Chapter 30 - The Write Off

7 Years Ago

West’s friends are exhausting, but Daphne and I discover pretty quickly that they’re so up their own asses it’s easy to stay out of their way. Petra, a girl I can only describe as pointy—from her nose to her winged eyeliner to the hip bones jutting out of the top of her pleated miniskirt—is in Daphne’s SoulCycle class. The two got to talking, and when Petra found out that Daphne was a writer, she invited her to spend the week at this retreat. The instructor yelled at them to be quiet before Daphne could get more details.

When I ask Daphne if Petra is a writer, Daph admits that she thinks she’s a podcaster who also might be writing a play and running a Kickstarter to fund her online zine. In the short time we’ve been here, I haven’t seen Petra write anything except a string of “hot take” tweets crafted to go viral. But who am I to judge? I haven’t done much writing lately, either.

This cohort is young and beautiful and dressed in clothes that are both expensive and insane. As West predicted, they sleep late and appear at dusk like a coven of malnourished vampires. They unironically claim to be creating “art” while writing their Instagram captions. They spend the evening basking in their own cleverness and cloaked in vapor. Every conversation is buried under three layers of irony. As soon as we meet, they “casually” mention that a reporter from the New York Times Culture Desk is visiting at the end of the week to write an article about them and the “microneighborhood” they haunt. They call it Dimes Square, which is basically a concrete triangle at Canal and Division Streets in New York. When I ask if that’s just gentrified Chinatown, they raise their eyebrows at one another meaningfully.

Simply put, they are delightfully insufferable. Whenever we have the misfortune of being harangued by them, Daphne and I leave in stitches, grasping each other for support as we laugh. We could try harder to avoid them, but pointy Petra might just be Daphne’s muse. Their endless self-righteous conversations about everything from international politics to woke internet culture hit Daphne like a truck, and soon she’s twenty thousand words deep into a bloody thriller about a group of unlikable nepo babies getting murdered.

We create a schedule that looks like this: While they sleep, Daphne and I enjoy our WASP cosplay as we write on the wraparound porch. When the sun sets and the temperature dips, we all eat dinner together on the back deck. As their night is ramping up, Daphne and I head back to our room to gossip in between writing sprints.

Writing hasn’t been this easy in years. The words finally start to flow, and I credit the unbroken roar of the ocean in the distance and the salty sea air.

The porch swing.

Daphne’s encouragement.

Anything other than the fact that West and I are breathing the same air again. It’s not because of the way my chest hurts when he looks at me from across the dinner table or because we brush our teeth side by side in the mornings. On the first morning, he caught me wearing a Fox T-shirt as pajamas. The smirk on his face was catastrophic. We’ve been sidestepping each other for two days, never in the same room for more than a few minutes. He rounds a corner, and I quickly retreat. My palms are permanently damp.

Dinner tonight is a mountain of oysters and three lobster rolls to share between the eight of us. (Tristan was high as a kite when he ordered and just hit buttons.) I’m not an oyster girl, and if I’d known this was dinner, I would have skipped with Daphne, but I’m starving, and she’s in a trance. She’s already written ten thousand words today with no signs of stopping.

Tristan, Petra, and a DJ named Blake are at the table when I sit down. (No, I don’t know why a DJ is on a writing retreat. Yes, I asked.) Blake and Petra are debating religion—Scientology and Catholicism, respectively. I tune them out while I nudge an oyster onto my plate and stare it down.

“You squeeze the lemon juice on top,” Tristan says.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You looked confused.”

“I wasn’t.”

He waves his white napkin and exchanges a look with Blake. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to mansplain.”

They laugh while Petra rolls her eyes. “Ignore them,” she says as she takes a hit off her vape. There’s an untouched lobster roll on her plate. My stomach growls. She tips her head back to blow blueberry-scented vapor into the sky before looking at me. “West said you’re a writer?”

“She wrote the book that that movie is based on,” Tristan says.

“No, no, don’t waste your words,” Petra drawls.

“What’s it called? Fire and Flame and Third Cliché Here?”

“Don’t be rude,” Petra says, the corner of her mouth curling up. “She’s my guest.”

“Actually, I’m here with West,” I say. I can’t help myself. The lie is worth the puckered confusion on Petra’s face.

