Chapter 11
Tyler
Present Day
New York City
That Friday night, after Katie and I had hit pause on our book for the weekend, I went out for Chinese food with Arthur and
the guys, a ritual I always pretended to hate, but didn’t. We were on Fifty-First and Second Avenue, at our usual haunt: a
very Midtown East, kept-in-business-by-corporate-takeout restaurant where the air smelled like burnt sesame oil and our table
was always waiting.
“How’s the job, kiddo?” Arthur said, dumping a scoop of lo mein on his plate. I cracked open my soda and poured it over a
cup of crushed ice.
“Fine,” I said. “Good. Fine.”
“What job?” That was Pedro. He was a fortysomething stand-up comedian who reverse-moonlit as a substitute teacher. When things
got really bad, he was also a party clown. “You find a summer gig?”
Arthur gave me a knowing glance, which I expertly ignored.
“I’m kind of writing a book,” I said.
“Aren’t you always writing a book?” Cal this time. He lived on Park Avenue, did five years for insider trading, and always
picked up the tab. He had the softest hands I’d ever shaken and had been divorced three times. Four days a week, he paid an
ex-con to box with him at a gym in Hell’s Kitchen, and usually, I joined.
“It’s a real book this time. A ghostwriting thing—a three-month contract. And then I should be able to sell mine. The agent who got me the job said she’d help me.”
“That’s great,” Pedro said. “Wow, congratulations. Who’s the author? What’s it about?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s about nothing.”
Arthur shook his head, eyes bright through a frown that was really more of a smirk. I mouthed, What? and stifled a chuckle of my own, spinning the lazy Susan to retrieve a lukewarm egg roll.
“He’s writing a romance novel,” Arthur said.
“You?” Cal’s eyes went wide beneath his wire-framed glasses. “The boy they specifically tell girls to stay away from?”
“That’s not true,” I said. “That’s . . .”
Everyone else was grinning. Arthur, less so, but still.
“Face it,” Pedro said. “It’s not a Friday night in New York City if a girl’s not crying into a plate of diner pancakes because
Tyler McNally changed his mind about her.”
“Fuck you!” I flung a fried noodle across the table. It hit him right in the mustache. “I really am working on it! I swear!”
It was so nice out on Monday, we defected from Georgina’s to write in the park. Katie had picked out a spot of sun-soaked
grass, then promptly lay herself down on a picnic blanket she inexplicably happened to have in her massive tote bag. She was—just
so you know, for scene-setting purposes—wearing hot pink cutoffs that were completely up her ass and a frilly white top that
kind of looked like a tutu. Her hair was down in big, loose waves.
About an hour into our session, she turned her screen to me without a word.
I pulled her computer closer. On page, Willa was describing her childhood bedroom, the one she still came home to every summer, the one she never quite seemed to outgrow.
How it was full of beautiful things—fashion sketches and watercolor swatches and postcards of the faraway places she’d been.
But still, the house shrunk her. But still, she hated every inch of it.
I read the scene twice.
“What do you think?” Katie asked.
I squinted at the final few lines a third time. “It’s good. But that ending—you’re summing up the way she feels. Your writing’s
really strong. You don’t need to do that. I already know. You’ve already shown me. You should cut it.”
She tugged back her laptop and, nose wrinkled, began tapping on what must’ve been her delete key. And then, without glancing
up, she muttered a thank-you and got back to her scene. And somehow, in that moment, everything rewound, and we were teenagers
again. It was another cloudless afternoon on our beach, and we were scribbling in our notebooks, writing the stories we’d
never finish, and there was nothing else to it. I was just a standard-issue shithead whittling away the dog days of summer
with the girl next door. I had not yet tossed her aside. I had not yet lied to her face. I had not yet watched her slam her
window shut. I had not yet heard the glass shatter, had not yet discovered the good drugs, had not yet broken my promise or
fractured the future or disappeared from our little world without a trace. I had not yet—
“Tyler,” she said.
I blinked twice, but it hardly worked. I was still somewhere else—still on that beach, still flinging chips and biting lips
and—
“Tyler,” she said again. “What’s going on with you? You can dissociate later. On your own time. You need to finalize the outline.”
I nodded, rubbing the memory away. Trying to lock back into this moment—into the here and now. On Katie, glancing up from
her screen, the slightest furrow in her brow, the slightest space between her lips. Her ridiculous heart-shaped sunglasses,
reflecting the city’s silver-gray skyline, and sliding down her nose. Those eyes, still that same shade of emerald, and waiting
for me to explain myself. I closed my laptop and wrapped my arms around my knees.
“Katie, listen,” I said. “I’ve wanted to make amends to you for years. Since the day I left for college . . . It wasn’t okay,
what I did. The way I disappeared. That summer we spent together—the first one, and then, the second . . . If you wanted to
let me talk you through all the ways I was wrong, to tell you all about how I’ve tried to be a better person since then, I—”
“Stop it,” she said.
“I should’ve never—”
“I asked you,” she said, “to stop.”
I shut my eyes. I had done this. I was responsible for this. For whatever armor she’d been forced to weld, for all the ways
she’d hardened, for all the ways she’d learned to push the past away. I had left her all alone. I had given her no choice
but to grow up—but to carve a new life for herself out of whatever scar tissue remained.
I opened my eyes.
Katie was looking right at me. Her frown, slight—but there all the same.
“We could just write,” she whispered.
“What?”
Now she closed her laptop. She sat up straight; her legs, crisscrossed. Her face, at once, neutral. The space between us, an impossibly easy two feet.
“We could just write,” she repeated. “Like we did when we were kids.”
“I can’t let that happen. I can’t live in a world where you don’t know how sorry I am. In a world where—”
“No,” she said. “I call the shots. I don’t want this hanging over me. I don’t want this ruining my summer. It’s over, and
I’m fine, and I don’t care. I haven’t cared in years.”
“There’s no way. I—”
“Stop it. Stop trying to tell me how I feel. We’re adults. We’re colleagues. We know how to write and how to make each other’s
work better. So let’s just do that. Let’s just start over and move on.”
I nodded. We were still seated like that—like mirrors of each other. She pushed a wave behind her ear and inhaled.
“So,” she said. “Friends?”
I swallowed. I wanted, in that moment, to turn back time. I wanted, in that moment, to pull her into my arms, steady her head
on my chest, press my nose into her hair, lay right there until the stars fell asleep, until Long Island melted into morning,
listening to her talk about whatever scene she was drafting as if her body wasn’t glued to mine. Listening to me tell her
how I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of that town even though the only thing I’d ever wanted to do was stay. Instead, I
remained completely still, and so did she.
“Yeah,” I said. “Friends.”