Chapter 14
The next day, the sky finally cleared after lunch, the temperature warming into the midseventies. “We are going swimming!” Gabby declared as they washed their plates. “Well, we have to wait half an hour since we just ate. I’ll set a timer. But go put on those bathing suits!”
Everyone suited and sunblocked up, then traipsed outside. But Natalie hung back. It was a Saturday, so any news from her agent was highly unlikely. But just to be safe, she’d check her email one more time. Making sure that everyone was gone, she clambered up onto the table, letting out a grunt of pain. Oh God, her neck. She’d never admit it to him, but Rob had been correct: that couch was not meant for people to sleep on, or perhaps not meant for people to go within ten feet of.
She paused to stretch her neck out, then held her phone up to the ceiling. A text from Iman dinged:
IMAN:Sorry to contact you on a weekend, but figured you’d want the update. Leslie apologized profusely for the delay. She had a family emergency this week and is just plugging back in now. Said she’d aim to get me a definitive answer today. I’ll send over as soon as I get it. Fingers crossed!
A knot of anxiety and anticipation lodged itself in her throat, threatening to cut off her air supply. She would find out today. At any moment, maybe.
Nothing would change if she saw the email immediately versus a couple hours after it was sent. She would not lose an opportunity if she didn’t respond right away. It was the freaking weekend. Natalie would get down from the table and go in the water and then come back and check later.
But she could not move.
Not that she was stuck physically, though it would take a bit of effort to heave her aching body back down after the night spent tossing and turning on the torture couch.
She just could not make herself leave that patch of service. So, okay, she’d refresh her email one more time, then go.
She refreshed one more time. Nothing. She stayed.
Again and again, she refreshed, each time telling herself it would be the last, each time growing more frantic. She felt…addicted, like when, as a thirteen-year-old, she’d gotten really into playing this online game called Bubble Trouble. Each time she lost, she was convinced that the next time, she’d get to the next level, so she couldn’t turn it off. Eventually, her mom had to block the website on their computer. Now Natalie was waiting for proof that she’d get to the next level too—the next level of financial and career stability. The next level of being an adult.
How much could she have accomplished with all the hours she spent checking her email for news that would change her life? She probably could have learned Mandarin or gone to med school.
She climbed off the table, went to the bathroom, reapplied sunscreen, made it all the way to the door. Then she ran back to the table again for just one more check.
An unknown period of time slipped by, punctuated by false alarm emails: a sale on Old Navy’s flip-flops. A political candidate asking for “a chance to explain” why he needed her time and money, as if he were a deadbeat ex-boyfriend. And then she refreshed again, and the phone chimed with a notification she felt in her belly. Because Iman’s name had appeared on the screen.
Blood roaring in her ears, she read the email, Iman’s quick Looks like we’ve reached the end of the road with this one. Let’s regroup and find a time to talk, over a forwarded message from Leslie at Penguin. And then she pushed herself off the table, tripping out the back door of the house into the sun.
Gabby. She needed to find Gabby, to crumple into her arms, but she didn’t want any of the others to see. She couldn’t bear Angus’s loud sympathy, Melinda’s bluntness, Dante’s…whatever Dante’s deal was. She especially couldn’t face Rob and his infuriating superiority.
They were all on the main dock, Melinda and Dante playing music from a speaker, drinking beer, and shoving their tongues down each other’s throats. Rob was doing laps, Angus floated on an inflatable alligator, and Gabby was napping in an Adirondack chair, an open magazine splayed over her chest. Gabby looked so calm, a woman who had her life all figured out. Natalie crept closer, taking a side path, weaving around tree roots and low-hanging branches instead of walking down the main steps.
“Gabriella! Come in here and fight me with a pool noodle!” Angus yelled.
Gabby opened one eye. “I’m relaxing.”
Angus shrugged and jumped off his floatie. Melinda and Dante were wrapped up in each other. Now was the moment to beckon Gabby over. But Nat found that she couldn’t do it.
Because whatever Gabby said to comfort Natalie now would be hollow, half-hearted. Any of her platitudes about how the publishing world didn’t know what it was missing were sure to ring false. How could she know when she hadn’t read Nat’s work in years?
Nat had plenty of other people who wanted to know everything. Her mother. Her endlessly supportive writing group. The friends who had read and loved Apartment 2F (or who claimed to love it—Natalie now had trouble believing that anyone had really meant the positive things they told her), who kept asking when they could expect a new Shapiro novel for their shelves. But none of them were here.
