Tropesick

Chapter 7

Katie

I found him right where I’d left him, reading commercial fiction. It was nearly five o’clock, and at the corner table he’d

inhabited for the past seven hours, Tyler appeared to have consumed three cups of coffee, at least two sandwiches, and four-fifths

of a nine-dollar brownie. He was deep in thought, lavender highlighter in hand, his lips twisted and eyebrows tangled as he

turned the page. He’d made it to a second-chance cowboy romance by now—and was already halfway through.

“You’re alive,” I said.

He glanced up. For a moment, he held my gaze, and then . . . nothing. He rubbed his eyes, set down the book, and said, “Barely.

This shit is . . .”

“Clever? Satisfying? Relatable? An escape?”

“I was going to say derivative.”

“Oh, please. Everything is derivative. God forbid you have a lick of fun.”

He scratched his jaw with the cap of my highlighter and said, very quietly, “Am I a Gus?”

I sat down. Immediately. “Are you a what?”

“A Gus.” He dug a mustard yellow paperback out of his stack. Beach Read by Emily Henry. “The grumpy author guy.”

“It’s a trope, moron. And also, no, because Gus is a successful author, and you’re you.”

“Hilarious,” he said. “And the trope, it’s just . . . that’s it? It’s really just men who are vaguely sexy and slightly awful, but not to the point of being completely toxic?”

“Ideally, yes. But sometimes, they are very, very toxic. Heathcliff. Mr. Darcy. Christian Grey.”

“Romeo?”

“Oh my god, Romeo! Yes! Walking red flag. Like, the original love-bomber. Complete disaster. Ten out of ten, though. Would

totally fuck around and find out.”

Tyler laughed, tapping his fingers on the table. “Hey, are you hungry at all? I can’t eat another sandwich. And, eventually,

Lola’s going to start charging me for them.”

I fiddled with my straw for a second, wiping away the smile I’d accidentally allowed to slip across my face. “No, I had a

late lunch, I . . .”

Tyler nodded. His eyes darted back to his stack of required reading as Selma’s email echoed in my ears. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Tyler, but whatever it is, set it aside. I want a publishable manuscript, and

I don’t want to discuss this arrangement with either of you ever again.

We had so much work to do, and zero time to waste. And maybe it wasn’t so great, professionally, that I’d left him alone to

read all day. After all, it wasn’t only Tyler’s reputation on the line. Mine, suddenly, was equally fragile—and I really did

love my job.

I had seen the stress and unpredictability that came with chasing your own career in publishing, especially right out of college, and frankly, I didn’t want that.

You get one shot, maybe two, and then what?

Your title flops, and you never get a chance to write a book again.

But with Selma, I had security. I could pay my rent, I could get my stories into the hands of millions of eager readers, and then I could turn it all off and go thrifting in Brooklyn.

Go fishing for a cute boy in FiDi. Just set it all aside and be a normal, twenty-five-year-old girl.

And so, I pushed my hair behind my ears and thought it through. I could be nice, right? I could act like it didn’t matter—like

this was just work. Like I really didn’t care. Like every time he looked at me, I didn’t have to remind myself to breathe.

“I, um . . . I could maybe get a soda, though?”

Tyler capped the highlighter and rose to his feet. “I know just the place.”

We wound up at a pizza shop a few blocks south, a no-frills New York parlor with giant pies covered in broccoli, pineapple,

and what someone—who, exactly, it remained unclear—claimed to be meatballs. I had just completed a fifteen-minute lecture

on the importance of intimacy rituals when Tyler, halfway through his second slice of mushroom, cracked open a can of Coke.

“So,” he said. “Your date was . . . seven hours long?”

“Is that unusual? Most of my dates last at least a week. Two, if I’m ovulating.”

He rolled his eyes, then set down his drink. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“His name is Danny. You wouldn’t know him. He’s normal.”

“Oh, so, like, an opposites attract thing?”

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Also a trope.”

He laughed, dug back into his remaining slice, and proceeded to pepper me with questions about his reading list while I nursed my cherry soda. Why are so many women desperate to open bakeries? Why are everyone’s parents always dead? Why are the love interests always

named Josh?

“That,” I said, “is the beauty of romance. We don’t let the fact that things are a little implausible get in the way of a

good time.”

“Is that what you tell yourself when you get dressed in the morning?”

“I don’t dress for men, Tyler.”

“Obviously,” he said, but when he said it, his head tilted just a bit and his mouth dropped open half an inch, and everything

rewound. We were outside my house, and our bodies were slammed against the lattice beneath my bedroom window, and it was pouring,

and we were dripping wet, catching our breaths, and all of a sudden, my hips were in his hands and my hands were in his hair

and—

I pulled a folder out of my bag.

This couldn’t happen. That wasn’t him. That Tyler, he wasn’t real. He never was. I was here to write a story. I was here to

pay my rent. I was here to make sure Selma didn’t change her mind about me—and that I didn’t turn the gold star next to my

name into a permanent red line.

“We need to get back to work,” I said.

Tyler looked down, his jaw twitching as I opened the folder and handed him a printout.

“Those are the tropes,” I said, still steadying my voice as he flipped over the page.

“It’s pretty much an exhaustive list. I highlighted the really big ones—there are about fifty.

Since we’re short on time, I think we should pick at least five or six for our book: friends-to-lovers, hot bodyguard, marriage of convenience .

. . And then there are some random ones, too, that you don’t see as much, but we could still use: stepsiblings, amnesia, meddlesome ghost.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And this is the backbone of your literature?”

