Chapter 16
For years, James has dreamed of typing two little words.
The End.
Eight slow jabs, one held breath, ducts bursting with tears that have waited a decade for this.
Carefully, as if it might spontaneously crumble to dust, he rolls the final page free from the typewriter and places it atop his completed manuscript. Two hundred and forty-two pages of his words. He scoops the stack of paper up and flips it over to chapter one.
I did it.
Immediately, he wants to type the manuscript on a computer and upload it to the cloud.
But he left his laptop in Lincoln, and dropping a grand on a new one would make a hazardous dent in his savings account, which he needs to travel with Nelle.
With the completion of his first draft, he finally feels like leaving New York wouldn’t be The End.
There is a whole world to roam, and he’s lucky to have a partner to roam alongside.
They might be leaving sooner than he’s ready, but he’s not sad about it.
No, the next two weeks will be a golden period.
His imagination churns out a slew of images: floating on a gondola in Venice, climbing the Eiffel Tower, hiking the Scottish Fairy Pools.
He started plotting their first kiss, but nothing is set in stone.
Nelle is normally nestled in bed at this time of night.
The empty sheets hold her shape. So caught up in the last few chapters of his book, he forgot that he wrote for her to go to Jessie’s studio.
She has been back three times this past week to paint, even without Jessie.
James has yet to see any of her finished pieces, but Lena and Jessie both say they’re remarkable.
He believes it. Can’t really imagine Nelle being unremarkable.
Holding the manuscript like a small cake, James carries it down the hall. Jessie is frying an egg in the kitchen, a dishrag slung across her shoulder.
“Guess what I did?” he says.
As if handling a newborn, Jessie takes the manuscript and flips through the first few pages, disbelief written across her face.
“Holy shit, you finished a freakin’ book.”
“I’ve been talking about it long enough.”
“Have you told Nelle yet?” She turns to page one. “Is this because of her? Is it about her?”
“No, no, and no.” James takes back the manuscript into his own care. “And it’s nowhere near ready for reading.”
Jessie picks up a spatula. “Elevator pitch me.”
“It’s romantic, but not really a romance. And there is a curse. And two main characters.”
“Oh really? Main characters? Let me guess, it has a beginning, middle, and end, too. Your pitch is going to need improvement if you want to sell the thing, James.”
“I haven’t had time to formulate a detailed summary as I finished it literally minutes ago.” His mouth wrestles with a cheek-aching grin. I finished it. “I need a favor.”
“Sure.” Jessie frees a tea bag from its packaging.
“Will you keep my manuscript safe while I’m traveling with Nelle? Just until school starts, then I’ll come back for it. I’d hate to lose it, and I don’t trust anyone else.”
“I’m honored.” Jessie scoops her eggs onto a plate and steeps her Earl Grey. “Don’t worry, I’ll be the best guardian. If the city issues an evacuation notice, I’ll grab it before my phone.”
“Thank you,” James says.
Jessie’s finger goes up. “Under one condition.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re not reading it yet.”
“Fine. Does it have a title?”
“An excellent question.” James refills his water bottle, savoring Jessie’s anticipation. “For now, I’m calling it The Summer Curse.”
“That doesn’t sound romantic.”
“It’s not supposed to sound romantic. It’s a title, it’s just supposed to sound cool.”
Jessie reels backward like a psychic slapped with a premonition. “I’m having a thought. You need a celebration.”
“You’re always making an excuse to throw a party.”
“This doesn’t need excusing. This is a big deal, James!”
“I know,” he laughs. But does he? Finishing The Summer Curse feels both momentous and insignificant.
Within a month, he scaled the impossible cliff, only to reach the top and realize it was never as difficult as he thought it would be.
Which means he can do it again and again, producing a lifetime of books with his name on the spine.
Jessie blows on her tea. “Last November I slept with the owner of this cute bar on Carmine, so I can probably get it rented on short notice. Does Friday work? Or Thursday? I know y’all are leaving soon. Where is it you’re going again?”
James knows better than to argue with Jessie once she has her mind set, though the idea of a room full of people celebrating him makes his skin crawl.
“I need to ask Nelle again, but last she said, Paris. And don’t you think Thursday’s better for the party? School starts in two weeks, so we’ll need to fly out as soon as possible.”
