Katrina looks flattered, which makes me happy in ways I can’t quite decipher. She moves in the water, lazily pulling herself forward with hands outstretched, her chin barely skimming the surface. “I didn’t know what to think when you proposed cowriting together,” she informs me.
“Probably that it was some elaborate ploy to sleep with you.”
Katrina laughs, her cheeks flushed. “The thought did cross my mind, but then you mentioned being engaged. Seriously, though, a stranger approaches you and wants to write a book together? It seemed . . . unreal.” On the final word, her voice sounds delicate, even fragile.
I stop floating and face her. We’ve drifted deeper out, and I can barely get my feet beneath me. “What convinced you to take me seriously?”
She’s quiet, treading water. The current pushes us closer together. “The more I talked to you, I felt something I never had. It was like you could articulate every thought of mine I didn’t know how to. Like you were bringing my own self into sharper focus.” She smiles self-consciously. “I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does.” I meet her eyes over the shimmering water separating us. Something crackles over the inches of space in the seconds-long glance we hold while we float.
Then the sky splits open, pouring water on us. It literally douses the moment. We startle, looking simultaneously to the sky. I hadn’t noticed the black clouds closing over us. Katrina shrieks a little.
“Run?” she shouts, blinking water from her eyes. I’m already nodding. When she takes off for the shore, I follow her, feeling like I’m moving in slow motion. Together, we grab our towels and clothes, everything drenched, and sprint to the car.
A few feet in front of me, one of Katrina’s sandals slips out of her grasp, falling onto the sand. She doubles back for it, covering her head ineffectually with one hand when the rain gets harder, pelting pockmarks into the beach. I pass her, moving hastily. While I’m unlocking the car, the first boom of thunder rumbles through us.
We climb in, slamming the doors shut. We should have taken Katrina’s car, but I don’t have a car in New York and the chance to drive the Porsche was my only incentive for agreeing to this plan in the first place. Everything is soaked and covered in sand. I should be furious. I’ll have to pay the company a small fortune for this kind of damage to a rental Porsche Carrera—damage I knew would happen if we drove to the beach hours before predicted thunderstorms.
Instead, I start laughing. I don’t stop. Katrina joins me, and suddenly I’m in stitches, my eyes watering while Katrina doubles over in the passenger seat. The rain is coming down too hard on the windows to see anything. The water is a curtain, hiding us in our own private world.
I look at Katrina, her hair disheveled, her eyes sparkling, and I find I’m no longer laughing. There’s sand on her face, right beneath her eye. The next moment, I feel like I’m watching from somewhere else—I reach out, compelled, and wipe the sand from her skin. She stills under my touch, the only sound the furious pounding of rain on the car.
She holds my gaze, oceans of possibility in her huge eyes. I’m drowning in them, sinking into her. I let my hand linger too long.
I glance down at her lips and feel her breath catch. For the first time, I have the impossible need to pull her face to mine. To kiss her. To hold her close.
The stomach-punch of guilt slams into me. I’m not just disgusted with myself, I’m disoriented. I’m happily married, in love with my beautiful wife. My eyes don’t wander. I don’t want to kiss other women. Nor do I sexualize my female friends and colleagues. Katrina is worth more. Even so, it takes everything in me to remove my hand and face forward.
I focus on forcing the idea from my head. I would never cheat on Melissa—and a stray thought isn’t cheating, as long as it remains just that. Which it will.
Katrina says nothing while I start the engine. I have no idea what she’s thinking, though I know her well enough to be certain she’s thinking something. It’s funny how people can sit side by side, separate whirlwinds each self-contained.
When the windshield wipers engage, lightning flashes over the ocean.
32
Katrina
• PRESENT DAY •
The preparation for the New York Times profile is immediate and intense. It has everyone whipped up into a media frenzy, a circus where no one knows quite who’s the ringleader. Liz fights gamely for the role—the next morning we wake up to an email on which she’s copied the entire Parthenon publicity team. They want to “get on a call” this evening. They’re four of my least favorite words in the English language. Get on a call.
The long list of names who will be listening in unsettles my stomach. It reminds me of the endless conferences with my team in the weeks before the release of Only Once. Calls in which everyone would gush about the book, how special it was, how they couldn’t wait to share it with the world.
I only heard the pressure. Pressure for the book to perform to their expectations, pressure to deliver the next one quickly and better, pressure to enjoy every promotion and interview because this was my “dream come true.” I felt like I was on top of the Empire State Building and at the bottom of the ocean at once.
I’m not unusual in what scares me. What frightens me frightens everyone. I’m scared of being nothing. Not becoming nothing, in the sense of dying. I mean the life-in-death of being no one special. Being nobody’s person. Being worth nothing.
When I was young, I felt not very important. I was the middle child of five. I loved my mom, and she loved me, but I was indistinct. I was hopelessly uncoordinated, so sports were out. I was smart in a small town, where smarts earned respectful shrugs and not much more. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t figure out why I existed. Which sounded dark whenever it crossed my mind, but it wasn’t, really, not to me. Just confusing.
When I found writing, I realized what it meant to have something where I shone. Where I could be someone.
It scared me. It scared me to have this thing I’d long instinctually felt I was missing, because I knew with cutting clarity how it would feel to lose it. When Only Once was coming out, those fears finally caught up to me, and even though I got control of my nerves, it took me months, even years, to recover from what they had done. Emotional episodes like those hit like natural disasters. Everything isn’t just repaired once the hurricane or the flood passes. I needed to rebuild.
Which wasn’t easy when some days I felt like I was flunking an exam on myself. I would find myself literally unable to decide whether I wanted to read or rewatch old Gilmore Girls episodes or run in the park. Some days, I dutifully picked plans and executed them.
Other days, the indecision sent me back to bed.
Dating Chris helped. Moving to LA helped, and eventually, I returned to myself. But I’m still scared every day of returning to those doldrums.