enough to wave goodbye before starting off down the block. I tried to settle back into reading, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be cooped up in this house, waiting for Nathan to return. I grabbed my bag, and I started walking.
Harriet’s house is fifteen minutes from ours. When I march up the front steps, I’m sweating from the humidity. I knock on the white wood and wait. I would have texted, except I deleted Harriet’s number in a rage years ago, and if I’d asked Nathan for it, I would’ve had to endure his prying questions on why I no longer had it.
Right when I’m starting to turn around, Harriet answers the door.
“I was wondering when you’d turn up,” she greets me. Her ebony hair is down, falling over her black Cocteau Twins shirt.
“Have a minute to talk?” I ask.
From behind the screen, Harriet studies me for a moment. Finally, she swings open the door. I walk in, noticing immediately she’s remodeled the place. It looks less Florida-quirky, more simplistic. Gone is the retro leafy wallpaper, in its place white walls, dark wood furniture, and marble sculptures. It’s a reminder that not everything has stayed the same in four years.
The other reminder is how Harriet crosses her arms and frowns at me. “No Nathan today?” she inquires. It is not a cheerful or casual question.
I don’t bother answering. “You were out of line,” I say instead. I’m not talking about the café, and she knows it.
Harriet’s eyebrows rise. “Really? Isn’t this conversation a little late?”
“If you don’t want to have it, I’ll walk out right now,” I reply. I give her a look that says the rest. And we’ll never move past this.
Harriet sighs, long and drawn-out. Not exasperation. Resignation. “Fine,” she says. “Let’s do this. You think I was out of line? I was your friend. I was trying to help you.”
“How exactly? By ruining my partnership? My career?” I don’t hesitate in replying. I’ve had half a dozen versions of this fight in my head in the shower. While I never thought I’d have them in person, I hadn’t considered returning here, being in proximity with more pieces of my past than only Nathan Van Huysen.
Her mouth flat, Harriet looks unconvinced. “Come on. You were ruining your partnership on your own. You’re just mad because I said something you didn’t want to hear.”
I shake my head. Does she know how obvious her retorts sound? How uninformed? “I’m mad because you didn’t respect me,” I say.
“How was I not respecting you?” Her eyes have gone wide with mocking incredulity.
“What you said—” I start.
She cuts me off. “Enough euphemisms. I told you you were in love with Nathan and you couldn’t handle it.” She looks me square in the eye. “Because it was true.”
For the first time in the conversation, I’m off-balance, groping for words in response to ones I didn’t expect. Facing each other from the ends of the room, we’re like prizefighters dancing around the ring, and she’s just dealt me a stinging, head-spinning shot.
Finally, my counter comes to me. “He was married.”
“Yeah, he was,” Harriet replies levelly. “And if I thought you two had fucked, our conversation would have been very different.”
My face feels hot. I haven’t yet found my composure, Harriet’s words ringing in my ears. Because it was true. I hadn’t wanted to face them four years ago, either. I hadn’t wanted to face any of it. I was in the darkest period of my life. It didn’t matter that Harriet and I had fallen into friendship with what I recognized was remarkable ease after Nathan introduced us on the second day of the New York Resident Writers’ Program. It didn’t matter she and Nathan and I had celebrated just the three of us when she sold her first book. Didn’t matter she’d been the first friend I told when my cat died. When she’d walked uninvited into the Florida house the day after Nathan had left, I couldn’t understand why she just wanted to push and prod and sneer.