• FOUR YEARS EARLIER •
It’s seven in the morning. I’m sitting grumpily on one of the striped towels we found in the house, squinting out over the ocean. Katrina’s next to me, putting on sunscreen. It’s humid—muggy, really—threatening the thunderstorms predicted for today. The beach, unsurprisingly, is empty.
My cowriter, having read the weather report, dragged me out of bed at five minutes to six, insisting we spend some time in the water before we’re cooped up indoors. I’m sandy wherever I even glancingly touched the beach—the tops of my feet, the edges of my hands. It’s everywhere. I don’t want to be here, under the clouds folding their ominous blanket over the sun. Even though it’s Sunday, I want to be in the house, writing.
We’ve spent the past two days on the same scene without any forward movement. The lack of progress frustrates me. I don’t just dislike writer’s block—I don’t believe in it. Writer’s block is nothing but the point where you’ve forgotten what your characters really want. The solution isn’t sitting on the Florida sand in the wet early morning, it’s getting back to work.
Something cold and slimy hits my shoulder, interrupting my rumination. When I look up, I find Katrina standing over me in her black one-piece, holding the sunscreen, which she just squeezed onto me.
Ruefully, I rub it in.
“Seriously? Moping while you’re here?” She spins playfully, throwing her arms out with enthusiasm. Stray curls of her hair flutter over her face. “With one of your favorite people,” she adds.
“I’m not moping,” I reply. “I’m brooding. It’s entirely different.”
Katrina laughs, her nose scrunching up in delight. Then she plasters on fake sympathy. “Right. So sorry,” she says.
Part of me wants to laugh with her, just a little. Instead, I push us stubbornly into the conversation I want to have. “What if we move the dinner scene. Maybe that’s the problem. It would take weeks of rewriting, but—”
Katrina tosses the sunscreen into my lap. “Nope,” she says. “I’m not discussing work with you today. Today, you’re not my writing partner, you’re . . .”
Her hanging fragment is enough to pull my focus from our scene. I don’t know how she’s going to finish the sentence. What are we to each other if not writing partners? Our creative collaboration is where our relationship began. We weren’t even friends first. I search her face for clues, reading nothing in the gaze she’s fixed somewhere past me.
“You’re the guy I’m at the beach with,” she finishes, smiling. I register my split second of disappointment before she continues. “Don’t make me replace you.”
Frowning, I gesture to the open sand. “Katrina, there’s nobody here to replace me. Because it’s seven in the morning, and it’s about to rain.”
Cocking her hip, Katrina pouts. Unhesitatingly, she reaches her hand out for me. “Then I guess I’ll have to go in the water with you.” Now I do smile, if only slightly. Taking her hand, I stand. Our palms touch for hardly long enough for me to notice the feel of her skin before she releases me. The contact is nothing. It’s empty, like clicking the stovetop burner without the gas on. “Besides,” she says, “maybe inspiration will strike.”
“Hopefully before the lightning.”
She rolls her eyes. Without warning, she’s off, running down the sand and into the water, where she submerges fully. When she comes up, her hair is slicked down her neck.
I’m pulled forward, following the small semicircles her footsteps have left on the wet sand. I walk in slowly, the sea surrounding my feet in cooling contrast to the morning. It’s refreshing. I stride in farther, the salty tide rising up my chest while I continue out to Katrina.
She floats on her back, her flat stomach rising and falling while she breathes. Water beads on her eyelashes. “When we first met,” she muses quietly, “did you ever imagine we’d be here?”
Knowing there will be no quiet contemplation while Katrina is determined to leave the book behind for the day, I dunk my head. The shock to my system is invigorating. I come up, exhaling hard and pushing my hair up my forehead.
“Yes,” I say.
She lifts her head from the water to look at me. Even in the cloudy sun, the flecks in her brown eyes sparkle. “Really?” She’s curious to the point of incredulity. “The first night we walked home from dinner, you imagined writing a novel with me in Florida?”
