We’re an hour from Miami, she’d written. Sunday?
I’d replied beneath her question the next morning. I’ll pick you up at seven.
It’s 7:21. I’m preparing to head up to her room and ask if she wants to call off the plan when I hear her door open and shut.
When she emerges from the hallway, pausing at the top of the stairs, I forget I’m halfway on the first step. I forget everything. I forget I’m Nathan, who went years not exchanging even an email with the person in front of me now. I forget she’s Katrina, who fled from everything we had. I only know this woman is breathtaking.
Her dress, the palest pink, drapes over her curves, dipping low in the front. The hem hits high on her thighs. In between the silk and her black heels is a mile of skin I’ve spent twenty-one minutes and four years waiting for. Her hair drawls loosely down her back, the lipstick kissing her mouth a dark rose. When her eyes meet mine, her long lashes flicker.
“What?” she asks.
I want to say she’s gorgeous. Heart-stopping. If I started, I don’t know how I would stop. I’ve worked my entire adult life to marshal the English language into whatever I wanted. But were I to try to capture Katrina with it, it would best even me.
I don’t try. “I wondered if you were standing me up,” I say instead.
She laughs. It makes my heart pound. “Pretty sure you can’t stand up the person you live with.” She descends the stairs, stopping in front of me, so I’m looking up while she looks down. I notice she’s gripping the bannister, her knuckles white. “I called Chris and told him what we were doing tonight,” she says.
Hearing Chris’s name stuns me for a second. Katrina never mentions her fiancé without prompting. “What’d he say?” I ask cautiously.
“He just wanted to hear about our progress on the book.” She worries the finger and thumb of her other hand. “Then he told me to have fun.” Her words come out bitter.
I remember what she said on our walk. Chris gave her permission to do whatever she wanted with me. I hear in those two resentful syllables—have fun—how it hurts her knowing her fiancé values her writing over her fidelity.
I don’t have the opportunity or the right to give her the whole English language. I do have the chance to ease the pain. I hold out my hand to her. “I’m certainly ready to have fun if you are.”
She looks down. Then she takes my hand.
“I’m ready,” she says, holding my gaze for a long moment.
Together, we walk out into the evening.
38
Katrina
I’m on the dance floor, two drinks in. I have no idea where Nathan is. The club is sensory overload within four walls, the electronic beat pounding through crisp metal railings and black velvet booths. Smoke and lasers obscure the DJ conducting the controlled chaos. I lose myself in the music throbbing against my skin.
Half-heartedly, I try to center myself in Evelyn’s head, working to internalize details of the room, the sensations. It’s why we’re here, ostensibly. Method research, like when we spent seven hours sitting in the Venice airport to pick up descriptive texture for Connecting Flights.
It’s not entirely why I’m here, though. Earlier this evening, what I needed from this trip into the city changed. I want the pummeling music, the chaotic lights. I want escape. If I wind up with some sharp descriptors or poignant observations for Evelyn, so much the better.
The drive into Miami was pleasant enough. Nathan, in his dark jacket and white shirt with several buttons open, was quiet but not stiff. We casually went over the details of the scene we were researching while I gazed out the Porsche’s windshield. Miami seemed a likeable, lively composite of other places I know—the clean commercialism of San Diego combined with the old-school relaxation of Italy and the vibrance of Havana. When we reached the club, Nathan and I staked out the bar. He ordered us drinks, and we lingered, observing things we wanted to incorporate.
When he grabbed his Cuba libre and headed for the balcony, I made for the dance floor. I found immersing myself in the crowd easy. With every movement of my sweat-slicked body, I fought to shake off Chris’s words from earlier. Katrina, you don’t need to get my permission for each thing you two do. I told you. It’s fine. Have fun.
His voice had been cold, businesslike. An agent keeping his client happy. It’d left me feeling sick, hunched over the toilet for twenty minutes while Nathan waited downstairs. Nothing came up. Finally, I found my composure and, putting one heeled foot in front of the other, I left my room. Chris had told me to have fun. I was determined I would.