Her mouth flat, Harriet looks unconvinced. “Come on. You were ruining your partnership on your own. You’re just mad because I said something you didn’t want to hear.”
I shake my head. Does she know how obvious her retorts sound? How uninformed? “I’m mad because you didn’t respect me,” I say.
“How was I not respecting you?” Her eyes have gone wide with mocking incredulity.
“What you said—” I start.
She cuts me off. “Enough euphemisms. I told you you were in love with Nathan and you couldn’t handle it.” She looks me square in the eye. “Because it was true.”
For the first time in the conversation, I’m off-balance, groping for words in response to ones I didn’t expect. Facing each other from the ends of the room, we’re like prizefighters dancing around the ring, and she’s just dealt me a stinging, head-spinning shot.
Finally, my counter comes to me. “He was married.”
“Yeah, he was,” Harriet replies levelly. “And if I thought you two had fucked, our conversation would have been very different.”
My face feels hot. I haven’t yet found my composure, Harriet’s words ringing in my ears. Because it was true. I hadn’t wanted to face them four years ago, either. I hadn’t wanted to face any of it. I was in the darkest period of my life. It didn’t matter that Harriet and I had fallen into friendship with what I recognized was remarkable ease after Nathan introduced us on the second day of the New York Resident Writers’ Program. It didn’t matter she and Nathan and I had celebrated just the three of us when she sold her first book. Didn’t matter she’d been the first friend I told when my cat died. When she’d walked uninvited into the Florida house the day after Nathan had left, I couldn’t understand why she just wanted to push and prod and sneer.
I drop onto the dark blue fabric of the chair behind me. “Whether it was true or not wasn’t the point. If—if I was . . . what you said”—I can’t help dodging the “L” word—“what good would admitting it be? We had a whole career in front of us. We had lives.”
I must appear miserable, because Harriet’s face softens. “I wasn’t trying to be cruel,” she says, leaning on the wall closer to me. We look a little less like prizefighters now, more like people who used to be friends. “But Katrina, you can’t just pretend feelings that are inconvenient don’t exist,” she continues. While her voice is not gentle, it’s not harsh, either. “I thought you both would be writing together forever, and I just couldn’t sit by and watch you fall for him, right at his side but out of reach. I thought . . . if you talked about it, or maybe got some space or something, it would be good for you.”
I say nothing, suddenly exhausted. We’ve split open the years of silence on the subject, and instead of wary, or resentful, or everything I was when Harriet used to cross my mind, I’m only numb. I don’t know where Harriet’s wrong or where she’s right. I only know I did what I had to do to protect me and Nathan both.
Hesitantly, Harriet leans off the wall. She crosses the room and sits in the chair nearest to me.
“Did you ever talk to him about it?” she asks.
I cut her a look. Then immediately, the combative flicker extinguishes in me. I’m tired of fighting everyone and everything. “Of course not,” I say softly. “Nathan doesn’t . . . do that.” Nathan doesn’t talk about what’s real. He writes it. He uses it to inspire and deepen his art.
“What he said about you in the New Yorker interview . . . He was hurting. I know it,” Harriet says, her voice reaching for me now instead of pushing me away.
I frown, remembering the interview. The sting of Nathan’s words was palpable, physical. It was like emotional food poisoning, worked painfully into my gut, unwilling to let me ignore it. His quotes, cruel and flippant and ever-so-Nathan, were the first I’d heard from him in weeks. “He doesn’t need you to defend him,” I reply, knowing it’s not exactly what Harriet’s doing, yet needing to say it nonetheless.
She receives my frustration gracefully. “Right. Well, none of it matters now, does it? You’re engaged and, as far as I’ve heard, this book is the last you’ll be writing together.”
Her eyes find mine, questioning.
“Definitely,” I confirm, dropping my gaze to the floor. “None of it matters now.” I try to take comfort in the idea, but it feels hollow. Finally, I look up, finding my friend watching me from her chair. Catching myself thinking of Harriet as my friend is reassuring, even fortifying. She is, or I want her to be. Our fight was never about her—not really, I realize. If I’m honest with myself, any anger I had for her died years ago. I was holding on to the ghost of a feeling, telling myself it was real when it wasn’t. “I’m sorry I shut you out,” I say. “I . . . should have talked to you years ago.”