“What do you want to do now?” I ask. It’s a direct question, the kind she told Noah Lippman she didn’t get enough of. While there’s plenty we need to discuss, those conversations will come with time.
Which we now have, I realize. I don’t need to leave her life when we leave Florida. Or . . . maybe she’ll want to leave Florida tomorrow. Without Chris pressuring her, maybe she won’t even want to finish the book. The possibility terrifies me. It’s like I’ve just remembered I’m perched somewhere high over the ground, like I’ve just caught my first perilous glimpse down.
Katrina lifts her gaze, her expression now focused. “I want to write,” she says firmly.
Her response floods me with a painful rush of relief. “Katrina, we can take the day off. We can take however much time you want off.”
“No.” She stands up. “I want to write now. Today. I . . .” She goes unfocused for a second, like the fragile scaffolding of her composure is shaking. “It’s the only part of my life I understand.” When she meets my eyes, I know what else she’s really saying. We still need to sort out where we stand, but I understand what she needs. Sometimes processing emotions is easier on the page.
I feel undeniable pride hearing this resolve from the woman who’d retired from writing. She’s finding herself, pushing past the ways in which we got in the way. I nod, letting myself smile.
“Then let’s write,” I say.
46
Katrina
• FOUR YEARS EARLIER •
We’re just days from finishing Only Once. This has my emotions erratic, uncontrollable, like the needle on whatever internal sensor measures my feelings is wavering wildly. There’s joy and relief, the inevitable counterpoints of finishing a novel, sharpened but simultaneously undercut by the expectations heaped on this book. Then there’s looming depression I can see clouding the horizon. Without Only Once to work toward, to focus on each day, I’ll be untethered, drifting out to sea. I’ll return home, leaving this house, leaving this piece of my life. Leaving Nathan.
He sits at the end of the table, typing furiously, running his hands through his hair. It’s the middle of the day, the summer warmth coating every surface of every room. Despite the heat, I feel a chill. I’ll still see Nathan in New York, I know. It’ll just be different.
Nathan breaks off typing, looking up at me. “Stuck on something?” he asks. “Is it because of my changes to the next scene—”
I cut him off. “No, it fits perfectly. I’m just done.”
He pauses. “Already? Are you trying to make me feel threatened, Freeling?” He cocks his head, smiling slightly.
I grin. “Trying to impress you, more like.”
“As if you don’t impress me every day.”
He returns to his computer like he doesn’t know his words have warmed my skin. I privately soak in them. The moment doesn’t last long. Sighing, Nathan closes his computer.
“I’m going for a run. Then I’ll finish this scene,” he declares.
“Okay,” I say.
“Soon, um . . .” Something serious, even slightly uncomfortable, enters his voice. “We should talk about how much time we want to take before starting the next book. At this rate, we’ll finish Only Once within the week.”
The chill returns. Colder, deeper. Panic runs tremors through my hands, rattling my fingers, which I hope I’ve hidden well enough under the table for Nathan not to notice. I nod soundlessly, feeling pathetic. I just can’t fight how little I’m looking forward to the life waiting for me outside Florida. I don’t want to go home.
Nathan starts to stand.
I stop him, placing my hand on his thigh.
When he stills immediately, I recognize what I’ve done. I’ve never touched him this way, ever. Why I did now is something I understand only in the heated haze of instinct.
I’m not sure if it means anything. I’m not sure it doesn’t mean anything.
“I don’t want to take a break,” I say. “I want to start the next book as soon as possible.”
I meet his eyes. He swallows. The moment stretches, and I expect it to bend under the weight of so many unsaid things. But it doesn’t. I remove my hand, knowing I’ve left it too long.
“I’d like that,” Nathan replies. “What do you want us to write next?”
I hear the question within the question. Not which of our half-finished outlines I’ve chosen, which jotted-down plot I’m sparking to. What he wants to know has nothing to do with books.
Neither does what I say in response. It comes out breathless. “Anything. Everything.”
In my head, I go on. I unravel hopes, hidden fantasies, precious imaginings. I want a whole life with you. Not guilty sentences shoved under closed doors. Not characters speaking our secret confessions.
Nathan and I are speaking in code. It would be completely outlandish to think anyone else would understand what we’re saying in this discussion of what sounds like our writing career. But I’m not having this conversation with anyone else. I’m having it with Nathan.
And Nathan and I have been speaking in code for years.
The messages may have started innocently, the ways we would say I’m grateful for you or I’m proud of you in every “good line” we’d scratch onto each other’s pages, or every check mark I learned to recognize meant Nathan liked something I’d written. Then they started to change. Started to deepen. They became the kind of messages only fit for code. Edits intertwining like embraces. Dreams on and off the page. Sorry to steal your dress. But you look nice.
I hold Nathan’s gaze in the space separating us. Watching his eyes light up, I see the moment it happens. The fantasy in my head merges with the one forming in his. Suddenly we’re filling in each other’s hopes, detailing each other’s dreams with devotion like I never would have thought myself capable of feeling. It’s impossible for me to read his mind, to know his heart. But I do. Because we’ve had years of practice. Imagining together is what Nathan and I do.
It’s how I know he hears everything I’m not saying. He confirms it when he speaks next.
“I’ll need a couple weeks to . . . resolve things at home,” he says. “Then, I’m yours.”
More code, though not the sort only cowriters could decipher. When I felt the first flickers of something in my heart for Nathan, I wondered if I wanted him to leave his wife for me. I decided I didn’t. It sickened me. I knew I needed to hide my feelings until they faded.
Except they never did. This veiled dialogue, this dance of intimations and looks, is the only way I could possibly imagine communicating this. The truth. The one I couldn’t imagine speaking out loud.