Katie
For the next week, we worked incessantly. Tyler, by now, had devoured over thirty romance novels and, since we “started over” on Monday, had watched a Hallmark movie every night. I knew this because he’d relayed any and all thoughts he’d had about the films to me in real time via a constant onslaught of late-night text messages. Things like,I’m sorry, but liking Christmas is not an entire personality, andDoyou think I could, theoretically, cut down a tree? Or am I too narrow?andShakespeare can see this, Katherine, and he’s embarrassed for us.
It was easy, honestly, being friends with Tyler again. It was easy, after doing this alone for so long, to have a partner to write with—to haveTylerto write with. To look up from my laptop and have him right there beside me, lost in the tiny universe we’d built together. To, when the day ended, rub our eyes and shake out our hands, spackling some pesky little plot hole as we walked those first few strange and hazy blocks home, waiting for the real world to come back into focus.
Truthfully, when I’d offered Tyler a clean slate, I’d barely thought it through. All I knew was, wherever his mind had wandered as we lay in that grass, he was not all right. He was suffering—and viscerally. And, to be honest, so was I.
After all, hating Tyler did not come naturally to me. The mereperformance of it, the past few weeks, had wiped me out. And I was getting worse at it with every passing day.
You already know this, of course. You could flip through the first dozen or so chapters of this story and pinpoint all the times I’d let my guard down. I’d laughed when I should’ve frowned. Participated in pointless banter when I should’ve bitten my tongue. Allowed my gaze to linger on his cotton-cradled and, frankly, very good quad-thigh-hip-dick-region-zone as he stood in his doorway, half-asleep and biting his bottom lip and staring right back at me.
It was so much work, icing him out. It was so much work, constantly reminding myself why I could never let him back in. I simply couldn’t have stayed that mad or that sad for another ten weeks. Not if I wanted to be a normal girl, having a normal summer. To do that, I needed to let go. I needed to move on, to start over. To put the past behind us.
And, so far, it was working—and making our manuscript better. By Wednesday, Tyler and I had turned the storage closet at the café into a detective wall of sticky notes, scribbled-on maps, and napkins full of chicken-scratched ideas for side characters and subplots.
By Thursday, we’d ironed out our writing process: Working from our outline, we each took on an alternating chapter, with Tyler writing Henry and me writing Willa. We followed the beats as best we could, but we also listened to our characters, trying to remain receptive to whatever it was they wanted to do. In the mornings, while I drafted, Tyler would go back to his previous chapter and review my notes, clean up his sentences, and respond to my bigger-picture comments. At lunch, after he’d read and marked up mywork, we stayed seated and talked everything through. And then, in the afternoon, we switched, Tyler writing while I tweaked my scenes and updated the outline as needed. Around four, when he was finished, I’d leave my thoughts on his new pages for the following day while he did research or worked on larger thematic tasks.
By Friday, we were so immersed, so deep in selecting digital paint swatches for a completely fictional bed-and-breakfast, so mid-argument about whether Henry lost his virginity at fifteen-and-a-half or fifteen-and-three-quarters, that neither of us realized the sky had gone from blue to violet to black... or that Lola was standing at the door, tapping her foot.
“Guys,” she said. “It’s nine o’clock.”
“Shit.” Tyler took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I’m on a roll. I just figured out Henry’s crap with his uncle. Can we have a few more minutes?”
I was nodding, only half paying attention. Mostly, I was researching claw-foot tubs. We needed—well, sorry, the Inn, the fake Inn—needed a dozen of them, and wow. So expensive.
“I have plans,” Lola said, tossing us the keys. “Lock up when you’re done. And don’t make me regret this.”
We didn’t answer. We were already back to work: typing, talking, showing each other pictures of bathroom vanities. Asking questions like, “Could Henry build this?” and “Would Willa want cleaner lines than that, where the backsplash ends?” and “Is this countertop sturdy enough for him to fuck her from behind?” And then, somehow, half an hour became five. Somehow, it was two o’clock in the morning, and we were still talking. We were still writing. We were sixty pages in now, ten more than we needed toshow Meredith on Tuesday, and our characters were really starting to come to life—to have minds of their own. We were just typing and typing and going and going, and then Tyler startled.
“Fuck! I completely forgot it was Friday.”
“Well, itwasFriday. It’s Saturday now.”
He pulled out his phone and began texting furiously.
“You miss a date or something?” I said.
He didn’t even glance up. “I don’t really date.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Now he looked at me. “Seriously. I just have this thing I do on Fridays, okay? It’s no big deal. I never miss it, that’s all.”
“And what do you do, exactly? Skin small animals? Leave bad reviews on small business’s websites? Bark at people who smile at you?”
“Oh, it’s much sexier than that.”
“Hmm, wait! Do you separate your laundry into darks and more darks? Do you sit at the laundromat and smolder? Do you scream if someone else’s white sock gets stuck to yours in the dryer? Do you demand a refund?”
He laughed, then rubbed the back of his neck. “I go to an A.A. meeting,” he said. “And then I eat Chinese food with my friends where I’m pretty sure the median age is fifty-five, and they all talk shit about me to my face.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know if you still...”
“I do.”
I scrunched my nose. My face was hot. Everything itched. “That’s great. I’m... I’m really happy to hear that.”
He closed his laptop. “Will you go with me?”
