Her expression closes up. “Yeah, well. It’s true.” She continues walking, like she’s decided this part of the conversation is over.
I follow her, thinking back to last night, when she touched me, when I had to fight down everything I wanted. She’s just revealed she has the type of relationship where I could do those things. I should be excited. Yet somehow, I’m not. Not while she’s unmistakably unhappy, and furthermore, the idea of sleeping with her, then sending her home to Los Angeles and Chris has me nowhere near excited.
I have to remind myself that while I know Chris’s feelings on the matter, I still don’t know Katrina’s. Surely, if she felt the way I did last night and knew she had permission from her fiancé to act on those feelings, she would have. She didn’t, though. I know what it means.
“We shut down the rumors. All of them.” I say decisively.
Katrina blinks, surprised. “And the book sales?”
“We’re writing a fucking good book,” I say. “It doesn’t need rumors about us to sell.”
She’s silent. Finally, she nods. “The truth, then. We tell them nothing ever happened between us.” Her voice gathers conviction, momentum. “And we split because . . . ?”
She’s right. We can’t tell the whole story.
“Because writing a book with someone is hard. We needed space,” I say. “That’s all.” It’s not all. But that piece of the truth is for us and no one else. If we’re ever going to confront what happened, it won’t be in front of a reporter. It won’t be to make our publisher happy or promote a book.
Katrina looks over, smiling slightly. “This is really going to piss Chris off.”
I don’t let myself laugh. “Does it bother you?”
Her smile doesn’t change. “No.”
34
Katrina
• FOUR YEARS EARLIER •
His hand. His fingers near my lips. His eyes.
The thunderstorms haven’t subsided. I’m in bed, reading, diligently ignoring the feelings coursing through me. Except when I turn every page, in each split second, my memory transports me to the beach. To Nathan’s car. I replay the moment, envisioning every detail. His hand, gently brushing my cheek. His fingers, featherlight on my skin. His eyes, dipping down to my half-open lips. The way I hold my breath, waiting.
When he started the car, I was ashamed of my own disappointment. Nathan is married. I cannot want to kiss him. Repeating this to myself under the covers, I hardly notice the echoing roll of the thunder outside.
But I’m pulled from my thoughts by the whisper of paper on hardwood, cutting through the pattering rain. I get out of bed and find pages have been slid under my door.
I check the clock. It’s nearly two a.m. Wait, it’s nearly two a.m.? I’ve flipped pages and fended off memories for three hours? Regardless, the new pages confuse me. Nathan never writes this late into the night—he prefers to start each day well rested. What’s more, he never passes pages under the door. He just gives me scenes in the morning. He would’ve seen my light was on when he dropped these off. Why didn’t he just knock?
I pick up the strange, secretive packet. They’re warm, the edges freshly curled from the printer. It’s the best feeling. For a second, I can’t resist holding them to me, soaking in the heat.
Then my breath hitches when I realize what I’m holding. I read, lingering in front of my closed door, the words pulling me in. It’s the scene where Jessamine and Jordan have their first kiss.
Except in the outline, this scene doesn’t come until much further in the story. Nathan’s moved the kiss up into the scene we were stuck on. It’s an enormous deviation from the outline, which immediately has me wondering why he didn’t discuss the change with me first.
When I keep reading, I know.
The scene is set on the beach behind Jessamine’s and Jordan’s neighboring lake houses, where they’re vacationing. It’s early in the morning. They’ve woken up early to watch the sunrise while their spouses choose to sleep in. Returning to my bed, I read on.
They ran up from the water, kicking sand and silt as they raced to the dock. Jordan’s feet tingled from the shock of the cold water. He didn’t know why he’d dared her to run into the lake, or why she’d done it, or why he’d followed. Catching their breath on the dock, they overlooked the water, their backs to the homes where their spouses slept.
The fog curtained over the lake, pink in the morning light, hiding the far edge from view. Everything was quiet, their own private world.
I flip pages, feverish. Because I know what Nathan’s describing.
It’s our morning, without the thunderstorm. He’s captured the quiet, the early sunlight, the breathlessness perfectly.
Jordan’s eyes wandered from the water, finally finding Jessamine, whose gaze was fixed forward. Her chest rose and fell beneath her bathing suit and the white cover-up she didn’t bother to remove before running in. In a few moments, she wouldn’t be winded. Neither of them would be.
What Jordan wanted fell onto him instantly, like it dropped out of the sky, yet it made him weightless. He knew it was wrong. Nevertheless, he felt pulled. Reaching forward, he placed his hands on Jessamine’s hips. She looked up, unsurprised and wanting.
Jordan did what he’d imagined doing for so long. What he could have done only under the rosy dust of dawn. He kissed Jessamine, and she kissed him.
I put the pages down, flushed, head spinning. It’s different from how Nathan usually writes. His prose is immediate, personal in a way his studied poeticism usually isn’t. I force myself to finish reading what he’s written.
Jessamine reacted like she’d imagined the kiss the same way he had, her hands rising to his face, running through his hair. Plummeting together into passion, they were joined. The kiss was erasing, engulfing everything surrounding them—the lake, the houses, the day still breaking—into empty ecstasy.
They withdrew, more out of breath than when they’d raced to the dock. In the silence, they said nothing. Jordan noticed sand from their sprint under Jessamine’s eye.
Lifting his hand, he swiped it from her cheek, his fingers gentle on her skin.
It’s then I know Nathan’s not writing our characters.
At the bottom of the last page, he’s scrawled a message. I figured out what he wanted. No other scene could work.
I reread the pages over and over for the next hour. I don’t change a thing.
35
Katrina