I’m in my office that evening, pages and pages in front of me on my desk. They’re not pages of prose, though. They’re financial statements, records of payments and royalties occupying the wood surface everywhere it’s not piled with books. I ran out of bookshelf space years ago and resorted to double-shelving, then putting them in stacks on the floor and in boxes in the closet, then finally giving up every semblance of organization and depositing them wherever there’s room.
After talking to Chris, I spent the rest of the day on the phone with our financial adviser. She emailed over the documents in front of me now, which I pored over, unraveling the numbers. It’s a myth writers have no faculty for math. I understood Chris’s position quickly, and it wasn’t good. Earnings from my books and from his other clients, vacations in Europe, the failing investment portfolio on which he’s overspent. Then there’s the house. I had no idea when we moved out to LA that Chris couldn’t afford what he’d put into our four-million-dollar home. Add in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar renovation and the fucking Tesla, and he’s in over his head.
I feel stupid. I should’ve been conscious of how his finances measured up to mine, but I wasn’t. Honestly, I’d been too depressed to focus on much.
I cap my pen and rub my palms on my pants, working to unwind my nerves. James Joyce, who was curled on the rug in the center of the room, gets up on noiseless cat paws and slips out of the crack in the door, perhaps intuiting my mood.
I wouldn’t mind selling our house, downscaling our lifestyle. Chris . . . would. It’s not just the money, either. Chris likes being attached to a famous author. Every day I don’t write, don’t publish, I disappoint him—I let him fall a little more out of love with me.
I don’t want him to fall out of love with me. Not only for the promise of our engagement but for the Chris I know he can be. For the Chris who would wrap me in huge hugs with sparkling eyes when he’d sell new manuscripts, or who would hold my hand in museums we’d visit on vacation and request I show him my very favorite painting in the gallery.
The idea of losing him and us is exhaustingly painful, which is why I chose to ignore it until now. With our financials in front of me—documenting our life like photographs or love letters—I feel like I’m finally viewing honestly what Chris and I have, weighed down by the baggage of success. Of whatever Chris inherited from his frustrating family. Of me and Nathan, if I was honest. Except “baggage” shouldn’t be the metaphor for this sort of thing, because you can put baggage down. When you’re weary or your hand hurts, you can say “wait up” and drop the baggage to the ground until you’re ready to carry on.
I don’t think you ever get to put these kinds of problems down.
They’re less like unwieldy luggage and more like the ugly furniture gifted by your in-laws you have to keep in view because they might come over and check. While you grow used to the puce leather chair and the lamp inherited from Grandma’s old home, you wish deep down they were gone and know they never will be.
Chris and I have ugly furniture with each other. Years of it.
There’s one thing that would fix this. All I need to do is write one book. Well, one book with Nathan. Nevertheless, just one book. I could do it in two months, if I pushed myself.
Two months to save my relationship.
I’m contemplating the passage of time when there’s gentle knocking on the door behind me. I turn to find Chris entering. He’s holding the bookstore bag I realize I left in the living room, and flowers. White roses. Chris understands the value of a cliché. He lingers near the doorway, looking sculpted out of clay instead of stone, his imposing form soft instead of uncompromising.
“I’m really sorry, Katrina,” he says. “I didn’t mean what I said. You don’t have to write if you don’t want to.”
He hands me the flowers and places the bag on my desk.
His voice is reluctantly reassuring when he continues, like it’s not easy for him to say his next words. “I’ll call Liz and tell her it’s not happening.”
I look up, meeting his eyes. There’s contrition in them, effort he’s making for Katrina his fiancée, not Katrina the writer. I wonder how long it’ll last.
Still, it’s real. Just the fact he’s offering to call Liz and rescind something he desperately wants on my behalf shows he genuinely loves me.
And without Chris, what does my life even look like? He was by my side when I had nothing. The night we first slept together was the day Only Once was released. He kept me grounded, helped me navigate the stratospheric path from published author to household name. The truth is, his fraternity-president features hide streaks of uncommon patience and gentle care, though I haven’t felt them lately. He even managed to make good days out of the hardest time of my life. In the post–Only Once year, I remember weeks when I felt guilty for doing nothing the entire day except read or nap. Those nights, Chris would spend dinner discussing every detail of whatever I was reading with such focus I couldn’t help looking forward to reading more, and telling him more the next night.