So she turned away from Gabby and stumbled down the path along the side of the house, over tree roots and patches of moss, to the smaller, more hidden dock around the bend, little more than a place to tie up an extra rowboat. She would deal with this alone.
To be devastated in a place like this felt wrong. The ferns and rushes rustled in the breeze, the afternoon sun casting a great golden beam across the water, the surface of the lake a glimmering soft blue. Goddammit, here came a loon, gliding by her with its low call. The beauty of it all seemed to say, How can you look at me and feel anything besides awestruck?
And yet Natalie was miserable. The water shimmered in front of her, yes, but so did the future she’d pictured for herself. That future grew fainter, then was carried off by the wind, to be given to someone else instead. What was she doing? She was twenty-eight years old. Everyone else had been laying the groundwork for the rest of their lives while she’d fixated on this book being her purpose, convincing herself that she didn’t need to worry about backup plans. So much time had slipped by while she’d let herself be dazzled by the illusion that she was special. Now, not only was she not special, she was unprepared for everything else.
Why had she thrown herself into a career with so much heartbreak involved? She could have been…an accountant and not cared too much and had BENEFITS and saved her energy for other things instead of basing her entire self-worth on whether some people she’d never met decided that her book was worth publishing.
She glanced down once more at the email on her phone, reading the message from Leslie at Penguin, a paragraph of praise followed by:
Unfortunately, after consulting with the team here, we don’t have a vision for how to publish this book in a big way, so I’m going to have to step aside. I’m sure someone else who loves it will snatch it up!
But there was no one else who loved it. Natalie, apparently, was the only one. She loved it with a passion so deep it hurt. With a certainty that this was the best thing she’d ever done. The best she could do. She’d dug inside herself, then dug even more, tunneling into her core until there was simply nowhere else to go, and this book was what she’d returned with, dirt-stained and exhausted and triumphant. And the response had been a collective Sorry, but not good enough.
A noise startled her, and she whirled around. Rob appeared in his bathing suit, neat navy shorts, a few remaining droplets of water clinging to his skin. He approached hesitantly, a man stumbling upon some wounded animal in the woods, feeling it was his duty to investigate. Dammit, he was the last person she wanted to see her like this.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I thought I saw you over by the other dock, peering through the bushes, looking all shifty and morose.”
“I’m not morose!” she said. Then she burst into tears.
He took a step forward, reaching out a tentative hand before thinking better of it and gluing it back to his side. “What’s wrong?”
Water sloshed against the dock. Hot tears stained her cheeks. She tried to wipe them away, but they kept coming, uncontrollable. “I…” She sniffled. “I’ve got great news for you. I won’t get to publish another book.”
“Ah,” he said.
“Yup. Go ahead and gloat.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you wanted to burn Apartment 2F at the stake.”
“Because of Dennis.” He scratched at his ear. “And the new one doesn’t have a Dennis type.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You read it? I told you to erase that email from your inbox and your memory!”
“Well”—he cleared his throat—“I was curious.”
“And what did you think?” She cut herself off, shaking her head, furiously scrubbing her face. “No, I don’t want to know.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay.”
She paced the length of the dock back and forth, wiped the snot from her nose, then said, “Fine, tell me.”
He hesitated. “I thought it was good.”
“Wow. Stop before my ego explodes from the torrent of praise.”
“You’re a talented writer.”
She bit her thumbnail. “So, what? Two stars this time?”
“Five,” he said, avoiding her eyes.
“You are a terrible liar.” Still, silence, as he gazed out over the water. “Robert. How many stars?”
“Fine. Three point five.”
She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Thank you for your generosity.”
“Three point five is good. Four is amazing. Five is one of my favorite books ever.”
“My God, you don’t have to have such rigid standards for everything.” She paused. “So, why only three point five?”
“I liked it. I thought the main character was compelling, and the setting was well researched.”
“Harder for people to assume I’m writing about them—or their best friend—if it’s historical fiction.”
He scratched at the back of his neck, making a noncommittal noise.
“What’s the complaint, then?”
“Nothing.” She glared at him until he relented. “It just seemed clear to me that, in Apartment 2F, even with its cynical, unforgiving bent, you were having more fun.”