“You know Emerson?” Tristan asks, appearing genuinely interested in me for the first time all week.

“Since college.”

“Is it Torched?” Blake’s staring at his phone. He missed the change of subject.

“Ooooh. Cinematic!” Tristan says.

Blake angles his phone so they can watch the trailer together. I sit opposite, watching them watch. Petra elbows Tristan in the side when he laughs at the dramatic climax.

“Cute!” Petra croons when it’s over.

“If I was in it for the money, I’d write something like that,” Tristan says. “Like taking candy from a baby.”

I care too little of his opinion to be upset by it. “I bet it’s easy not to be in it for the money when your parents own this house.”

Scientologist-slash-DJ Blake laughs so hard that sauvignon blanc squirts out his nose as West emerges from the house with damp hair and bare feet.

“I don’t think your friend Mars likes us,” Tristan says, and drains his glass. “We have too much privilege.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” West says.

Tristan turns to Petra. “Is ‘privilege’ the buzzword of the day? The insult that’s supposed to hurt us the most?”

“We should record that for the podcast,” Petra says.

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Don’t come inside for an hour,” she warns me and West. “Ambient noise will ruin the recording.” She, Tristan, and DJ Blake take their smoke and their post-woke, wannabe-edgelord humor inside the six-thousand-square-foot Martha’s Vineyard beachfront mansion.

“They get off on shocking people,” West says apologetically.

“I can tell.”

He sits in the vacant seat next to mine. His eyes look tired.

“So…your friends suck,” I say.

“Yep. Yeah. I’m increasingly aware.” He nods.

I lean toward him. “West, what are you doing here?”

“You’re here.”

“Because there’s something cultish about SoulCycle and Daphne is bad at saying no. What’s your excuse?” I rest my chin on my hands and wait.

“I know,” he says with a sigh, running a hand through his damp hair. “The guy who owns the press that published my book is part of all of this.” West gestures to the house.

“Okay. And?”

“And what? I’m in kind of deep with them.”

“Why? Because you sold them your novel for—and I’m guessing here—a fraction of its worth? They published it, the deal is done. You don’t owe them anything.”

“They have connections, Mars. They have a reporter from The New York Times coming to talk to us. That could be big for me.”

“You don’t need them! You have more talent than all of them combined.”

He looks surprised, and then uncomfortable. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“How?”

“I remember.” I turn sideways to face him and tuck one leg up under me. We’re treacherously close. The butterflies in my stomach wake from hibernation.

I remember, but I don’t know if he does.

When I’m feeling emotionally fragile, I sometimes wonder if I made it all bigger in my head. If, in the process of writing Fox and Juniper, I’ve mythologized our own history in a way that was outside of reality and then bought into my own lie. Maybe what we had is better on the page than off.

West’s gaze is searing. His hand lands on my bare skin, just above my knee, and silent acknowledgment passes between us. The set of West’s shoulders and the weight of his palm say the same thing: It was real. You didn’t imagine it.

I look down at his hand. Heat is building in all my dangerous places.

The glass pocket doors at the back of the house slide open. West withdraws his hand, seemingly unbothered. Meanwhile, my heart pounds like we’ve been caught by our parents. A bearded guy with no shirt on sticks his head out the door. I can’t remember his name.

He stifles a yawn. “Food?”

“Depends. Do you want oysters for breakfast?” I pick up the oyster from my plate and gag it down. It’s disgusting and unsexy. What a move.

“Pass.” Beardman vanishes back into the house.

West looks at the table. “Are you going to eat this?”

“Not if I don’t have to.”

“We could make dinner?”

I pretend to gasp. “Think of the ambient noise!”

He laughs, and I grin, feeling nineteen again.

“There’s nothing edible in the kitchen anyway. Except the edibles,” I add.

Under the table, West’s foot nudges mine. It feels like a question. I nudge back. A silent negotiation. What the outcome will be, I don’t know.

He takes a bracing breath. “Want to walk with me to town? Grab dinner? You can tell me more about how you hate all my friends.”

I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, tempted to tell him that I’d go anywhere he wanted. I’d put up with his awful friends for as long as it took. “Deal.”

