The Roughest Draft(3)

“I know.” The girl’s grin catches a little mischievousness. “I wonder what happened between them. I mean, why would such a successful partnership just split up right when they were really popular?”

The collar of my coat feels itchy, my pulse beginning to pound. This is my least favorite topic, like, ever. Why did you split up? I’ve heard the rumors. I’ve heard them from graceless interviewers, from comments I’ve happened to notice under online reviews. I’ve heard them from Chris.

If they’re to be believed, we grew jealous of each other, or Nathan thought he was better than me, or I was difficult to work with. Or we had an affair. There’d been speculation before our split. Two young writers, working together on retreats to Florida, Italy, the Hamptons. Photos of us with our arms around each other from the Connecting Flights launch event—the only launch we ever did together. The fact Only Once centered on marital infidelity didn’t help. Nor did the very non-fictional demise of Nathan’s own very non-fictional marriage.

This is why I don’t like being recognized. I like the excited introductions. I love interacting with readers. What I don’t like is the endless repetition of this one question. Why did Katrina Freeling and Nathan Van Huysen quit writing together?

“Who knows?” I say hastily. “Thanks for your recommendation. I’ll . . . take it.” I reach for the copy of Refraction, which the girl hands over, glowing.



* * *



? ? ?

Five minutes later, I walk out of the bookstore holding the one book I didn’t want.





2





Nathan


I’m on my third iced tea. I would order coffee, except it’s gauche to order iced coffee from the bartender. Fuck, though, I’m exhausted. I feel sleeplessness singeing my corneas, the small revolt they’re staging for the post-midnight hours I spent in front of my new manuscript. It’s this thriller I’m working on, where the wife of a federal agent stumbles onto the possibly criminal secret he’s hiding.

I look like hell, the product of being on a plane yesterday, then writing into the night, then getting shitty sleep in my non–Four Seasons hotel. It leaves me undeniably out of place in O’Neill’s, the trendy bar where I haven’t set foot in years. When I lived in New York, I’d come here to meet other writers. With gold-rimmed mirrors, marble tabletops, and cocktails named after playwrights, O’Neill’s was the place to be seen. Which I liked. But it’s been two years since I left the city I could feel turning on me, needing a fresh start following my divorce.

“Sorry to make you wait.” My agent sits down across from me. Jen Bradley is middle-aged, fearsome in negotiations, and fantastic with working out plot holes. She’s the second agent I’ve had in my career. After Only Once, I had my pick of literary agents. I chose Jen for her straight-shooting sensibility and her intelligence, which she’s shown in selling my solo manuscript.

“It’s fine,” I say, washing the words down with iced tea. “How are you?”

“Busy,” Jen replies. “How was your tour?”

I have to smile. Straight to the point. I just wrapped a weeklong book tour for my new novel, Refraction. It was a whirlwind of bookstores in Midwestern cities, nondescript hotels, dinners of room-service Caesar salads every freaking night. Hour-long flights between airports named for one president or another, which were the best parts of my day for the refuge I could take in writing on the plane, running wild on this new thriller. “Fewer stops than the last one,” I admit. “Pretty good turnout, though.”

Jen eyes me.

“Okay, mediocre turnout,” I amend. “They did crap marketing, and you know it.”

I was prepared for Refraction to get less promotional support than Only Once. When we sold the book, it was clear my publisher was settling. What they wanted was another Katrina and Nathan book. It was Jen who convinced them this was the next best thing. One-half of the duo whose book sold fifteen million copies and counting wasn’t someone to turn down.

Her mouth flattens. She’s displeased. “First week numbers aren’t what they’d hoped.” She lets the sentence hang in the chatter of the room.

I nod. While I suspected sales numbers were low, I don’t like having my suspicions confirmed. In the pause, I drift from the conversation. I have this problem—at least my ex-wife, Melissa, would say “problem”—where when I’m not immediately engaged in what’s in front of me, my mind returns to whatever I’m writing. Which right now is the critical scene where Sarah confronts her husband. It’s a referendum on their marriage with huge, high-intensity implications, and I’m hungry to put it on the page.

“Will the numbers hurt their offer?” I ask, remembering I haven’t yet sold the book I’m working on now. I submitted the proposal months ago, and we’ve heard nothing since. Jen’s explained the publisher didn’t want to offer until they had sales information on Refraction. Truthfully, I don’t even care what they pay me. It’s not like I need the money. I’ve never needed the money—a trust fund and an Ivy League education took care of that long before Only Once was an idea in the back of my head. Even with the divorce, in which I willingly gave Melissa half of Only Once’s royalties, I still don’t need money.