I lift my feet off the soft ocean floor, floating the way she just was. Thinking back to the first days I knew her, I remember going for coffee and coming up with what would become our debut novel. It was seamless. Katrina said something offhand, I suggested it could be a premise and embellished it, she twisted it once more, and I knew we had something. Not just the idea—I knew we had something.
“I didn’t envision Florida specifically,” I say. “But everything else, yeah. It’s why I pursued you so tirelessly.” I don’t hide from the gravity of what I’m saying. Our relationship is strong enough for honesty. “I could see everything we’d have together. Everything we don’t have yet, too. We will.”
Katrina looks flattered, which makes me happy in ways I can’t quite decipher. She moves in the water, lazily pulling herself forward with hands outstretched, her chin barely skimming the surface. “I didn’t know what to think when you proposed cowriting together,” she informs me.
“Probably that it was some elaborate ploy to sleep with you.”
Katrina laughs, her cheeks flushed. “The thought did cross my mind, but then you mentioned being engaged. Seriously, though, a stranger approaches you and wants to write a book together? It seemed . . . unreal.” On the final word, her voice sounds delicate, even fragile.
I stop floating and face her. We’ve drifted deeper out, and I can barely get my feet beneath me. “What convinced you to take me seriously?”
She’s quiet, treading water. The current pushes us closer together. “The more I talked to you, I felt something I never had. It was like you could articulate every thought of mine I didn’t know how to. Like you were bringing my own self into sharper focus.” She smiles self-consciously. “I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does.” I meet her eyes over the shimmering water separating us. Something crackles over the inches of space in the seconds-long glance we hold while we float.
Then the sky splits open, pouring water on us. It literally douses the moment. We startle, looking simultaneously to the sky. I hadn’t noticed the black clouds closing over us. Katrina shrieks a little.
“Run?” she shouts, blinking water from her eyes. I’m already nodding. When she takes off for the shore, I follow her, feeling like I’m moving in slow motion. Together, we grab our towels and clothes, everything drenched, and sprint to the car.
A few feet in front of me, one of Katrina’s sandals slips out of her grasp, falling onto the sand. She doubles back for it, covering her head ineffectually with one hand when the rain gets harder, pelting pockmarks into the beach. I pass her, moving hastily. While I’m unlocking the car, the first boom of thunder rumbles through us.
We climb in, slamming the doors shut. We should have taken Katrina’s car, but I don’t have a car in New York and the chance to drive the Porsche was my only incentive for agreeing to this plan in the first place. Everything is soaked and covered in sand. I should be furious. I’ll have to pay the company a small fortune for this kind of damage to a rental Porsche Carrera—damage I knew would happen if we drove to the beach hours before predicted thunderstorms.
Instead, I start laughing. I don’t stop. Katrina joins me, and suddenly I’m in stitches, my eyes watering while Katrina doubles over in the passenger seat. The rain is coming down too hard on the windows to see anything. The water is a curtain, hiding us in our own private world.
I look at Katrina, her hair disheveled, her eyes sparkling, and I find I’m no longer laughing. There’s sand on her face, right beneath her eye. The next moment, I feel like I’m watching from somewhere else—I reach out, compelled, and wipe the sand from her skin. She stills under my touch, the only sound the furious pounding of rain on the car.
She holds my gaze, oceans of possibility in her huge eyes. I’m drowning in them, sinking into her. I let my hand linger too long.
I glance down at her lips and feel her breath catch. For the first time, I have the impossible need to pull her face to mine. To kiss her. To hold her close.
The stomach-punch of guilt slams into me. I’m not just disgusted with myself, I’m disoriented. I’m happily married, in love with my beautiful wife. My eyes don’t wander. I don’t want to kiss other women. Nor do I sexualize my female friends and colleagues. Katrina is worth more. Even so, it takes everything in me to remove my hand and face forward.
I focus on forcing the idea from my head. I would never cheat on Melissa—and a stray thought isn’t cheating, as long as it remains just that. Which it will.
Katrina says nothing while I start the engine. I have no idea what she’s thinking, though I know her well enough to be certain she’s thinking something. It’s funny how people can sit side by side, separate whirlwinds each self-contained.
When the windshield wipers engage, lightning flashes over the ocean.