Nathan stands. When he walks past me toward the dining table, his eyes flicker angrily with everything he hasn’t said. His emotions will find their way into his pages later—I know they will.
42
Katrina
? PRESENT DAY ?
Nathan and Chris have left the room, walking off in different directions.
I close my eyes. I inhale deeply. And I follow Chris.
I take the stairs two at a time, my heart rate picking up. When I swing open the door of my room, Chris has the gall to look surprised. “What the hell was that?” I ask.
Chris sits on the bed, reclining on his elbows. Carefree. “What was what?”
I’m in no mood for this dance. No mood to give him the benefit of the doubt the way I usually do when I think he’s slighted me. When he’s made dismissive references over dinner to how long it’s been since Only Once was released, or when he makes some decision for the house without even telling me. “That kiss,” I say, sharply. “I got the strangest sense it wasn’t for me.”
“Can’t a guy kiss his fiancée after weeks apart?” He smiles his winningest smile.
“Sure,” I reply. “If that’s what it was. If it had nothing to do with Nathan.”
Chris laughs. “Katrina, calm down. You know jealousy makes Nathan a better writer. I may not be his agent anymore, but I still know how to inspire him.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. The room suddenly feels slanted while years of conversations reorient themselves in my mind. Nathan and I used to joke about the attention Chris paid me in particular. When Chris and I got serious, I converted the jokes into signs. I found it comforting to think this was exactly where my life had been leading all along. Chris had carried a torch for me. It was obvious to everyone. The idea that we had something of a past, a history of innocuous flirtations, half connections and insinuations, gave me the sense of a future.
Except now, I’m remembering how often Chris’s flirtations happened in the presence of Nathan. Worse, I remember the undeniable results. How wonderfully Nathan would articulate jealousy and longing and impossible, unnameable emotions.
I hear my voice come out hollow, choked. “Is that why you flirted with me before we were together? Only to goad Nathan’s writing?”
Chris straightens. Smiling lazily, he stands and walks up to me. “Obviously, I was attracted to you.” He places a hand on my hip.
I step past him, wanting his hands nowhere near me. It’s morbidly funny how much I’ve wanted to see Chris, yet within fifteen minutes of him getting here, I can’t stand to be in the same room with him, or the confident quirk in his lips, or the manufactured masculine scent of his shower products, or the rumbling murmur of his voice.
He faces me, frowning. “You’d be wise to be aware of Nathan’s feelings for you,” he says.
I search for jealousy or calculation in his eyes and find none. I can’t help the sick shiver of pleasure I feel at Chris’s warning—at what it implies. But the feeling is lost beneath disgust with Chris. With how he manipulated Nathan, how he used me to do it. Worse, how he’s discussing another man’s feelings for his fiancée like it’s casual conversation or commonplace advice, like Don’t forget to lock the door or Remember to get detergent. I don’t even know exactly what he’s advising, and the possibilities feel like gut punches. Should I use Nathan’s feelings the way Chris did? Should I torture us both in order to write a better book?
I don’t want to know. I don’t want to finish this conversation. I don’t want to confront how everything with Chris is falling dominoes of I don’t want.
I head for the door. With my hand on the handle, I turn back. “You should’ve come to Florida because I asked you to,” I say, each word boiling. “Not because of this interview.” Before he can reply, I leave the room, slamming the door behind me.
43
Nathan
The next day, the day of the interview, I stand stiffly with Katrina on the porch. We haven’t spoken since yesterday.
It’s not her I’m avoiding. It’s Chris. I’ve diligently kept myself out of the same room with my former agent, opting instead to spend the rest of the day writing in one of the other cafés in the neighborhood. Not the one where I went with Katrina. When the place closed for the night, I begged Harriet to let me come over. It was nearly midnight when I returned to the house, where I noticed Chris and Katrina’s bedroom door closed, the lights off.
Now, we’re shading our eyes in the morning sunlight, exchanging polite smiles with the reporter who’s come to pry into every corner of our personal and professional lives. While Chris greets him and the photographer, I study our profiler. Noah Lippman is short, slight, collegiate-looking. He doesn’t hide his baldness, and he’s paired thin brown glasses with a well-chosen striped button-down. He reminds me of New York.