I let out another bleat. Twenty years of stoicism about my deadbeat dad, and here I was, crying like a baby over the oldest trope in the book.
“This is so fucking embarrassing. Why do I suddenly care so much? What do I think he’s going to do, show up out of nowhere and read me a bedtime story? Take me to the fucking park? Tell me he’s proud of me? Tell me, despite everything, I turned out all right?”
Katie was still cupping my face.
“Your father,” she said, “was an idiot. I mean it, Tyler. He didn’t deserve to know you. He must’ve been the biggest idiot in the whole wide world.”
64
Katie
In romance novels, there is always a montage. When this montage occurs is not set in stone, but the general consensus is to place it right as the main characters—the hero and the heroine, or the heroine and the heroine, or the hero and the hero, or whatever you’re into—slip into that warm and fuzzy honeymoon state right after they bang.
The reasons for this are many: To keep readers hooked after hundreds of pages of sexual tension are released. To propel the story forward as the end of Act Two turns into the beginning of Act Three. And, above all else, to show you—swiftly, broadly, beautifully—what it feels like to fall in love.
Well, here you have it: The next two weeks were magic. We wrote our book. We made goat cheese tarts and Bibb lettuce salads with green goddess dressing. We chased each other into the roaring ocean, hot sand burning our flying feet. When Tyler went to his meetings, I’d either hang back with Meredith or bike to a coffee shop in town to proofread silent auction pamphlets for my mom. Around ten, Tyler would tap on the window, and I’d close my laptop and let him buy me an ice cream before we laughingly pedaled back home. I’d fall asleep in his bed while he worked on his novel and then, when he finally crawled under the covers, I’d mutter his name as he wrapped his arms around me.
There is more that I could add, but it would be wasted space. My heart was on fire, and you know how to fill in the blanks.
Secrets and Lies
Henry and Willa had no desire to hurt each other. They were head-over-heels, deliriously happy. But they had been that way before, and things had still fallen apart. And here they were, a decade later, with only a few weeks left in their summer, too afraid to talk about why.
65
Tyler
I flung the final period onto the last page of my rewritten manuscript around three in the morning on a balmy and unremarkable Wednesday. It was late August by now, and Katie, as usual, was sound asleep in my bed, a pillow threaded between her bare and glistening legs. I sat at the table for a moment, hunched and tensed and unfathomably tired, and let the thrill course through me for a third and final time.
And then, still flooded with the high, I clicked my laptop shut, tiptoed out the cottage door, and made my way to the beach. Within minutes, Meredith had emerged. This had, over the past month, become something of a tradition between us. These unplanned, pitch-black drafting breaks by the water. Sometimes, we missed each other, but at least a few times a week, the stars just seemed to align.
“I finished,” I said as she settled onto the sand. “It’s done.”
“And?”
I let out the slightest chuckle. “You were right. Turns out it was a love story all along.”
She laughed. “Yes, well, most stories are. Even when we do not care to admit it.”
I nodded. For a while, we were both quiet. We let the waves crash. We let the stars blink. We let the sky breathe. And then, all of a sudden, she broke the silence.
“I fell in love here, you know. Right on this very beach.”
I turned to her then. She was smiling, and sand was slipping through her fingers. All summer, I’d been too afraid to ask questions. Too afraid to ask how or when or why she’d let this happen to her life. After all, she had no desire to stop drinking. What good was it, encouraging her to recount whatever had crushed her? But now, here she was, offering her story to me.
“I was young,” she said. “Barely twenty-two. I’d just graduated from college, and he was working at my family’s beach club for the summer. A trope, I know, but it didn’t feel like that one bit. It never does—not when it’s happening to you. Not when it’s real. And god, was it real.”
I nodded. Meredith continued. “I loved him instantly. I loved him the minute I laid eyes on him. He was so different from the boys I’d met at boarding school or university. He was a grown-up—a man. Weathered, assertive, unafraid. From that very first night, I had this feeling he’d set the whole world on fire for me. We went on one date—simple: pizza and a walk on the beach, and that was all it took. I couldn’t get enough of him. My parents were in Europe, and we sent the staff away. We took over the carriage house and cooked and talked and swam and laughed. It was the easiest thing I’d ever done, loving him. I was born to do it. It was second nature to me.”
On the shore, somehow, was Meredith’s silhouette. A projection, almost. Her story, playing out like a movie scene, nearly how it had that night I caught sight of her crying on the beach. But this time, there was no scouring of the sea. This time, there was another shadow beside her, and she was happy. She was young. She was free.
“What changed?” I asked. The words practically fell out of me. But I had to understand what shattered her. What made her do what Katie had told me she’d done over two decades ago: send her husband and daughter away. “What went wrong? Why’d you get divorced?”
She let out a chuckle. “Oh, Tyler, no. I had the kind of love you’d write a thousand books about. But not with Alan. Not with the man I married.”
My stomach flipped. That vision on the sand rewound. It became a smudge—a blur. A question mark. I tried to connect the dots but couldn’t. “Why... why wouldn’t you marry the person you loved?”
“I was a fool,” she said. “It was as simple as that. The summer ended, and I was moving to Iowa City, and I was a fool. I thought I’d have a dozen more loves in my lifetime. That I’d find someone who was more like my father. Someone who was from my world. And I suppose there was this part of me—the budding romance novelist in me—who believed we’d get a second chance at our story. That if he were truly my soulmate, he’d come back to me.”
