Her hanging fragment is enough to pull my focus from our scene. I don’t know how she’s going to finish the sentence. What are we to each other if not writing partners? Our creative collaboration is where our relationship began. We weren’t even friends first. I search her face for clues, reading nothing in the gaze she’s fixed somewhere past me.
“You’re the guy I’m at the beach with,” she finishes, smiling. I register my split second of disappointment before she continues. “Don’t make me replace you.”
Frowning, I gesture to the open sand. “Katrina, there’s nobody here to replace me. Because it’s seven in the morning, and it’s about to rain.”
Cocking her hip, Katrina pouts. Unhesitatingly, she reaches her hand out for me. “Then I guess I’ll have to go in the water with you.” Now I do smile, if only slightly. Taking her hand, I stand. Our palms touch for hardly long enough for me to notice the feel of her skin before she releases me. The contact is nothing. It’s empty, like clicking the stovetop burner without the gas on. “Besides,” she says, “maybe inspiration will strike.”
“Hopefully before the lightning.”
She rolls her eyes. Without warning, she’s off, running down the sand and into the water, where she submerges fully. When she comes up, her hair is slicked down her neck.
I’m pulled forward, following the small semicircles her footsteps have left on the wet sand. I walk in slowly, the sea surrounding my feet in cooling contrast to the morning. It’s refreshing. I stride in farther, the salty tide rising up my chest while I continue out to Katrina.
She floats on her back, her flat stomach rising and falling while she breathes. Water beads on her eyelashes. “When we first met,” she muses quietly, “did you ever imagine we’d be here?”
Knowing there will be no quiet contemplation while Katrina is determined to leave the book behind for the day, I dunk my head. The shock to my system is invigorating. I come up, exhaling hard and pushing my hair up my forehead.
“Yes,” I say.
She lifts her head from the water to look at me. Even in the cloudy sun, the flecks in her brown eyes sparkle. “Really?” She’s curious to the point of incredulity. “The first night we walked home from dinner, you imagined writing a novel with me in Florida?”
I lift my feet off the soft ocean floor, floating the way she just was. Thinking back to the first days I knew her, I remember going for coffee and coming up with what would become our debut novel. It was seamless. Katrina said something offhand, I suggested it could be a premise and embellished it, she twisted it once more, and I knew we had something. Not just the idea—I knew we had something.
“I didn’t envision Florida specifically,” I say. “But everything else, yeah. It’s why I pursued you so tirelessly.” I don’t hide from the gravity of what I’m saying. Our relationship is strong enough for honesty. “I could see everything we’d have together. Everything we don’t have yet, too. We will.”
Katrina looks flattered, which makes me happy in ways I can’t quite decipher. She moves in the water, lazily pulling herself forward with hands outstretched, her chin barely skimming the surface. “I didn’t know what to think when you proposed cowriting together,” she informs me.
“Probably that it was some elaborate ploy to sleep with you.”
Katrina laughs, her cheeks flushed. “The thought did cross my mind, but then you mentioned being engaged. Seriously, though, a stranger approaches you and wants to write a book together? It seemed . . . unreal.” On the final word, her voice sounds delicate, even fragile.
I stop floating and face her. We’ve drifted deeper out, and I can barely get my feet beneath me. “What convinced you to take me seriously?”
She’s quiet, treading water. The current pushes us closer together. “The more I talked to you, I felt something I never had. It was like you could articulate every thought of mine I didn’t know how to. Like you were bringing my own self into sharper focus.” She smiles self-consciously. “I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does.” I meet her eyes over the shimmering water separating us. Something crackles over the inches of space in the seconds-long glance we hold while we float.
Then the sky splits open, pouring water on us. It literally douses the moment. We startle, looking simultaneously to the sky. I hadn’t noticed the black clouds closing over us. Katrina shrieks a little.