“It’s romantic, but not really a romance. And there is a curse. And two main characters.”
“Oh really? Main characters? Let me guess, it has a beginning, middle, and end, too. Your pitch is going to need improvement if you want to sell the thing, James.”
“I haven’t had time to formulate a detailed summary as I finished it literally minutes ago.” His mouth wrestles with a cheek-aching grin.I finished it.“I need a favor.”
“Sure.” Jessie frees a tea bag from its packaging.
“Will you keep my manuscript safe while I’m traveling with Nelle? Just until school starts, then I’ll come back for it. I’d hate to lose it, and I don’t trust anyone else.”
“I’m honored.” Jessie scoops her eggs onto a plate and steeps her Earl Grey. “Don’t worry, I’ll be the best guardian. If the city issues an evacuation notice, I’ll grab it before my phone.”
“Thank you,” James says.
Jessie’s finger goes up. “Under one condition.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re not reading it yet.”
“Fine.Does it have a title?”
“An excellent question.” James refills his water bottle, savoring Jessie’s anticipation. “For now, I’m calling itThe Summer Curse.”
“That doesn’t sound romantic.”
“It’s not supposed to sound romantic. It’s a title, it’s just supposed to sound cool.”
Jessie reels backward like a psychic slapped with a premonition. “I’m having a thought. You need a celebration.”
“You’re always making an excuse to throw a party.”
“This doesn’t need excusing. This is a big deal, James!”
“I know,” he laughs. But does he? FinishingThe Summer Cursefeels both momentous and insignificant. Within a month, he scaled the impossible cliff, only to reach the top and realize it was never as difficult as he thought it would be. Which means he can do it again and again, producing a lifetime of books with his name on the spine.
Jessie blows on her tea. “Last November I slept with the owner of this cute bar on Carmine, so I can probably get it rented on short notice. Does Friday work? Or Thursday? I know y’all are leaving soon. Where is it you’re going again?”
James knows better than to argue with Jessie once she has her mind set, though the idea of a room full of people celebratinghimmakes his skin crawl.
“I need to ask Nelle again, but last she said, Paris. And don’t you think Thursday’s better for the party? School starts in two weeks, so we’ll need to fly out as soon as possible.”
Jessie already has her phone out, and she’s tapping away. “Thursday, say ... seven?”
“Seven’s perfect.” James stands. “Until then, I’m going into hibernation.”
He can barely get the words out through the sludge of his mind. Whenwasthe last time he slept more than a few hours? He stumblesdown the hallway, fatigue slamming into him like a bag of bricks, and crawls into bed. Cool sheets on his legs. A fan stirring the air in the room. His pillow whispering sweet nothings.
Nelle is restless, sitting at the desk, watching James. She once begged Quill to let her into the front yard to catch fireflies. She was eight at the time, and he said no. But James doesn’t care where she goes. Even celebrates what she does independently. Earlier in the summer, he wanted her to write for herself. Until she told him that it would kill her.
But what if Father lied?
Nelle hungers for the pen. She started spiraling about Quill’s honesty while mixing paint in Jessie’s studio. Struck by a sudden compulsion to write for herself, she abandoned her half-finished painting and stormed out. Vibrating, she hiked over the Brooklyn Bridge and up Broadway through Lower Manhattan. When she returned, panting, to the apartment to find James unresponsive, Nelle was guiltily grateful. She won’t have to debate with him. This is something she needs to do—to try—even if it kills her.
But if she does it, she wants a new journal. If James has to live with those pages as his only memory of her, she doesn’t want them to hold the sentence that killed her.
Nelle nudges James as she slides on his denim coat. “Can you write for me to go to Shack O’ Books?”
He cracks open an eye, then writes so sloppily that Nelle is shocked her ink recognizes it as language. As soon as the journal closes, he is snoring again.
Twenty minutes later Nelle crosses the street to her favorite bookshop in the Village. The air holds hints of fall. Back home, it’ll be in the nineties. She feels in James’s coat pocket for his wallet. Still there, palm-size and leather. She pushes through the shop door and goes to a section of journals near the back. She grabs the first one she sees.