* * *

The next morning, West joins Daphne and me for our writing session on the porch. At lunchtime, her hands are cramping, but she refuses to come up for air, so West and I take bicycles out of the garage and ride along the boardwalk. We order fried shrimp and carry it to the beach, where we eat with our toes in the sand and swap stories about life in New York as we watch the tide drag in and out.

I worried that dinner last night would be stilted or awkward, but I should have known better. Even when we can’t get anything else right, talking to West has always been easy. He quiets an inherent restlessness in me, settling my anxious thoughts like snow in a globe.

A breath of disbelieving laughter escapes me when I realize that the settling effect is what spooked me so badly when he first kissed me freshman year. I’ve always thrived on the agitation in my brain. Believed that I would never achieve anything without the constant pressure to do more, achieve more, prove myself. At nineteen years old, West made me content in a way that was terrifying.

“You’re ruminating,” West says. Not exactly a question, but an offer to listen.

I hug my thighs to my chest and drop my cheek to my knees. “Can I ask you—”

“Yes.”

I survey his profile, my tongue loosened by the lack of eye contact. “Are you happy that you didn’t move to New York? Back then?” After our conversation last night at dinner, I know that he moved back in with his parents for two long years and helped his mom with his siblings while she took care of her mother. By the time his grandma passed last year, his siblings were older and life was calmer, though I get the feeling the responsibility continues to weigh heavily on him, and his eyes still cloud in anger every time he thinks of his dad.

“I can’t bring myself to regret it. It was the right thing to do,” he says, wonderfully predictable.

“If things had been different with your family—”

“But they weren’t. They needed me,” he says firmly. I think he’s going to let it drop there, until he adds a quiet confession. “I wasn’t ready yet.” He scowls as his fingers drag forcefully through the soft, warm sand. I recognize his expression of internalized frustration.

“What I’m trying to say, badly, is that I wasn’t good enough yet. I still don’t know if I’m—” He rakes a sandy hand through his windblown hair, as curly as I’ve ever seen it thanks to the salt air. “I would have held you back,” he says, though he looks unhappy with his own words.

I feel a bruise bloom below my rib cage in a spot I thought I’d protected well from West’s influence. Just moments ago, I was wondering if I’m better off because he didn’t come with me. Hearing him echo that sentiment, however, makes me ache. He thinks he would have hindered me by not being good enough, when I know the real reason is because I loved him too much. He made me too content.

“That’s not true,” I whisper, and when he grimaces at the water, I match his expression.

We spend an endless stretch of time watching the tides, lost in memories, until eventually West stands and pulls me up by the hand. “What a tragic pair we make today,” he says dryly.

“Not tragic,” I argue.

“No?”

“No,” I confirm as I throw a leg over my beach cruiser. “In progress.”

His eyebrow ticks up with curiosity. “I thought our story ended a while ago, Mars.”

I shrug and pedal away from him, tossing one last comment over my shoulder. “Haven’t you heard, West? I like sequels.”

* * *

“Are you seeing anyone right now?” West asks that night as one of his friends snorts a line off the porch railing in my periphery. His question is abrupt, but after our trip to the beach, I’ve been waiting for it.

My mind flashes to my most recent ex. He was smart and kind, and when drinks turned into one date, which turned into two, which turned into eight months, I initially felt I’d done the impossible. I’d found one of the good ones.

In the end, I needed more than smart and kind and good. I needed heat.

“No. Not for a couple of months now.”

“Why’d it end?”

I push my feet off the brick porch, swinging us higher. Do I tell West that I broke up with my last boyfriend because I didn’t feel anything when he touched me? That during sex, my mind wandered to my to-do list more often than not?

West narrows his eyes. “You can’t smirk like that and not tell me.”

“He didn’t inspire…well, much of anything…in my writing. Or me,” I say. West’s brow lifts impossibly high. “What about you? You were always the boyfriend type.”

“Was I?”

“You were in a four-year on-again, off-again relationship with your high school sweetheart.”

“If you want to think of it like that.”

I roll my eyes playfully. As if it wasn’t exactly like that. “And when I saw you at Amber’s wedding, you were dating someone.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You said you’d moved on.”

“I was lying.” He outstretches his hands in a what-can-ya-do gesture.

“And now?”

“Recently single,” he confirms.