Jessie already has her phone out, and she’s tapping away. “Thursday, say . . . seven?”
“Seven’s perfect.” James stands. “Until then, I’m going into hibernation.”
He can barely get the words out through the sludge of his mind.
When was the last time he slept more than a few hours?
He stumbles down the hallway, fatigue slamming into him like a bag of bricks, and crawls into bed.
Cool sheets on his legs. A fan stirring the air in the room. His pillow whispering sweet nothings.
Nelle is restless, sitting at the desk, watching James.
She once begged Quill to let her into the front yard to catch fireflies.
She was eight at the time, and he said no.
But James doesn’t care where she goes. Even celebrates what she does independently.
Earlier in the summer, he wanted her to write for herself.
Until she told him that it would kill her.
But what if Father lied?
Nelle hungers for the pen. She started spiraling about Quill’s honesty while mixing paint in Jessie’s studio.
Struck by a sudden compulsion to write for herself, she abandoned her half-finished painting and stormed out.
Vibrating, she hiked over the Brooklyn Bridge and up Broadway through Lower Manhattan.
When she returned, panting, to the apartment to find James unresponsive, Nelle was guiltily grateful.
She won’t have to debate with him. This is something she needs to do—to try—even if it kills her.
But if she does it, she wants a new journal. If James has to live with those pages as his only memory of her, she doesn’t want them to hold the sentence that killed her.
Nelle nudges James as she slides on his denim coat. “Can you write for me to go to Shack O’ Books?”
He cracks open an eye, then writes so sloppily that Nelle is shocked her ink recognizes it as language. As soon as the journal closes, he is snoring again.
Twenty minutes later Nelle crosses the street to her favorite bookshop in the Village.
The air holds hints of fall. Back home, it’ll be in the nineties.
She feels in James’s coat pocket for his wallet.
Still there, palm-size and leather. She pushes through the shop door and goes to a section of journals near the back. She grabs the first one she sees.
No hesitation. If she stops to think, she will never go through with it.
Quill’s biggest fear was losing control over her. He lied to her about the world being full of dangerous people. He lied when he told her that only he could write for her. He lied when he called himself her fucking father.
Nelle pours her change into her coat pocket, and takes the red-cloth journal out onto the sidewalk.
People zip around like gnats. She has considered New York’s citywide egotism a flaw until now, when anonymity is what she needs.
She drops to the concrete and bites into the meat of her hand.
Hard, until bitter ink stings her tongue.
Spitting, she flattens the journal open on the stained concrete and shakily touches the wound below her thumb. Ink glistens on her fingertip. Her ink.
“Is it worth it?” says a voice above her.
Nelle squints up, as if emerging from bathwater, mistaking the newcomer as an angel.
Quill crouches beside her. How uncanny to see him here, in this setting. She has only ever seen him in their house, except through the peephole in DC. Never on a street, in broad daylight, surrounded by people.
“The risk,” he says. “Is it worth it?”
Nelle’s adrenaline melts away. “How’d you find me?”
Another drop of ink hits the page and runs to the journal’s spine.
“I don’t have to search,” Quill says, as if this should reassure her. “I close my eyes, and I know where you are. The farther you go, the clearer you get.”
Nelle looks between him and the journal.
She came—literally—from his mind. The way he feels her .
. . she feels him, too. His presence. Like a cold lizard perched along the back of her brain.
She ignores it most of the time, but the farther she gets, the more the bond strengthens.
She feels his anger, his sadness, his patience.
“Are you going to follow through with it?” Quill nods to her bleeding hand.
Nelle shrugs. “One way or another, it’ll put me out of my misery.”
Except I’m not miserable. For the first time in her life, she has friends. She has James. They have plans to leave New York, to see more of the world.
Nelle hesitates. Legs whoosh around her. A black droplet grows heavy on her fingertip. Swelling and stretching, until—
The drop hits the page and splatters, black and spiky, like a spore.
I can’t do it.
Quill touches her shoulder, his fingers like a raven’s claw. “It’s okay, Nellie.”
“Move your hand.” Nelle twitches. “Or I’ll bite it off.”
He recoils. “You scorn me again and again, but you’ll understand when you’re older. You’ll realize how grateful you should’ve been for your father.”