But when I focus on the page, nothing comes out.
I can’t write. I find myself imagining precisely what will happen when I do.
I’ll have everything I want.
The reality cools my mind. I push myself to render the details, just like if I were writing a scene. Nathan will return home, where he’ll end his marriage. Then, after some weeks, some impossibly short time . . . he’ll return to me. And he’ll never leave. He’s courteous enough that he’ll give Melissa their apartment. He’ll use my bathroom, watch TV from my couch, sleep under my white duvet. With me. I’ll have him, then and forever.
In a year, Only Once is going to come out and be a huge success. I can feel it. Every single page is electric. The echo of finishing it today hasn’t stopped reverberating in my ears. It’ll change our careers. Change our lives.
For my entire professional life, I’ve stared up the side of this mountain I’m climbing with Nathan, finding clouds obscuring the summit. Now, the clouds have parted. The way is clear. I imagine reaching the peak not long from now, imagine how it’ll feel gazing down from the dizzying height. I’ll be struggling in the thin oxygen.
I feel paralysis seeping in even now. I can’t. I can’t have everything at once, everything I’ve ever wanted.
Especially not when Nathan’s put his promises into words like these. Whatever he thinks he feels is too wrapped up in a story he’s telling himself, the story of us. It’s plain in the pages in front of me. He couldn’t even put his feelings for me down without fictionalizing them. That’s how real they are.
But real life is everything else. Everything continuing on once the story ends. I’m not certain which one Nathan wants, the story or the everything else.
The pen falls from my hand. What I’ve been feeling this summer was, I realize, just the ominous pull of the current. Now I’m swept off my feet. Sucked out into very deep water. The future is overwhelming, suddenly here, daunting and mine to lose. And I’m thrashing furiously under the surface, not sure which way is shore. And I’m scared.
Because the true, true horror, the one seemingly no one realizes but me, is that once you have your dreams, all you have left is the chance to lose them. It’s inevitable. Losing writing will hurt. Losing Nathan—
It’s like some switch flips in me, leaving me unfairly furious. He put his words down on paper, where they’re fucking perfect, immaculately unmistakable—where they’re fiction.
Where they’re easy to destroy.
I walk downstairs, my heart pounding, my head memorizing every single word written on the page in my hand. The living room is dark. One forgotten coffee mug sits on the side table. There’s something foreboding in how normal everything looks, like it’s ready to be disrupted. I walk to the fireplace we’ve never once used.
Hands shaking, I reach for the lighter.
This way, Nathan can return to his wife, to the life that’s real. This way, I’ll fall from a lower height, one I can survive.
It takes me two tries for the lighter to spark in the dark frame of the fireplace.
When it does, the flame burns steady.
53
Nathan
• PRESENT DAY •
Katrina walks five or six steps in front of me. In the hallway, I follow her outline, my heart like a drum.
She leads us into my bedroom, not hers. The choice is inspired, of course. It’s utterly sexy, the confidence, the self-possession of taking me to my bed to sleep with me. When I walk in, she’s sitting up on the bed, wearing nothing except her underwear. Her eyes fix on me with gentle invitation, her legs folded loosely under her—the legs I’ve watched her reposition countless times while we work, except now they’re bare, only one soft triangle of fabric separating me from what I want.
I linger in the doorway, trying to memorize every detail. The waterfall of her hair spilling over her shoulder, brushing the tops of her breasts. The hinting curve of her rib cage under her bra.
But my body wins out. I’m pulled forward, hands finding those curves, my lips crushing to hers. She kisses me fiercely, clinging to me, her hands taut in the fabric of my shirt.
Which I tear off. I catch her leaning forward in one smooth motion, reaching—her bra falls, her wonderfully soft chest meeting mine when I pull her to me. When I reach up, caressing, the small, gasping moan I hear escape her undoes me.
“Fuck,” I say into her neck. She lifts her chin, the motion perfectly synchronous with mine, like we’ve practiced this dance. It might be because we have in dreams—I know I have. But I don’t think it’s why we know each other’s movements before they happen. Why her fingers find mine to interlace over her breast. Why she knows to spread her knees when I reach to cup her lower down.
I think it’s the gift of being us. We’ve expected, examined, chased each other’s instincts on the page so often we’ve internalized them. We write like we’re one. Now, we’re moving like we’re one.
“Yeah,” she pants, nodding. “Fuck.”
I laugh while I figure out why this is funny, pausing only to join her in quick, deep kisses. “I’m glad we agree on the word choice,” I say.
She grins, then pretends to contemplate, leaving me to continue kissing her neck. “Hmm,” she says. “Now I’m not sure. Could we try a few synonyms?”
“I’ll have you trying plenty of synonyms when I get these off,” I say, tugging her underwear up teasingly from her hip. She laughs, spontaneous and real, and it’s the greatest sound I’ve ever heard. It makes me crush her to me, feeling her small body shake with the echoes of humor and delight—which of course change to a pleased whimper when skin meets skin down the whole length of our chests.
She pulls away from me. From the spark in her eyes I know instantly she’s not done with the joke. “No elaborate metaphors, okay?” she demands. “When you talk dirty to me, I want it normal. No trying to win the Pulitzer Prize. Just sexy. Got it?”
“Good note,” I reply with faux-fancy respectfulness, imitating the tone everyone would use in creative writing courses. “Just sexy. I’ll workshop it in.”
“Yeah.” Kat nods. “Workshop it in, Van Huysen.”
We’ve separated for this repartee, her fingers still interwoven with one of my hands while my other holds the inside of her thigh. Her eyes smolder into mine.
I feel the moment when we realize we really, really want to return to kissing. We rush forward with new fevered intensity, everything sweeter for the pause. She reclines flat on the comforter, her hair splaying out while I shower her with kisses, over her collarbone, her stomach, the upper hem of her underwear.