It’s impossible to deny the vibe shift after that, and for the rest of the week, West claims the spot next to me on the porch swing. It is both motivating and distracting to have him so close. When he drums his fingers against his thighs, my thoughts scatter.

As the week goes on, matchsticks collect behind my belly button. One for the time his knee rests against mine. Another for the minutes we pretend not to notice our arms brushing against each other while we work. A third for when he silently passes me an AirPod and we take turns adding songs to the world’s most chaotic playlist. It’s terrible for my focus, but listening to the songs West selects for me is another struck match, each one held dangerously close to a pile of kindling.

As twilight descends on our last evening in the house, Daphne stretches and announces that she’s done. As in done done. Wrote-an-entire-novel-in-a-week done.

“I’m headed to town for celebratory sugar,” she says. There is no group dinner tonight because everyone else is out on a chartered yacht.

“I hate you.”

“Will I see you before you go?” she asks.

I’m leaving in a couple of hours to catch a red-eye for the London premiere of Torched. “No, but go celebrate. You deserve it. I’ll see you back in New York.”

She waves goodbye and bounds down the stairs, brimming with the kind of joy that can only come from knowing you never have to write that first draft again.

I lean my head back on the porch swing with a contented sigh. The sky slowly turns from purple to navy, stars winking into sight. The push and pull of ocean waves drones in the distance, covered only by the clacking of West’s fingers against his keyboard. I wouldn’t mind if this were the soundtrack of my life. My head is quieter than it’s been in years. “Should I move to Martha’s Vineyard?”

“Hmm?” He’s focused but trying to pretend he’s listening to me.

“No wonder rich people are so happy.” I’m talking more to myself than to him. I want to carve this moment on stone tablets. I want it to survive a nuclear fallout and outlast the cockroaches.

“Rich people aren’t that happy,” he muses before adding, “Aren’t you kinda rich?”

I glance sideways to find him with a chewed pen between his lips, and I’m pretty sure I want to kiss him. It’s a feeling so familiar it’s almost hard to identify. Wanting to kiss West is like the sound of the ocean’s tides on this island: a constant hum in the back of my mind. I’m so used to it that I’ve allowed myself to pretend it isn’t there.

The pen falls to his lap, blue ink staining his bottom lip.

“You’re still doing that, huh?”

“What?” he asks, his eyes still scanning the document on his screen.

I reach across him and run my thumb over his bottom lip.

His fingers pause over the keys.

I withdraw my thumb and hold it up so he can see the ink, and time stops. I have the worst sense of déjà vu: I’ve written a book, and he knows that I’m in love with him. I’m begging him to go to New York with me, and he’s saying no. We’re dancing at a wedding, and he’s moved on.

I jump to my feet. “I have to go.”

“Mars, wait.” West follows me to the front door. His hand grasps the crook of my arm, and in one fluid motion, he pulls me back toward him and presses his mouth to mine. I barely have time to register my surprise before he pulls away. “I hope that was okay.” His eyes are dark, and there is a hint of pink on his cheekbones, but he doesn’t look half as shocked as I feel.

I swallow heavily. “It was.”

“Good.” He nods, running a hand over his jaw. “I usually try to ask first.”

“It’s fine.”

“Good. But if you want me to kiss you again, I’m going to need you to say it.” As his eyes sear into mine, my loosely held matchsticks fall. All I feel is sizzling heat, burning me from the inside out.

“West—” My breaths are uneven, but my voice is steady. “Take me inside.”

The words aren’t even fully out before his hands are under my thighs and my legs are around his waist. He crushes his lips to mine as his hands find their way under the bunched-up hem of my dress to my ass. He tightens his grip, holds on. I suck air through my teeth.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks.

It’s pleasure that’s right on the brink of pain. I shake my head as he backs me into the house and up the stairs, his demanding mouth pulling breathy whimpers from behind my teeth. We stumble through the door to his room, and he kicks it shut with his foot. The thud makes my bones rattle.

He sets me on the edge of his bed and pulls back, cupping his hands around my face. He kisses me one more time, slow and lingering. “If you change your mind, tell me to stop,” he says, his voice raspy.

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

His eyes darken with focus. “Then tell me what you want.”

