“I shouldn’t have dropped our friendship because I couldn’t face things with Katrina,” I say, pressing past her redirection. While I’m not used to this kind of opening, I have momentum now. I’m not giving it up. “You have to know it wasn’t about you.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem,” Harriet returns, the first hint of frustration entering her voice. “It wasn’t about me. Everything in your and Katrina’s lives is about each other. Whether you’re friends with me, whether you’re not friends with me—it all comes down to what’s happening between you two.”
I rub my neck. Guiltily, I understand exactly what she’s saying. I remember how often over the past few years I’ve congratulated myself on not missing my friendship with Katrina, on how much happier working on my own makes me, only to realize I was still . . . fixating on Katrina. Harriet’s called me out on my myopia, and it feels like a kick in the gut. “I know I’ve been a shitty friend,” I say feebly, “but I want to point out I’ve hung out with you this whole trip, even while Katrina and I hated each other.”
“Oh my god,” Harriet snaps. “You literally never hated each other.”
This stops me. It felt like hatred, I want to say. Except I don’t. Because . . . I know, deep down, it never really did.
“You’re writing a book about divorce,” Harriet continues, “and somehow it’s the most romantic book I’ve ever read.” The gentle sincerity in her voice gets me to pull my eyes from the window overlooking her pool, where I’ve had them fixed like a penitent kid in the principal’s office, and study her expression. She looks a little sad. “You and Katrina are incapable of hating each other,” she says.
Heat steals up my neck, into my cheeks. Harriet’s small smile confirms she’s noticed. Was I really so easy to read? I’ve practiced nestling characters’ innermost insecurities and instincts under layers of coping mechanisms, obfuscations, unreliable narration. Was every one of my own emotions just scrawled over me for everyone to see? I thought I was submerging them in fiction. It turns out I wasn’t hiding anything.
Not the point, I remind myself. “Regardless, Harriet,” I say. “You’re my friend. I’m going to do everything I can not to fuck it up, but if I do, I want you to call me on it. Right now”—needing her to know I mean every word, I steady my voice—“we’re going to celebrate your book deal. We’re not going to talk about Katrina. We’re going to drink champagne, and we’re going to commemorate how fucking great it is my friend sold her next literary sensation.”
Harriet laughs. I’m inexpressibly glad. Downing her drink, she points the rim of her empty flute in my direction. “I like that plan,” she pronounces. “But first”—she narrows her eyes, sly—“I have to know. How was it?”
I’m opening my mouth to protest when she holds up a hand.
“Do not give me that I-don’t-kiss-and-tell crap,” she commands. “You’re a writer. One way or another, you write every one of your experiences down for the whole world to read.”
Defeated, I can’t help grinning. It’s extraordinary, really, how well Harriet has put into words what I’d hoped Katrina understood last night, what I was too full of feeling to express outright. She’d wondered whether what we had was real or fiction, but the question collapses into itself. Fiction comes from truth. It is a wonderful, imaginative, flourishing thing grown from a seed of real feelings, real desires, real fears. No artist ever creates from nothing. We work from what we’ve experienced, inspired by the unique piece of the world we see. It’s why art cannot be replicated. And it’s why what Katrina and I had was always real, even when it was only on the page.
“I’m not sure you want to know,” I say.
Harriet smiles while she pours her next glass of champagne. “That good, then?”
Images and raw feeling flood me. When Katrina’s hand was in my hair, I found myself in the eye of the storm and within the whirlwind at once. The ocean, the night, everything followed our rhythm, echoing how we breathed into each other. It was like fiction. It was magic and it was life.
“That good,” I repeat.
“Gross,” Harriet says fondly. “I’m happy for you. You certainly waited long enough.”
The truth is, I would’ve waited longer. For Katrina, I would’ve waited forever. “Enough about me,” I say instead. “Let’s talk about your book. Tell me everything.”
Harriet’s smile softens. Her eyes start to sparkle. While she speaks, I hold dearly onto every word, hoping with every minute I’m showing her how I won’t cut her out the way I wish I never had. It’s nice—I feel present. With the pink flowers rustling out Harriet’s kitchen window, the sunlight warming the room, I recognize I’m living my own life, the one I’m learning to pull off the page.
50
Katrina
• FOUR YEARS EARLIER •
When Nathan returned from his run, his hair windswept, he rushed upstairs. I couldn’t help smiling. It was perfectly Nathan. The night we turn in something huge, he’s springing upstairs to start something. I recognized the fresh frenzy of inspiration in him. I’ve seen it in the seat next to mine on international flights, on mornings when he stands in front of his computer, coffee untouched on the counter, in his pajamas, too consumed by his ideas to move. It’s incredible, if also unnerving.
I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the night. When I return upstairs from grabbing a glass of water before bed, I notice his door ajar, his light still on. It’s nearly eleven—I was reading, engrossing myself in one of the books I’d packed but not found the time to open.
Past the door, I see half of him. He’s hunched over his desk, writing under the yellow light. I notice he’s not on his computer. His hand flies over the page of the leather-bound journal he uses for brainstorming and freewriting whenever he’s working through something big.
I knock lightly on the door, which swings open. “You seem inspired,” I say.
He straightens up. When he spins to face me in his chair, I falter. His expression is unusually electric, even for Nathan. “Yeah . . .” he says. “Just finishing something. Are you going to sleep?” He seems to force his words past ideas or feelings moving impossibly fast.
I don’t know how to read his demeanor, whether he’s distracted or excited or nervous. Why he would be nervous, though, I can’t figure.
“I’ll stay up for a bit,” I say uncertainly.
“Good. Great,” he says emphatically, like my response was very important. “Wait one second.” While I linger in the doorway, he returns to his journal, where he scrawls one more sentence then caps his pen. I’m confused when he rips the page out, tearing it carefully so the edge is neat.