“This,” I said, “is the backbone of the genre single-handedly keeping publishing companies alive. Who do you think pays for

your depressing-as-shit, experimental pseudo-novellas? Not everybody wants to read McCarthy.”

“Actually, nobody wants to read McCarthy.”

“Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

His eyes twinkled, and my breath caught. How long could we possibly do this? This back-and-forth? This hot and cold? How long

could I possibly pretend I hadn’t needed him? That our final summer hadn’t shattered me?

He scrubbed a hand over his face.

“I’m so sorry, Katie.”

“That Cormac McCarthy died? It’s fine. We weren’t close.”

“No,” he said. “For everything.”

Nodding, I rose from my seat. “I’m, uh . . . I’m really tired. Just read that Talia Hibbert next, okay? Also, the three books

of Meredith’s I brought. We can keep going some other time.”

Tyler stood too. His hands, gesturing, but coming up empty. “Should I text you, or . . . ?”

I was trembling from head to toe, but composed myself enough to say, “Didn’t they teach you how to interpret the subtext at

Brown?”

The following evening, I went out with Danny, and everything felt normal and right and good again.

We were in the West Village, eating ice cream on somebody else’s stoop, and Christopher Street was sparkling.

The sun was low and gold, and that last hint of soft blue sky was slipping between the wine bars, bookshops, and Edith Wharton–era brownstones that lined this impossibly perfect slice of the city.

This was summer, just how I’d pictured it: Cute boy.

Beautiful strangers. Sandals and short little dresses and nights that didn’t end.

The air, smooth, hopeful, and only smelling faintly of trash.

I took a lick of my melting cone—passionfruit chocolate chip—then turned to Danny, offering a taste. He was already stealing

a second and negotiating for a third when my phone dinged between us one, two, three times.

“One of your other boyfriends?” he said, wiping a rogue smear of melting vanilla off his wrist before it could stain the rolled-up

sleeve of his untucked button-down. Danny was twenty-nine and an attorney, and whatever it was we were doing here, it was

decidedly unserious. He was not my first Danny, and I sure as shit would not be his last Katie. But it didn’t matter. Because

this, right here, was exactly what I’d wanted: to get railed in a sundress, to keep my heart in one single, fully functioning

piece.

I glanced at my phone.

Call me.

Need to discuss the seating chart.

Janine and Oscar from group bought a table, and we might have to shuffle everything if they aren’t sitting with the New Hampshire

people anymore.

I wrote back, I’m actually out right now. That boy, Danny, I told you about. Can we do it before work tomorrow?

There was no response for a minute. I inhaled, tapping my foot, staring at the screen.

Danny, who was peering over my shoulder, ran his fingers down my spine and asked me what was up.

I ignored the churning in my stomach and told him it was just my mom—that she was just a little needy, that was all—like it was nothing.

Like I wasn’t hanging on every word she was never going to say.

Finally, she replied, Fine.

I winced, my ice cream forgotten. All the good in my evening, gone. Danny turned to me a little more.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, just . . .” I took a deep breath and rose to my feet. Danny followed me, and we began to wander, making our way toward

Washington Square. “Well, when I was . . .”

He looked at me, waiting. I looked at him, wavering. Danny, as far as I could tell, had suffered precisely zero traumas in

his lifetime, other than winding up a half inch under six feet tall and having been wait-listed at Harvard Law. He’d settled

for Penn, gotten a job as a summer associate at a fancy firm in Hudson Yards, and now made a shit ton of money working seventy-plus

hours a week. He had a nice smile and warm brown eyes and four siblings who were not dead. We’d been hanging out for three

weeks and fucking for two, and in that moment, I remembered what we were doing here, what I was doing here, and I pushed it

all aside.

That boy did not want to hear about my mommy issues any more than I wanted to admit I had them.

And so I tossed my cone in the trash, pinned him against the cool marble of the arch, and kissed him. I kissed him until the bitter taste of the cold, hard truth was gone. And then, when I finally felt like my old self again, we went back to his place, and I buried the truth a little more.

The rest of the week was more of the same. Tyler read a dozen books, memorized the trope list, and spent nine hours analyzing

one-star reviews on Goodreads, which Selma had taught me to do fall semester of my freshman year, when I first became her

intern and was learning what it meant to “write to market.” By Friday, before we went our separate ways for the weekend, Tyler

understood the importance of a three-act structure, knew how to use a beat sheet, and could explain—with nuance—the difference

between a happily ever after and a happy for now.

On Sunday morning, I booked Lola and myself a couple of bikes at my spin studio, where I attempted to maintain Cassandra’s

reggaeton-inspired choreography while Lola shook her head. As a courtesy, during the second half of class, I pretended not

to notice her humming along, dripping in sweat, enjoying it.

After we’d showered and changed, we celebrated Lola’s only day off from Georgina’s by going directly to the café, helping

ourselves to free coffee and pastries, and then meeting up with our friends at the pool at John Jay Park, where we lay out

on flimsy white chaise longues, plastic slats pinching our baking skin. Along FDR Drive, horns honked and tires screeched,

but whatever. Summer was a state of mind.

Lola was on her stomach, arms dangling by her sides, flipping through Anna Karenina. “That boy still has a thing for you, by the way.”

“Raj?” I said. “The locker room attendant I boned last year?”

Lola looked up from her book. “No, babe. Tyler.”

I buried my head in my Sophie Kinsella. “He’s just transferring his trauma onto me. I read about it.”

“Where? On TikTok?”

“Obviously.”

Lola turned her page and said, “Isn’t that all love is, anyway?”