Embarrassment washes over me. I’ve had a million fantasies of this moment, and I can’t say a single one of them out loud. “Anything.”

The mattress dips on either side of me as his hands press into it. He leans over me with another drugging kiss. In a blink I’m on my back, scrambling on my heels as the mattress dips again under his knees. A steady hand runs up under my dress and wraps around my hip bone, a thumb brushing over lace.

Before he exposes another inch of me, I’m greedy to see him. I reach for the hem of his shirt, but he makes quick work of it, grabbing the back of his collar and dragging the shirt over his head in one fluid motion. If this were a different sort of moment, I’d trail my fingertips along the contours of his stomach, savoring every inch of him, pressing a kiss everywhere my palms touched. But time is short, and our patience is gone, and every lick and touch and graze of teeth is a frenzy. His mouth traces a line of kisses down to my collarbone while I struggle to remember how to breathe, my fingernails scraping across his shoulder blades while he curses into my skin, so soft I almost don’t hear it.

After an agonizing stretch of time, he runs his fingers under the strap of my dress and lets them linger, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on my skin where his teeth just were. He looks up at me with hazy eyes. I nod, and he slips the dress down my torso. I lift my hips as he pulls it off. When he looks at me in just a bra and underwear, the furor slows.

“Mars—” His voice is raw, barely stitched together with awe and longing.

“I know,” I agree on a rasp. I’m not sure what I’m agreeing with, because his fingers are tracing slowly over my bra and across my soft stomach, stopping when they meet lace again. He dips one finger under the fabric and brushes lightly. My breath stutters as my eyes fall shut, preparing for sensory overload.

His hand retreats as he laughs softly. It retraces its path back over my stomach and up to my chest, where he slowly rubs his finger over my nipple. Then he lowers his mouth and pulls me in, his tongue flicking against fabric. I’m hit with a rush of endorphins, a heavy downpour in my veins. I press my knees into West’s side and bring his mouth back to mine. I feel like I’m out of my mind. I can’t move fast enough, can’t touch him everywhere at once, can’t stay still, can’t stop myself from arching into him. I do, and it doesn’t offer enough friction. I hook my fingers into his belt loop and pull him down until his full weight collapses on top of me.

“I need you to touch me,” I gasp, starting to feel lightheaded. His mouth moves to my neck, his tongue relentless as he gently bites then licks the sensitive spot below my ear. His hand squeezes my breast as I suck in air, trying to clear my head. He rolls his hips against mine, his cock dragging over my clit, and we both moan.

“West,” I whine, grinding my hips harder.

“Patience.” He playfully admonishes me with a nip of teeth on my collarbone, then shifts his weight to one forearm. Just when I think I might actually beg, he finally tugs my underwear to the side. I press my forehead to his shoulder as my knees fall open. I’m soaked, and I know the exact moment he feels it, because his mouth curves into a wicked smile. “Already, Darling?” He brushes a featherlight finger over me, gathering moisture before circling my clit. I inhale through my nose and sink my fingernails into his arms to stop myself from coming too quickly.

“West—” I nudge his shoulder up. He looks at me with dark, drugged eyes. “Do you have a condom?”

“I can get one.”

I check the clock and groan. “I have to leave for the airport soon.”

He presses a kiss to the hollow of my throat and circles my clit again. “There are things we can do without a condom.”

A door slams downstairs. “Emerson! Now!” West and I freeze. “Emerson!” Tristan roars.

West grits his teeth and rolls onto his back. “I’ll tell him to shut up.”

I pull my dress back over my head, combing my hair with shaky fingers as my breathing slowly evens out. “I’m flying to London tonight.”

“Emerson!” Petra’s footsteps patter up the stairs.

I push up to my knees and lean into West for a last kiss. “Where will you be after London?” he asks as I pull back.

Petra knocks on the door. “Emerson, the reporter from the Times is here. You coming or not?”

“New York.”

West rakes his fingers through my hair and holds the back of my head steady as he kisses me again. “You’ll be in New York, and I’ll be in New York.”

“Looks that way.”

“Emerson?” Petra yells.

“I’ll call,” West promises, and I know he’s committing to more than a phone call. When we’re both in New York, he wants to try again. He wants to be together.

I don’t have a single reason not to believe him.