She sat down onto the sun-stained slats then, her legs practically collapsing under her. “I can’t win. When I’m having fun, my writing isn’t serious. When my writing is serious, I’m not having enough fun.”
He sat down next to her. Insane to be confiding in him of all people, to be giving him the power to wound her more deeply than he already had. She turned off everything she knew of him outside this moment, outside this expression on his face like he wanted to keep listening, and went on, her voice small. “I just feel like I’ve lost my way. And all the rest of you are doing so well. I’ve gotten turned around while you guys have been happily hiking forward, and now I’m on the edge of the parking lot while Gabby is reaching the summit of the mountain. And you, you’re going to be a professor. You’re not even thirty!”
He shrugged, an uncomfortable expression on his face. “Well, assistant professor. And I’m a legacy. And it’s in Arizona, which is far too hot for me. And comparison is the thief of joy.”
“Or does comparison just get you off your ass so you stop wasting your life?”
“I’m not sure about that.”
“Me neither.” She shook her head and said softly, as the wind rushed through the pine boughs, “This book is the best thing I’ll ever do.”
“That’s not true.”
“I worked so hard. I don’t know how to dig any deeper. I have nothing more interesting than that to say.”
“Well, maybe not now.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Olympic gymnasts do their best work when they’re young. But maybe for writers, it goes the other way. Don’t you think? You live more life, get more perspective.”
“So…what? I’m just supposed to wait?” She stood up too, pacing again. “I’m impatient! I want…” Without realizing it, she’d paced very close to him. She turned, and he was right there, still only in his bathing suit, his shoulders glowing in the sun. “I want things now,” she finished, slightly out of breath.
He swallowed, his chest moving up and down. Slowly, softly, he said, “It’s not the best thing you’ll ever do.”
She stepped back. “Thank you for listening to me be a whiny little brat.”
“I think you’re allowed to whine about this. It’s a big deal.”
“Yeah.” She let out a bitter laugh. “I’ve been so distracted by this the whole weekend that I haven’t even gone into the water.” She held up her phone. “I just kept checking this godforsaken thing.”
Rob looked at her, his eyes gentler than she was used to seeing them. He reached out, indicating her phone. “May I?” Confused, she gave a half nod, and, carefully, he took her phone from her hand, as if to make sure that she couldn’t keep rereading her rejection email. He laid it down on the bleached slats of the dock, far from the edge. Then he moved toward her. For one strange moment, she thought, Is he going to kiss me? And, strangest of all, she wanted him to. He brought his arms up toward her, as if to pull her to him. Then he gave her a swift push off the dock.
She crashed into the water, still in her sundress, her shriek cut off as lake sloshed into her mouth. The cold shocked her system, and she came up sputtering. “What the hell!”
He’d folded his arms on the dock, his mouth quirking up slightly in amusement. “Now you’ve gone in.” She splashed as much water as she could in his general direction, spraying his legs. “Refreshing, thank you,” he said, then did a shallow dive in to join her. Excellent form. Was he good at everything except for being a kind person? (Well, besides in this particular moment.)
The wake from a motorboat some yards out rippled toward them, pushing her one way and then another. She could float, or she could swim against it. She’d been swimming so hard for such a long time.
He emerged beside her, droplets in his hair, rivulets streaming down his back, and she watched the passage of those rivulets as they slid down, down, until she caught herself and averted her eyes, focusing instead on the vast sky above.
“The water is nice. Thank you for the…encouragement.”
“You don’t have to keep thanking me for being a decent human being.”
“It’s out of surprise. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay.” Then he sent a great wave of water her way. She yelped in surprise and went to smack his shoulder in retaliation, but he grabbed her wrist (thankfully her good one) before she could.
They froze in that position, the lake thrumming around them, his fingers firm and strong and warm as they encircled her skin, her pulse beating against his thumb.
“Reflexes,” she said, her voice faint.
“What?” His dark eyes were clouded, his pupils huge.
“You have good reflexes.”
“Thank you.”
A moment more, in which the only sound was the quiet push and pull of the water, the shiver of wind through the trees, Natalie’s heartbeat in her ears, Rob’s ragged exhale. His thumb traced the soft, thin skin of her wrist, then moved, so slow it made her ache, up her palm, pressing the tender center of it. Her fingers curled onto his, doing so of their own volition, traitorous. Her whole body was being a traitor to her now, humming and buzzing and full of want.
