“That’s it.”
He presses his lips into a thin line and lets the subject drop.
The rain is coming down in sheets as West pulls into the driveway of the address Evie sent. “I’ll be back in two minutes,” I say.
Evie’s mom answers the door and hands me the book. I shove it in my bag and run to the car. “Let’s go,” I say as I shut the door behind me and buckle in.
West is pulling his sweater over his head, revealing a white button-up stretched tight across his chest, and I’m momentarily stunned by the movement. He hands it to me. “You look cold.”
“Thank you.” I pull it on and wait. “You ready?”
The car is still in park, and West is in no hurry. “As soon as you tell me why we’re here.”
“What? No.”
“I drove you all the way out here. I want to know why we made the trip.”
“Are you serious?”
He turns the car off and pockets the keys. “I’ve got time.”
“Ugh, you’re annoying. And this forfeits your right to lunch, by the way.” I unzip my bag and retrieve my signed copy ofDrought. “It’s your book, okay? Can we go now?” My hair drips water on the pages. As a booklover, it pains me. As someone who wants to get under West’s skin, I let it happen.
Lightning flashes over the nearest mountain peak.
He starts the car, and we pull onto an empty road, the rain making it hard to see more than a few feet ahead of us. “You’ve got to help me out, Mars,” he says quietly.
I swallow heavily. “With what?”
His eyes fall to the book grasped tightly in my fingers, and I know I’ve been caught. If he asks why I care so much about it, I’ll have no defense.
I glance up as a coyote darts in front of the car. “Look out!”
West swerves. The car lurches off the road and spins into a ditch.
30
7 Years Ago
West’s friends areexhausting, but Daphne and I discover pretty quickly that they’re so up their own asses it’s easy to stay out of their way. Petra, a girl I can only describe as pointy—from her nose to her winged eyeliner to the hip bones jutting out of the top of her pleated miniskirt—is in Daphne’s SoulCycle class. The two got to talking, and when Petra found out that Daphne was a writer, she invited her to spend the week at this retreat. The instructor yelled at them to be quiet before Daphne could get more details.
When I ask Daphne if Petra is a writer, Daph admits that shethinksshe’s a podcaster who also might be writing a play and running a Kickstarter to fund her online zine. In the short time we’ve been here, I haven’t seen Petra write anything except a string of “hot take” tweets crafted to go viral. But who am I to judge? I haven’t done much writing lately, either.
This cohort is young and beautiful and dressed in clothes that are both expensive and insane. As West predicted, theysleep late and appear at dusk like a coven of malnourished vampires. They unironically claim to be creating “art” while writing their Instagram captions. They spend the evening basking in their own cleverness and cloaked in vapor. Every conversation is buried under three layers of irony. As soon as we meet, they “casually” mention that a reporter from theNew York TimesCulture Desk is visiting at the end of the week to write an article about them and the “microneighborhood” they haunt. They call it Dimes Square, which is basically a concrete triangle at Canal and Division Streets in New York. When I ask if that’s just gentrified Chinatown, they raise their eyebrows at one another meaningfully.
Simply put, they are delightfully insufferable. Whenever we have the misfortune of being harangued by them, Daphne and I leave in stitches, grasping each other for support as we laugh. We could try harder to avoid them, but pointy Petra might just be Daphne’s muse. Their endless self-righteous conversations about everything from international politics to woke internet culture hit Daphne like a truck, and soon she’s twenty thousand words deep into a bloody thriller about a group of unlikable nepo babies getting murdered.
We create a schedule that looks like this: While they sleep, Daphne and I enjoy our WASP cosplay as we write on the wraparound porch. When the sun sets and the temperature dips, we all eat dinner together on the back deck. As their night is ramping up, Daphne and I head back to our room to gossip in between writing sprints.
Writing hasn’t been this easy in years. The words finally start to flow, and I credit the unbroken roar of the ocean in the distance and the salty sea air.
The porch swing.
Daphne’s encouragement.
Anythingother than the fact that West and I are breathing the same air again. It’s not because of the way my chest hurts when he looks at me from across the dinner table or because we brush our teeth side by side in the mornings. On the first morning, he caught me wearing a Fox T-shirt as pajamas. The smirk on his face was catastrophic. We’ve been sidestepping each other for two days, never in the same room for more than a few minutes. He rounds a corner, and I quickly retreat. My palms are permanently damp.
Dinner tonight is a mountain of oysters and three lobster rolls to share between the eight of us. (Tristan was high as a kite when he ordered and just hit buttons.) I’m not an oyster girl, and if I’d known this was dinner, I would have skipped with Daphne, but I’m starving, and she’s in a trance. She’s already written ten thousand words today with no signs of stopping.
