“I guess I was bored,” she says finally, her voice calmly neutral.
I frown. Katrina doesn’t get bored. It’s not how her mind works. She’s intensely curious and intently observant, capable of sweeping herself up in examining and understanding whatever catches her interest. It’s one of her greatest writerly gifts, the authenticity her prose has from the intuition-level understanding she’s developed of the world and of people in it.
I pick up my knife. “So it really had nothing to do with Chris?”
Katrina’s face hardens for a half second. She sips her drink, and when she sets it down, I can see she’s decided something. “No, it did,” she says. “I’m doing the book because Chris needs the money.” Her voice has shed the practiced nothingness it’s held this morning. The change is subtle—she’s not wry or emotional. She just sounds matter-of-fact.
I can tell there’s more she’s not saying, truths too fundamental to ignore. It’s not on Katrina to earn Chris money. The reality is, Chris is taking advantage of their personal relationship to better their professional one. She’s obviously uncomfortable with the position she’s in, and rightfully so.
I stomp out the flicker of pleasure the news of their discord lights in me. We’re pretending we’re friends, and people don’t gloat over proof their friends got engaged to manipulative, money-hungry assholes. Still, for every speculation I’d had—and I’d had many—I never imagined Katrina’s return to writing had sprung from so much selfishness on Chris’s part.
“Why did you agree?” She sounds like she’s fighting to keep the question cordial. I find myself grateful for her effort. Where our writing is combat, if productive combat, we’re collaborating for once. Collaborating on one respectful, normal conversation. We’re in the same lifeboat, our eyes fixed on the same horizon.
Her honesty inspires candor of my own. “My book sales without you are . . . not great,” I admit. “Publishers, and apparently readers, only want Nathan Van Huysen when he’s writing with you. I can’t blame them, either.”
Katrina’s expression doesn’t change. I fight gamely to figure out what’s going on behind her sunglasses. I’ve seen her non-expression on plenty of occasions in the past—I used to watch her read, in sunlight or lamplight in the rooms of houses we’d rent, and I would try to guess what she was thinking. When she’d close the cover, I could never predict whether she was going to look up, eyes luminous, and want to spend the next hour discussing everything she’d loved, or shake her head, frustrated by everything she felt the writer should’ve improved. I never knew how she did it. How she contained so much and revealed so little.
“I read Refraction,” she says.
Instantly, every part of me leans in, wanting to hear whatever she’ll say next. It’s the moment every author hates—the I read your book, followed either by praise or by damning nothing. In general, it’s a conversation I prefer not to have. With Katrina, I have to know.
“I . . . loved it,” she concludes.
The relief would weaken me in the knees if I were standing. I do my impression of Katrina’s reserve. “I’m surprised you read it at all,” I say genuinely.
“I’ll always read everything you write,” Katrina replies. Again, honesty. I can hear it in the way her voice goes soft, how easily her words come.
We return to our food, the silence less stilted. I find I’m finally . . . comfortable, or close. I’m ready to take the plunge, fully acclimated to the water. “I should have congratulated you when you got engaged,” I say.
I remember when I found out. It wasn’t like Katrina emailed me the news, obviously. It was fucking Facebook, the carousel of baby photos and new houses I wish I could get off, connecting me to people with whom I no longer needed connection. People like Chris Calloway, who of course was the one to post, not his new fiancée, smiling with her eyes shut, his hands clasped in hers with her ring finger small in view while he kissed her cheek. I’m sure she approved of the photo. It was so Katrina, so understated and human, nothing showy. Every day I’ve had the size of the princess-cut diamond on her finger under my nose as we write, and while I cannot be said to respect Chris’s taste, in this I understand how Chris wanted to post it for the world to see.
They were on some balcony somewhere. The photo was from New Year’s Eve. I found the post the following morning, so hungover even the white fabric of the couch in my living room hurt my eyes. I studied their expressions—Katrina’s smile—with the resentful half disbelief reserved for cruelties you knew fate might deal you but hoped it wouldn’t, then I locked my phone. My pounding headache wouldn’t be the only reason I would be unproductive that New Year’s Day.