“I should let you go,” he said, his voice strained.
She swallowed. “Don’t.”
Later, she couldn’t identify which one of them leaned forward and closed that final sliver of distance between their bodies. Maybe it was both of them at the same time, racing to press their mouths against each other before they remembered themselves. His hands were in her hair, rough in the best way, her arms around his neck. Every part of her that was touching him burned, and every part that wasn’t pressed against him felt cold, too cold, wanted to be touching him too. She was dizzy, unsteady, maybe from the current around her (but she didn’t think that was it), and so she clung to him, because if she let go, she might just slip under the surface and never reemerge.
Her first kisses with people before had been sweet and shy, or drunk and messy, awkward or nice. This, though, was entirely different. There should be a new word for something so fiery, voracious, so full of need and feeling. He was the linguist. She could ask him: How did one go about inventing a new word? But to ask would involve removing her mouth from his, something she did not want to do.
His bare chest was separated from her only by her thin white sundress, now completely see-through. His hands slid down her back, pulling her even closer, until she could barely breathe. She grasped him harder too, an unspoken competition between them even now to hold more tightly, kiss more fiercely, destroy the other more completely. Hatred and passion shared such a fine line. And she hated him, this man who had made her doubt herself and had never apologized for it, who still thought that he was in the right.
With that, she remembered all the reasons she should not keep pushing into him and turned her head away, gasping. He loosened his hold on her. They untangled themselves and stared at each other in disbelief. He seemed to be having trouble catching his breath, looking at her with such ferocious intensity that she knew she should look away.
“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath, and moved forward again. In the second before he could take her in his arms, she realized this man was dangerous to her. Somehow, he saw her more fully than the other men she’d known and wasn’t afraid to let her know what he thought. He’d already judged her once and found her lacking. Could she bear to let that happen again?
“I’m starting to date someone,” she blurted right before their bodies collided.
“I…” Before he could control himself, his face fell, and she felt a spark of triumph. Then he stepped back and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up. When he spoke again, his voice was professional. “I am too. I think it’s going to get serious.”
“Same. So we can write this off as a moment of weakness. Or…or like we had to let that out, and now we can stop being so weird and just be civil to each other.”
“Yes,” he said, angling his lower body toward the dock so that she wouldn’t notice what was happening down there. (But it was too late. She had noticed, all right.) “This will definitely stop everything from being weird.”
“Your sarcasm is not appreciated right now!” She tossed her head, then winced from the sudden movement. The kiss had erased, momentarily, the crick in her neck from the previous night. It was like being drunk, the way you’d go around bumping into things and hurting your feet in high heels, and not feeling it until the next morning. Kissing him had intoxicated her. But now the pain was setting back in.
He registered the expression on her face. “The kiss was that bad, huh?”
“No, it’s just…”
“What?”
“My neck…from the couch.”
“Mine too,” he said, and slowly, they both started laughing.
“You were right. It is a torture device.”
“Vindication,” he said. “I am not a delicate flower.”
Not delicate at all, she thought, an aftershock rippling through her at the way his body had felt against hers, so lean and strong.
“I’ll take the couch again tonight,” he said.
“That’s not fair.” Then he’d get to be the decent one, suffering twice as much as her. The kiss was still making her brain slow, allowing her to stumble into dangerous territory. “We can share the bed tonight.” He arched an eyebrow, and she continued, quickly, “No funny business! Just so we can both get a decent night of sleep.”
“You sure?” She was having trouble telling whether his expression was disbelieving or smug, like he was goading her to admit how much she’d enjoyed what had just happened. God, why had she made this suggestion? But she couldn’t back out now, couldn’t just say, You know, on second thought, this might be dangerous, because that kiss was far more thrilling than I ever imagined it would be. Not that I spent a lot of time imagining kissing you! It just flitted across my mind every once in a while, mostly before I got to know you better. But anyways, it was very good, and while I intellectually don’t want to do it again, physically a night in bed with you is going to be uncomfortable as hell.
They stood in an unspoken standoff.
“I think I’ll be able to control myself if you can,” she said, her tone entirely dry.
“I have excellent self-control,” he said, and an unwanted tingle ran up her spine.
“Good. Because I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer for neither of us to leave this weekend in a neck brace.”
He gave her a serious nod. “For the sake of our necks.”