She was quiet for a moment.
“You’re twenty-five years old,” she said. “You write literal bodice rippers for a living. Don’t you want to be with somebody who sees you? Don’t you want to feel like your soul’s on fire? Like your heart’s going to explode?”
35
Tyler
I woke up to streaks of sunshine—to bright and balmy morning. I rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of my midnight, and all the fog-cloaked, sea-smoked impossibilities still developing like film in my mind. It was only when I began to reach for my glasses that I fully remembered I’d lost them in the woods.
But just when I was beginning to put together a reason for scouring that forest—a sex scene in which Henry railed Willa against a tree, I’d tell Meredith when I saw her next—my brain realized my hands were already gripping the frames.
My glasses were right there on my nightstand, exactly where I always left them—and the wind whistled through an open window I swore I’d left shut.
I biked into town, bought myself a sandwich I could barely eat, and tried to read a book. I sat on a park bench and thought about my glasses for several hours. I went to the library and stared into the manuscript I was writing with Katie, expecting her to be in there, revising, when obviously, she was not. I found an in-person meeting at a clubhouse behind a grocery store, drank two sludgy cups of coffee, and then made a few minutes of parking-lot small talk with a semi-disgraced movie producer. And then, around nine thirty, when I could not put it off any longer, I pulled out my phone, calleda busy-being-a-grandpa Arthur, and let it all out. The white-blue glow of that supermarket sign, my spotlight.
When I finally shut up, Arthur let out a sigh. “It seems to me, Romeo, that you could stop thinking about that girl and that cat, cool it with all this amateur sleuthing, and maybe start showing a little compassion instead.”
“Compassion?” I was still pacing. “She’s a billionaire who doesn’t fucking work, and she’s up to something, I swear. Whatever happened last night, it felt like a show. A performance. Like she was reenacting a Fitzgerald scene just to fuck with me. I mean, how did I end up with this job? How did I wind up working with Katie, of all people? And how is it possible that every time we write one of our tropes into the story, it—”
“She’s a drunk, kid. I told you this after your first brunch, after your picnic date. She has a disease, and she’s no different from you or me.”
“That’s not—It’s not...”
“Tyler,” he said. “You know better than this. I’m not sure if you’re jealous or insecure or what, but it’s clouding your judgment, and you’ve got to do something about it, before you end up fired or loaded or... You sound like you’re losing your mind. You need to get your shit together. This is what we talked about, remember? When you took this job? Keeping your side of the street clean. Making sure—”
“You don’t understand! I had this dream about Katie, and Henry, he imagined the same thing! He—”
“Tyler,” Arthur said again. “This agent who hired you. What’s she paying you to do, exactly?”
I groaned. “Write a book.”
“All right,” he said. “Why don’t you get back to the house, try and get some sleep, and then, in the morning, get back to writing that damn book.”
I headed home, determined to put the events of the weekend behind me and focus instead on doing exactly what I’d been contracted to do. Write a love story. A fictional, trope-riddled, formulaic love story. I’d stow the visions of the carriage house and that mist-cloaked shoreline and Katie’s glowing window on the very top shelf of my mind, where I couldn’t reach them, where they couldn’t tempt me, where they’d gather dust next to the too-bright, too-blurred Polaroids of the summers we’d spun together before everything fell apart.
But just when I’d slipped through the garden gate to head straight to the cottage, I froze. Sitting ten feet from my door, right there on the edge of a lounge chair, was Meredith. Her face, neutral and lit by what appeared to be a lantern, flickering candle and all.
“Good evening, Tyler,” she said, setting her hardcover—Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein, if my eyes could be believed—onto the cushion.
“I, uh... Hey. Hi.”
“Why didn’t you come in through the kitchen just now?” she asked, rising to her feet. I took a step back. “I’ve been waiting all day to speak with you.”
I gulped. My whole body, hot and cold and clammy. It was over. I had fucked up. I was going to be fired, or murdered, or maybe even both. There were probably cameras all over this place—every square inch of it, surveilled. My glasses had been returned becauseMeredith had seen them fall from my face. Her supposed ban on technology, likely bullshit, and even if remotely true, not enough to keep Maurice or whoever else was invisibly managing this mansion from using whatever means necessary to keep it secure. I had been given the keys to all the things I wanted, and I’d thrown them away for what? A tangential literary fiction walk? A chance to prove that Meredith Bradford was batshit crazy? A chance to forget, for half a fucking hour, the smattering of freckles that dusted Katie’s perfect face?
“Meredith,” I said. “About what happened, I—”
“I think,” she said, signaling toward the main house, “it’s time you and I had a little chat, no? About the elephant in the room?”
My throat was on fire, and my stomach was in scraps, and still, I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do. I simply followed her toward the dimly lit kitchen, trying to stop my heart from racing. She took a seat at the breakfast table, then glanced at an open chair across from her. I slid into it. Sweat lined my forehead, the nape of my neck, the creases of my palms. I clenched my fists to wring out the panic.
“The meeting at the church is a good one,” she said. “Tuesday nights at eight.”
“Wh-what?”
“The meeting in the church off Linden. It’s a good one. The clubhouse is always there, but the speakers aren’t as good. You should try it.”
My hands unfurled themselves. I wiped the moisture onto my jeans. My words, coming out impossibly quiet. “I don’t... I don’t understand. How did you know I was sober? How could you possibly know that about me?”
