“Are you married?” The question is a hollow attempt to push away the memories, Simon’s eyes, and the curl of his fingers around my bare knee.
“No.”
I recognize it immediately, the clip of words, the tightening of his shoulders. I don’t want to think about the past, he doesn’t want to talk about his present. It’s too bad for him, because he isn’t allowed to cut my head open and then protect his own. “Why not?”
“I was married. She passed away.”
I suddenly understand the look I’d seen in his eyes, the haunt of grief that hugged the edges of his smile. No wonder I feel a kinship with him. We’ve both lost someone, his pain still as raw as my own. I look away. “How’d she die?”
“Cancer.”
Go figure. I sigh. “That’s encouraging.”
“Sorry. It’s a popular disease.”
“You could have been more creative with it.” I risk a glance at him. “Told me that she got trampled by elephants while on safari.”
“Fine. It was a band of cannibals. They broke in and feasted on her. I barely escaped with my life.”
“Oh my God…” I try and swallow a smile. “Please tell me that she passed ages ago, so that this isn’t terribly painful and rude.”
“Three years ago. But conversation with you seems to lean toward painful and rude anyway.” He finishes his taco and I watch as he crumples the wrapper into a ball and tosses it into the floorboard. I wouldn’t have thought that littering in a vehicle needs a rule, but it obviously does.
“I’m sorry about your wife.”
“Thank you.”
There is silence, and against the windshield, the first drop of rain hits. I watch it, then a second, then there are a hundred blurry dots across the smooth surface, his hand reaching up to start the wipers.
“Have you outlined anything yet?” He has to speak up over the rain, and I turn to him.
“No. I will this afternoon.”
“I won’t need a lot, just an idea of what is next.”
“Have you worked off an outline before?”
“No.” He grins at me sheepishly, like it’s any confession whatsoever. I could have told you that five chapters into any of his books. His writing lacks the organized structure that comes from an outline. It wanders in places where he should be concise. He has plot threads that sometimes dangle, as if he’d planned to go one route, then unexpectedly switched courses.
I’ve told him this, of course. I have criticized his sloppy execution in plenty of emails—dozens of them. They haven’t made any difference in his work, my criticisms ignored, his own path consistently and stubbornly retread, book after book, like a broken record played by a deaf DJ.
“You’ll have to learn to work off an outline.” He may push every rule I set, but this is non-negotiable. If he can’t stick to the path I give him, it won’t work.
“I’ll be fine.” We are on my road now, passing homes of people I used to know, of children Bethany once played with. He turns into the driveway and parks.
I didn’t realize I was lonely until I met him, until he fused himself into my life so completely that there wasn’t Helena and Simon, but only US.
And once I got used to US, I didn’t want to be alone any more.
The rain fills our silence, hammering against the kitchen’s window. It took twenty minutes to eat. Ten more to organize ourselves and devise a system. Now, two hours later, and neither the rain, nor our hands, pause for breath. I outline a chapter, write the first paragraph, and pass the page over. He picks it up, reads it over a few times, and begins to write. I was correct. He is fast. Not just his writing, but the execution of it. I had envisioned a hen-peck-typist—but he surprises me, his prowess that of the 100 wpm variety. I listen to him go and my fingers ache from just the sound of it.
We are still in romantic country, and he jumps in where my first four chapters left off, finishing the story of my first year with Simon—the giggling, happy girl that I became in his presence—the way my virtue crumbled with something as simple as flowers. I was so young back then, so inexperienced in love and courtship. Simon took me to the movies, and I bought my own popcorn. He interrupted my sentences and I ate up his words. When his hand snaked up my shirt, I let it. When he pushed my palm to his zipper, I obeyed.
I fell in love impossibly early, just months into our relationship. I thought it was cute how Simon would drink too much and hang all over me. I felt sexy when he pushed me against a tree in the darkness of the park. I told him about my books, and he listened. I cooked dinner for him, and beamed when he ate it.
He wasn’t all bad, and I wasn’t all naive. In between the idiocy, there were a few moments of sweet young love. In between the lies and the secrets—especially in the beginning—we did love each other. At least, I loved him. Fiercely. Blindly. Stupidly.
“You think he didn’t love you?” Mark speaks and I look over at him. I’ve almost forgotten that he is here, my mind and my mouth running away with me, spurred on by the wine, the bottle now half empty before me. I haven’t had alcohol in years. I forgot how weak it makes my throat. How much it opens my heart. I stopped drinking because it made me feel too much. I stopped drinking because I was worried, after pouring a glass, what I might say, what might slip out. A stupid fear for a woman with no friends, no drinking buddies, no social media accounts to corrupt.
“You think he didn’t love you?” I hadn’t said that exactly, but I understand where Mark gets it. Half of the time, I convince myself that Simon didn’t love me—that he was married to our big house and the lonely girl that worshipped his words and overlooked his faults. But I think he did. Early on, I think he fell just as hard for me as I fell for him. I tell Mark and he nods, as if unsurprised, as if there is anything likable in my emaciated frame and bitter words.
“I need a scene,” he says, lifting the bottle and filling my glass. “A good one between the two of you. A happy memory. One to add before this. One pre-engagement.”
I sit back in my chair and bring my knees to my chest, cupping the wine glass with both hands, its contents the color of pale sunshine. I close my eyes and try to find one scene—one happy moment when we were in love, reckless and passionate, our minds void of all sense.
I don’t come up with one. I think of a hundred.
Midnight. The glow above us, his hands tight on the rungs of the ladder, a skinny one that snaked up one leg of the water tower. A spray can stuffed into the waist of his pants; he lifted one foot and hesitated, looking down at me, the terror on his face illuminated from above. He made it fifteen feet and stopped, our initials quickly sketched on the leg of the tower in bright orange paint, a shaky heart around them. When he made it back down he was panting, his armpits soaked in sweat, his face disappointed when he saw the short distance that he’d traveled. I told him that it was beautiful. He kissed me and his lips trembled.
I finish off the glass and blink, my eyes wet.
Our first time. His sheets smelled like hamburgers and sweat. We turned on the fan and the hum almost drowned out his roommate’s tv. I was nervous and we were both drunk, our night spent at a bar, celebrating my print deal, my head spinning from too many appletinis. He didn’t have a condom and we discussed it, our slurred conversation filled with immature logic and groping, the act begun and finished before any conclusion was reached. He pulled me onto his chest and told me he loved me. I closed my eyes and calculated my ovulation window, given the date of my last period.
Mark pushes a napkin across the table at me, and I pick it up, looking down at the pattern, pink apples stamped into the thin paper, their cheery repetitions occasionally interrupted by a green leaf. Kate must have bought these.
“Let me get you to bed.”
He’s standing now, his hands helping me up, the kitchen dim, the afternoon light gone. What time is it? I look at the oven but the numbers on it blur, either from tears or intoxication.
“I can make it.” I step away from him, then think better of it. “Never mind.” I reach out and he takes my arm. He’s thicker where Simon was thin, his arm hair coarse where Simon’s was fine, and he’s taller, by at least four inches. “My room’s at the top of the stairs.” I’ll have to lay down in our old bedroom, that stiff four-poster bed where Bethany was created, the one I haven’t slept in since That Day. I’ll move, once he leaves. I’ll only have to lay there for a few minutes, for the sake of appearances.