Later that night, I texted Katie very carefully. My new number to her old one.
Selma said no.
She responded at once.
Then don’t show up. Disappear.
I winced, then wrote,Katie, come on. Let’s talk. I can meet you wherever. I can try to explain what happened, okay?
A blink later, this:Tell her youhave togo to rehab or something.
I clenched my jaw and typed out,What the fuck is your problem?but did not send it. After all, I knew what her problem was. Me.
Instead, I replied,Please, just meet me somewhere. Hear me out. I never meant to hurt you.
Just as fast, she wrote,Soundslike you’re really torn up about the consequences of your own actions, Tyler. Why don’t you repeat your senior year of high school, write an essay about your coming-of-age experience, and magically get into Brown?
Suddenly, my fists were hot, my throat was dry, and my pulse was pummeling. My fingers flew across the keys so quickly I did not know what they’d decided to say until I’d already sent the message.
You know what, Katie? It’s genre fiction, not a mission to Mars.Selma does not have time to find anyone else. I’ll write the boy. You write the girl. We’ve practically done this twice already anyway, and I cannot go back to her and have this conversation again. I’m going to end up blacklisted, and so are you. So, in the interest of making rent, just deal with it. It’s three months.
For a minute, bubbles. For a minute, dots. And then, she sent this:
Fine.
I stared at it, then closed my eyes. Softness. Quiet. Here it was: a chance, a window. But as soon as my heart rate had begun to calm, another ding.
I don’t want to see you, though.
I grimaced and then wrote,I realize there’s not much reading between the lines in romance novels, Katie, but rest assured: I know how to interpret subtext.
And then I threw my phone across the room, slammed the door to my apartment, and paced around Central Park until the navy night turned pink, trying to quiet the noise. Trying to convince myself that I’d changed when, all of a sudden, it was pretty clear that I had not.
5
Katie
We worked remotely for a week, collaborating on a Google Doc like we were hell-bent on pushing suggestion mode to its limits. Like we were genuinely curious how many times a single sentence could be struck through, commented on, and recast before causing the entire three-thousand-word block of text to go up in flames.
I cycled twice a day, ate peanut butter for every meal, sexted this guy I was seeing for the bare minimum of four minutes each night, and cried myself to sleep. And then, on the first Monday in June, I got an email from Selma.
This outline is unacceptable, Katie. The reason I hired you as my intern in college, the reason I trusted you to start writing for Meredith as soon as you graduated, was because you’ve always been an absolute dream to work with. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Tyler—I noticed from his paperwork you’re both from the same town—but whatever it is, set it aside. Get him up to speed and then get writing. I want a publishable manuscript, and I don’t want to discuss this arrangement with either of you ever again.
And that, I suppose, was the start of it all. That was when Tyler McNally and I finally began to write a love story.
Grumpy Sunshine
Henry Cooper was many things: a carpenter, a karate enthusiast, an amateur maker of jam. But he was also, at times, closed off, far too serious, and a bit rude. Every night, when Willa would sit on the edge of the Inn’s dock, humming, sketching, smiling as a thousand fireflies zipped through the sky, Henry would sit there, flipping through a massive anthology of very important poems, his head down and his frown severe.
It was almost as though he couldn’t stand to be around something so bright. It was almost as though he didn’t know what to do, what to say, or how to let the light in.
6
Tyler
We agreed to meet at the café the following morning, which, insofar as I could tell, was the only place Katie went. When the door swung open, I almost laughed. She was wearing white cowboy boots, an iridescent miniskirt, and red lipstick. It was ten a.m. on a Tuesday.
“You look insane,” I said.
