My run was punishing, exactly what I needed. I don’t prefer running after sundown the way I’ve had to on this retreat. Our neighborhood has so few streetlights that every passing car is a danger. Today, though, I’ve had nothing to do except run. I’ve wrung perverse enjoyment out of tracing my route with the sun pounding down on me, squinting while I navigate the paths I usually do in darkness.
I don’t know what Katrina’s doing right now. I doubt she’s on the phone with Chris, whom I’ve hardly even seen her texting since we got here. She’s probably on the porch, immersed in whatever she’s reading, not noticing the tops of her feet have started to sunburn.
Rounding the corner onto our street, I slow my steps. I’ve been out for over an hour, and sweat is pouring down my back. As I walk, I see a woman struggling to lift a rug. It was obviously delivered to the curb, leaving her to wrestle the heavy roll to her door. I recognize her, sort of. Straight blond hair strangled into a ponytail like she was in a hurry, long legs in spandex. I’ve seen her several times in the past few days, hauling boxes into the back unit on the lot. From the looks of it, she’s just moved in.
Glancing up from the uncooperative rug, she spots me. “Hey,” she calls out. I hear something Southern in the one-and-a-half syllables she gives the word. “Mind giving me a hand?”
I hold open my arms, showcasing the sweat dripping off them. “Mind the sweat?”
The woman eyes me. I know the look she’s giving me. It’s one I’ve learned to decipher, living my single life in Chicago. She likes what she sees. Her smile spreads flirtatiously.
“No,” she says. “Not at all.”
I jog over. When I hoist up one end of the rug, she lifts the other.
“I’m Meredith,” she says.
“Nathan,” I introduce myself. While we head toward her house, Meredith walking backward, we pass a very inviting swimming pool beneath a towering bougainvillea. Papery pink flowers float listlessly on the water. We continue up the short flight of front steps into her living room, where cardboard boxes cover the floor.
“I just moved to town.” Her eyes sweep over the boxes. “Obviously. You live nearby, right?” I catch her wince. “I’m not a creep, despite how that sounded. Just trying to learn the neighbors.”
I laugh, sympathetic to her self-consciousness. I remember well the rootless feeling of moving out of my home with Melissa and to my new city. I wonder what Meredith’s story is, which sounds cliché when the thought runs through my head, but it’s why I write fiction and where I find inspiration. “Don’t worry about it,” I reassure her. “Yeah, I’m staying down the street. The house with the blue shutters.”
“Vacationing?”
I shake my head. “Here for work. For the summer.”
Her eyebrows rise. I realize it’s the answer she was hoping for. When she doesn’t reply immediately, I indulge in the opportunity to look a little closer. She’s hot, probably in her early thirties, with a volleyball player’s frame. Her tan is too perfect to be unintentional, and her black halter top reveals a lean midriff.
She catches me looking, then grins. “Well, Nathan,” she says, “thanks for your help.” She sounds sure of herself—instead of a woman who needed my help and invited me into her unfinished living room, she’s a woman who now knows I was checking her out.
“Good luck with the boxes,” I say.
She walks me to the door. “I hope you run by again soon.”
On my way out, I flash her the dimple. By the time I reach the street, I’ve started strategizing how to get Meredith’s number. It’s a reflex at this point, after weeks on book tour in new cities each night. Opportunities like this one aren’t easy to come by. Meredith is attractive, by all indications single, and definitely flirtatious. It’s like the universe has delivered me a gift to sustain me through the next months with Katrina.
I wait for the prospect to excite me. It doesn’t.
With every passing second, the fire in me doesn’t heighten. Why wouldn’t I want to end stressful days of writing doing whatever Meredith wanted in her new bedroom, our wineglasses half empty on her living room floor? There’s no good reason.
Yet my desire only flickers, never quite catching. I’m not uninterested in the possibility, I’m just not enthusiastic. While I walk back to the house with the blue shutters, I wonder why not.