“Katie,” he said again.
“Yeah?”
“He’s going to try, okay?”
I nodded. My fists were glued to the edge of my chair. “Soon, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “As soon as he can.”
40
Tyler
That night, after I’d taken three very long, very cold showers, Meredith found me at the kitchen table, staring at a wall. My laptop was open, but I’d sort of forgotten how to use it.
“Tyler?” she said. “You all right?”
I made a weird noise.
She laughed. “Is Katie out?”
I nodded. A couple of hours ago, Katie and I’d begun to loosely draft the handful of scenes leading up to our first kiss when a calendar alert on her phone dinged. She froze at once, then explained she needed to go into town for some “videoconference-planning-meeting thing” for her mother. Right then and there, I knew it was for the foundation, and was forced to remember where Mikey was and why his mother’s nonprofit did the work that it did and why I’d spent the last eight years running from what I’d done.
Meredith took a seat across from me. “Are you working on your manuscript?”
I blew out a breath. “Yours, actually. Henry and Willa, they’re supposed to kiss soon. Katie wants it at our midpoint. She says that Henry needs to just do it—to just try. Any scene. Any time. That Willa’s scared, but she wants it. That Henry’s all she thinks about. We worked on the lead-up all day, but I still can’t see it. I don’t think I’m ever going to get the moment right.”
Meredith reached for the outline. A minute later, she set it back down.
“I think Katie is correct,” she said. “The tension is certainly adequate. If you drag this on much longer, your readers may begin to skim. The past forty pages, really, have been a bit frustrating. I understand you’re writing a slow burn, and that finding space in the narrative for all this characterization is difficult when you’re writing two points of view, but you must deliver eventually. It’s time to give the readers what they want. What they bought the book for.”
“But what if Henry’s not ready?” I said. “What if he ruins everything? What if it’s just like everything else he thought he wanted? What if he kisses her and changes his mind? And what about the landscape architect? I know Willa didn’t go on the boat, but she didn’t exactly come back to the Inn two nights early either. That guy’s still hovering. He’s not going to disappear just because Henry leans over and kisses her. It could take ten thousand words to get her out of that situation. I don’t have enough pages! He’s going to destroy my pacing!”
Meredith chuckled. “You have to believe that this time, Tyler, it’s going to be different. You have to believe that this time, when you—”
“You mean Henry.”
“Yes,” she said. “My apologies.Henry. Henry has to believe that what he has with Willa, it’s not going to be like what he’s had with the other girls. And, more importantly, Henry needs to believe the story he’s telling himself about himself might be just that: a story. A false narrative, a core misconception. Do you know that story? Take a day off and learn it. Because it’s the lies our characters tellthemselves where internal conflicts really brew. Eventually, Henry is going to have to try something new. He’s going to have to trust that he can do this—that he can be a different kind of man now. Otherwise, there’s no change. And when there’s no change, there’s no story.”
I scratched a few notes onto the outline. Illegible chunks of thought.Henry. Willa. Different. Story.Those sorts of things.
“So, you think he should kiss her?”
Meredith laughed again. “Yes, Tyler. I think he should kiss her. As soon as possible.”
“And the other guy? The landscape architect?”
Meredith rose to her feet.
“Plot device,” she said. “Nothing you can’t handle.”
On Thursday, Katie and I made dinner together as usual. By this point, we’d bumbled through a dozen of Ina’s recipes: roasted vegetable lasagna, fifteen-minute lemon capellini, easy tomato soup with grilled cheese croutons. Every night, we absolutely trashed the kitchen, and every night, Katie spent at least two-thirds of the hour sitting on the counter, yapping about musicals, taking breaks only to lick a balsamic reduction off a wooden spoon or tell me my chiffonnade sucked. She also insisted on subjecting each meal we—well, I—cooked to a full-blown photo shoot, mini ring light and portable tripod for her phone and all.
Tonight, we’d done another entree fromCooking with Jeffrey: roasted salmon tacos, but with cod instead because Katie thought salmon in a taco was gross.
“What are you going to do with all these pictures, anyway?”I said as she repositioned a sprig of cilantro on her plate for the thousandth time. “Blackmail me?”
“Exactly.” She snapped a few more photos and then signaled me outside. The sun was setting behind us, brushstrokes of rose dissolving into a soft blue sky. “Grumpy man proven to be human. Can tell the difference between household and finishing vinegar. No longer qualified to weigh in on human suffering or teach children about Mark Twain.”