He’s been good to me. He’s been there for me. We might have some ugly furniture, but the house we’re building still feels like it could be home.
What’s more, I’ve invested in our relationship, the way Chris has in his flagging financial portfolio. I never expected I would pin so much hope to getting married, but in the years since Chris proposed to me, it’s what I’ve had. Without wanting to publish my writing, the life I’m building with Chris has become the shining milestone I’m pushing for, the north on my compass.
If I give two months—two wretched months, but just two months—I’d be pointed north again.
“No,” I say softly.
The decision is made in my mind. The hard part is saying it. Chris watches me, waiting.
“I’ll do it,” I get out.
His expression shifts immediately. In it I see joy I haven’t in months. “You’re sure?” his voice wavers.
“I’m sure.”
I feel everything but.
He drops to his knees in front of me. Even on the ground, with me in my desk chair, he’s exactly my height. He kisses me in a way I hardly recognize, his lips rushing to meet mine, his hair brushing my temple. I drink in the smell of him deeper even than I’m consciously intending to. The feeling is heady. His kiss is not perfunctory, not even desirously expectant. It’s immediate. Intimate. And heartbreaking. The reminder of how he never kisses me this way is faint, yet insistent. I push it away, because this is how it’ll be now that I’m writing the book.
“You won’t regret this,” he whispers, withdrawing. “You’re a writer, Katrina. You just need to get back to the page.”
I nod, overwhelmed. “What about you? Are you sure?”
He studies me, searching. “Of course,” he says, sounding confused.
“You don’t . . .” I hesitate. I hate even introducing this into the conversation. But I know what’s coming, and I want him to be prepared. “You don’t care about the rumors about me and Nathan?”
Chris pauses, then laughs, short and unbothered. I feel the warmth left on my lips fading. I don’t know what reaction I wanted him to have, but it’s not this. “You mean am I worried you had an affair and you’ll pick it up again?”
“It’s what everyone will say when this gets announced,” I explain. I wonder why I even need to. Why he needs me to walk him through what would worry the average man in his position.
His face hasn’t changed, incomprehension and humor playing a discordant duet. “I don’t care what people say. Whether you and he had a fling in the past, it’s not for me to object to. We weren’t together. As for this book, I trust you,” he says reassuringly.
The floor feels firmer under me. If this wasn’t the reaction I wanted, why not? He’s being mature, non-territorial, respectful of my professional relationships and romantic history.
“Besides,” he continues, “I understand writing a book with someone is intense.”
His eyes have an indicative flicker. I’m not following.
“You two will share a lot.” He speaks slowly, deliberately. “I don’t . . . have a problem with that. You’ll do what you have to do. Finishing the book is what’s important.”
What was indicative in his eyes has hardened into meaning. In one dizzying moment, I understand what he’s implying. I was giving him credit moments ago, admiring his reserve and respect for me. It’s a little less laudable, him not minding if I have an affair in the name of writing one more goddamn novel.
I almost want to question him on it, clarify he wouldn’t actually “not have a problem” if I fucked Nathan Van Huysen. But I think I wouldn’t like the answer.
He kisses me once more, which I hollowly reciprocate, and gets up. From the door he grins, clearly not noticing how dazed I am.
“Hey, over dinner,” he says, “why don’t you show me some of those wedding venues?”
I hardly process the invitation, one I would have welcomed enthusiastically yesterday or this morning or whenever. Not now.
I nod, wanting to cry. I wonder if being cheated on feels like being given license to cheat. Chris smiles once more, noticing none of this, then shuts the door behind him.
Mechanically, I cross the room. I pick up the bookstore bag and pull out the copy of Refraction, watching my fingers run over the raised lettering of Nathan’s name.
Then I open the back flap, where I find his author photo. It’s not the one from Only Once, and he’s visibly three years older. The changes are subtle, but I take in every one of them. The narrowing of his face, the definition of the edges and angles, the reservation in his eyes.
He’s looking into the camera. Looking right at me. It’s the expression I’ve seen a hundred times, when he’s listening to my ideas, drawing them in, improving them.
I close the cover and walk over to the boxes of books in the closet, where I place the new purchase on top of the copy of Refraction I already owned.