WHY DO YOUR hands smell like that?” Libby demands as I guide her through the back door, palms pressed over her eyes.
“My hands do not smell,” I say.
“It’s, like, New TV Smell,” she says.
“That’s not a thing,” I tell her.
“Yeah it is. New TV Smell.”
“You mean New Car Smell.”
“No,” she says. “It’s like, when you open the TV box and pull the Styrofoam packing sheet out, and it smells like a swimming pool inside.”
“Then why wouldn’t you just say I smell like a swimming pool?”
“Did you buy us a big-ass TV?”
“You know what, forget the grand reveal.” I release my hold on her, and she screams.
Charlie jolts like she just chucked a priceless vase his way. “Sissy!” she yelps, spinning toward me, then back. “Charlie!” Then to me again. “We’re camping?!”
I shrug. “It’s on the list.”
She throws her arms around me and lets out another high-pitched shriek. “Thank you, Sissy,” she murmurs. “Thank you.”
“Anything for you,” I tell her. Over her shoulder, I lock eyes with Charlie.
Thank you, I mouth. His chin dips as he smiles. Anything for you, he mouths. In my chest, something heavy turns over.
I wake up twice, gasping for breath. The second time, Libby rolls over, flopping her arm around me in her sleep, her leg twitching so that she’s kind of kicking me.
Even with the strategically positioned fans, it’s uncomfortably warm, but I don’t shake her off. Instead I lay my hand over hers and squeeze her to me.
I will take care of you, I promise her.
I won’t let anything hurt you.
For once, I get up first. I skip my run and head straight for a shower, then preheat the oven.
The corn-lime cookies are ready by the time Libby’s up, and we eat them for breakfast with coffee.
“You are just full of surprises,” Libby says, and pretends not to notice that the cookies are lumpy and burnt at the edges. In this scenario, my cookies are definitely the bad drawing with the penis hat, but I don’t care. She’s happy about them.
On my walk into Goode Books, Frigid’s final pages arrive. The last stretch has officially begun.
When Charlie and I aren’t in the same room, we’re emailing about the manuscript. When we’re not emailing about the manuscript, we’re texting about everything else.
On Tuesday when I bite the bullet and order a salad from Poppa Squat’s, I send him a picture of the cubed ham monstrosity Amaya drops in front of me.
I think I underestimated your sadomasochistic streak, Stephens, he says.
The next day, he sends me a blurry shot of the bickering geriatric couple from town hall caught in a passionate embrace outside the new Dunkin’ Donuts. Love conquers all, I guess, he writes.
I reply, or she’s found a discreet way to suffocate him.
What a beautiful, twisted brain you have, Nora.
He stops by one night with the wood Sally promised us, along with s’mores supplies, and helps us build a fire the night is technically too hot for. While we sit around the deck roasting marshmallows, Libby announces, “I’ve decided I like you, Charlie.”
“I’m honored,” he says.
“Don’t be,” I tell him. “She likes everyone.”
She reaches into the bag of marshmallows and flings one at me. “Not true,” she cries. “What about my vendetta against the guy in the Trivago commercials?”
“One unpleasant sex dream does not a vendetta make,” I say.
“I once had a sex dream about the green M&M,” Charlie says bluntly, and Libby and I descend into snorting laughter.
“Okay,” Libby says when she recovers. “But she can get it. She’s fucking gorgeous.”
“Fucking gorgeous,” Charlie agrees, locking eyes with me over the flames. “So much better than adorable.”
We make plans to finish our notes on the final portion of the book on Saturday. Every moment until then feels like part of a countdown. Sometimes all I want is to run down the clock. Sometimes I want to stuff sand back up through the hourglass’s neck.
He texts me things like holy shit, page 340.
And she’s on fire.
And the cat!
I write back things like I SCREAMED.
Her best yet.
And the cat stays.
To which he replies, agreed.
Sometimes he sends me texts that just say, Nora.
Charlie, I type back.
Then he’ll say, this book.
And I’ll say, This book.
It’s killing me not knowing how it ends, I tell him.
It’s killing me that it’s going to end, he writes back. If I weren’t editing it, I wouldn’t finish it.
Really? I write. You have that level of self-control?
Sometimes. After a moment, he sends another message. There are full series I love whose last chapter I’ve never read. I hate the feeling of something ending.
Instantly, my heart feels raw, rug-burned, every inch of it stinging.
This book, this job, this trip, this never-ending, days-spanning conversation. I want to make it all last, and I need to know how it ends. I want to finish it, and I need it to go on forever.
If I thought I was sleeping badly our first two weeks here, week three obliterates the notion. Charlie and I text until at least midnight each night, sometimes interspersed with quick calls to talk through plot points that leave me so energized that I have to walk a loop in the meadow to cool down.
All these years spent thinking that I had superhuman self-control, and now I realize I just never put anything I wanted too badly in front of myself.
But I’ve made it to Thursday night, which means there’s only two days until we finish the edit letter. A week and some change until I go back to the city, where The Future We’ve Agreed Not to Discuss will begin. This interlude will be over. The future will be the present, and this will become the past.
But not yet.
