I don’t have the opportunity or the right to give her the whole English language. I do have the chance to ease the pain. I hold out my hand to her. “I’m certainly ready to have fun if you are.”
She looks down. Then she takes my hand.
“I’m ready,” she says, holding my gaze for a long moment.
Together, we walk out into the evening.
38
Katrina
I’m on the dance floor, two drinks in. I have no idea where Nathan is. The club is sensory overload within four walls, the electronic beat pounding through crisp metal railings and black velvet booths. Smoke and lasers obscure the DJ conducting the controlled chaos. I lose myself in the music throbbing against my skin.
Half-heartedly, I try to center myself in Evelyn’s head, working to internalize details of the room, the sensations. It’s why we’re here, ostensibly. Method research, like when we spent seven hours sitting in the Venice airport to pick up descriptive texture for Connecting Flights.
It’s not entirely why I’m here, though. Earlier this evening, what I needed from this trip into the city changed. I want the pummeling music, the chaotic lights. I want escape. If I wind up with some sharp descriptors or poignant observations for Evelyn, so much the better.
The drive into Miami was pleasant enough. Nathan, in his dark jacket and white shirt with several buttons open, was quiet but not stiff. We casually went over the details of the scene we were researching while I gazed out the Porsche’s windshield. Miami seemed a likeable, lively composite of other places I know—the clean commercialism of San Diego combined with the old-school relaxation of Italy and the vibrance of Havana. When we reached the club, Nathan and I staked out the bar. He ordered us drinks, and we lingered, observing things we wanted to incorporate.
When he grabbed his Cuba libre and headed for the balcony, I made for the dance floor. I found immersing myself in the crowd easy. With every movement of my sweat-slicked body, I fought to shake off Chris’s words from earlier. Katrina, you don’t need to get my permission for each thing you two do. I told you. It’s fine. Have fun.
His voice had been cold, businesslike. An agent keeping his client happy. It’d left me feeling sick, hunched over the toilet for twenty minutes while Nathan waited downstairs. Nothing came up. Finally, I found my composure and, putting one heeled foot in front of the other, I left my room. Chris had told me to have fun. I was determined I would.
The song changes, shifting into something slower, even sensual. Which is when I see Nathan. He’s on the edge of the dance floor, not dancing.
Past the crowd, his eyes are fixed on me. His gaze cuts through the fog and the noise, searing me.
I stop dancing.
Breathing hard, I push my hair out of my eyes. The way he’s looking at me is loaded with intention. I feel it on my skin, and I don’t look away.
While the crowd surrounding me continues to gyrate and sway, Nathan walks toward me. He stops in front of me, the swirling lights casting red shadows on his face. Without questioning myself, I reach out languidly, resting my hand in the crook of his neck and shoulder. I feel his palm on my hip. We both inhale. Then we’re moving to the rhythm, together this time.
I’m pressed to him, falling dizzily from moment to moment. Sweat meets with sweat, his skin on mine. I’ve never been this close to Nathan in the six years I’ve known him. Heat pounds in me in every place we touch. I indulgently notice every detail of him I’ve forced myself to ignore, the contours of his chest, the confidence of his fingers on my waist, the gleam in his eyes.
It’s clear from farther down he’s . . . no less preoccupied. I cut every cord holding me back. With a shimmying movement snaking slowly down the length of me, I press myself to the firm place in the front of his pants. His grip tightens. While we exhale together, he closes his eyes.
The revelation washes over me. Its impact is a tidal wave, overwhelming and leveling everything in me. We were always, always, headed for this. Chris doesn’t care. Nathan wants this. I can feel how things have already changed between us. Four years apart and yet we know each other in ways no one else does.
Wasn’t this inevitable? We’ve served the sentence for a crime we never committed. Why shouldn’t we commit it now? There are no possible consequences left.
I tilt my head to look at him. Reaching up, I place a hand lightly on his face. His eyes flutter open.
Slowly, I lean forward, pressing my lips to his.
His fingers dig deeper into my skin. But his mouth is a different story. His lips don’t move. He’s not dancing. He’s not kissing me.
Pulling away, I’m a mixture of confusion and hurt. I search his eyes for explanation. He wanted this. We both did. Who’s he protecting by refusing? Surely not Chris. But Nathan’s eyes are blank pages. While I just watch him, his fingers close over my raised hand. It feels like a caress, until he lifts my hand from his face.
His expression storms, desire colliding with anger. Without a word, he spins and walks off the dance floor.
39
Katrina
I pace the floor of my room. The wind outside is restless, an irritating counterpart to my mood. It’s half past midnight, forty-five minutes since we returned home from Miami. We drove in utter silence, which didn’t surprise me. I know where this discussion will be had.
Sure enough, moments later, pages slide under my door, shoved with such force they fan out on the hardwood.
I collect the pages, which Nathan’s eviscerated in his sharp handwriting. It’s the scene we’d written where Evelyn goes to a club. He’s edited it, adding in the setting descriptions we researched and much, much more. His handwriting is frantic, the pen digging deep grooves into the paper. But his most harried comments come in the conversation Evelyn strikes up with a man standing at the bar.
He’s replaced whole paragraphs, slashing what I’d written and inserting lines and lines of his own fervent prose.
It didn’t matter who the stranger was. She’d already forgotten his name. What mattered was he wasn’t Michael. It was this Evelyn found intoxicating. Only this. Everything he said, every facial expression, was wonderfully foreign to her.
When she let him kiss her, she wasn’t thinking of the man holding her. She was thinking of the man he wasn’t.
Every comment is the same. Nathan drives his point home with punishing strokes of his pen. Evelyn thinks she’s pursuing this fling because she’s doing what she wants. Instead, it’s not about her at all. It’s about Michael.
I know what Nathan really means. What he’s writing to me.
Maybe I was using him a little. It doesn’t mean kissing Nathan wouldn’t have been more, though.