When I keep reading, I know.
The scene is set on the beach behind Jessamine’s and Jordan’s neighboring lake houses, where they’re vacationing. It’s early in the morning. They’ve woken up early to watch the sunrise while their spouses choose to sleep in. Returning to my bed, I read on.
They ran up from the water, kicking sand and silt as they raced to the dock. Jordan’s feet tingled from the shock of the cold water. He didn’t know why he’d dared her to run into the lake, or why she’d done it, or why he’d followed. Catching their breath on the dock, they overlooked the water, their backs to the homes where their spouses slept.
The fog curtained over the lake, pink in the morning light, hiding the far edge from view. Everything was quiet, their own private world.
I flip pages, feverish. Because I know what Nathan’s describing.
It’s our morning, without the thunderstorm. He’s captured the quiet, the early sunlight, the breathlessness perfectly.
Jordan’s eyes wandered from the water, finally finding Jessamine, whose gaze was fixed forward. Her chest rose and fell beneath her bathing suit and the white cover-up she didn’t bother to remove before running in. In a few moments, she wouldn’t be winded. Neither of them would be.
What Jordan wanted fell onto him instantly, like it dropped out of the sky, yet it made him weightless. He knew it was wrong. Nevertheless, he felt pulled. Reaching forward, he placed his hands on Jessamine’s hips. She looked up, unsurprised and wanting.
Jordan did what he’d imagined doing for so long. What he could have done only under the rosy dust of dawn. He kissed Jessamine, and she kissed him.
I put the pages down, flushed, head spinning. It’s different from how Nathan usually writes. His prose is immediate, personal in a way his studied poeticism usually isn’t. I force myself to finish reading what he’s written.
Jessamine reacted like she’d imagined the kiss the same way he had, her hands rising to his face, running through his hair. Plummeting together into passion, they were joined. The kiss was erasing, engulfing everything surrounding them—the lake, the houses, the day still breaking—into empty ecstasy.
They withdrew, more out of breath than when they’d raced to the dock. In the silence, they said nothing. Jordan noticed sand from their sprint under Jessamine’s eye.
Lifting his hand, he swiped it from her cheek, his fingers gentle on her skin.
It’s then I know Nathan’s not writing our characters.
At the bottom of the last page, he’s scrawled a message. I figured out what he wanted. No other scene could work.
I reread the pages over and over for the next hour. I don’t change a thing.
35
Katrina
? PRESENT DAY ?
Over the next two weeks, I don’t have the chance to worry about the interview, or about how telling Nathan what Chris said had left me crying in the shower the next morning. The writing is exhausting. We’re reaching the heart of the novel, where it’s easiest to lose momentum. We combat the drag the way we always have—without rest.
The process isn’t easy. Disagreements spring up daily, though they’re only about sentence structure and metaphors. Nothing personal. We resolve them one by one, though they occasionally end with me slamming a door after we’ve fought for fifteen minutes over a single word.
Even so, I’m grateful for the hard work. I sleep soundly every night, wrists aching from typing, throat raw from speaking, but with words and ideas between every thought.
When we pass thirty thousand words, almost halfway, after writing all day, we decide to take our dinner out onto the porch.
The sun has set. I sit in the porch swing, a plate of almost-finished bruschetta in my lap, a glass of wine on the floor near my bare toes. I’m perfectly relaxed, my head tipped back as I gently rock the swing with my foot. Nathan sits in the chair nearest me, sipping his wine with the easy, contented expression he gets only when he’s pleased with the day’s writing.
“Nathan?”
I don’t recognize the voice. Turning, I find a woman running by. She slows to jogging in place on the curb. Her golden hair is in a ponytail, her workout clothes neon and flatteringly fitted.
Nathan straightens. “Meredith. Hi.”
I watch him, his changed posture, the way he skims his hand through his hair. He’s no longer relaxed, for sure. I’m just not certain what exactly has replaced his previous calm. I know desire on Nathan. It’s there in his eyes, just not on its own.
“Not running tonight?” Meredith calls. Whatever strange new strain I hear in Nathan’s voice, hers matches.