She returned to the spot at the bar next to me, her face flush with excitement. I was stunned, wondering who this woman thought she was.
“I know that feeling you have right now,” she said.
“You have no idea what I’m feeling right now,” I said. “Because I don’t understand it myself.”
She took my beer right out of my hand and shook her head, telling me I was wrong about my own thoughts and feelings.
“I can help you name it,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, waving down the bartender. “Let’s get you one of your own.”
Aimee returned my beer, now half-empty.
“So you’re feeling deep intrigue,” she said.
“Let’s google that one, just to be sure it’s the exact right word,” I said.
“Oh, it’s the exact right word. I know it.”
“Intrigue,” I read from my phone. “One: ‘arouse the curiosity or interest of; fascinate.’ Similar to tantalize, engross, charm, captivate. Opposite to bore.”
“Spot on,” she said.
“But wait, there’s a second definition,” I said.
“Go on, let’s hear it,” she said. The bartender delivered her beer, which she sipped with confidence.
“Okay, ‘intrigue,’ two: ‘make secret plans to do something illicit to someone.’ ”
Aimee smiled up at me.
“Don’t lie—you felt that too,” she said.
I tilted my head back and let out the laughter that had been building since she said she played basketball in elementary school. She smiled wider.
“And that.” Her eyes sparkled in the dim bar lighting. “That laugh right there?”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“That’s love,” she said.
I didn’t believe her that night, but I had been charmed by the outlandish comment. In the end, she’d been 100 percent right. I fell in love with her during that very first exchange. It wasn’t until years later that I understood why. Aimee is more powerful than I am. The world does not bend to her; rather, she forces the world where and how she wants. No one that powerful had ever chosen me.
But her power over me is weakening.
When I get out of the shower, Aimee is waiting on the bed. I quickly dress, avoiding her face pleading for a cuddle.
“I’m gonna get back to writing.” I gather my laptop and drafting notebook.
“Oh, okay, good luck,” she says, twirling her hair on the pillowcase.
Aimee thinks she made me the success I am today. It was her idea for me to start writing romance. Why don’t you base a character off me? she had joked after a particularly brutal rejection from an agent. You’re a hopeless romantic.
Yes, it was her suggestion that got me devouring everything from modern-day bodice rippers to happily-ever-afters for unlikable women, but I started reading because I was between projects. Once I began, I was enchanted of my own accord. Impressed too. I wasn’t aware of how much craft went into those meet-cute beats, how many subgenres had exploded onto the scene, and how much nuance existed within the basic tropes. We didn’t exactly study romance in my MFA program, but there was so much to sink my teeth into.
When I began writing in the genre, every bit of my past clicked into place. I’d been rewriting the tragedies in my own life since I was a kid. A therapist told Nana it was an excellent coping method to make sense of my parents’ deaths. To slay my father like the dragon I saw in him. To rescue my mother who died and my sister who would never be the same. I wrote to let them live the lives we deserved. This was the career for me.
Aimee was my muse, but those days are over. She hasn’t read my latest published book, and she hasn’t asked about this current draft. Aimee had once been my first reader and she gave great notes. She’d help me fix plot holes; she’d make sex scenes not just titillate, but advance the plot. Aimee made it part of her work to create content in our real lives that was fertile ground for my novels.
Until that creative well dried up. No, that’s not the right metaphor. Aimee built a dam. She diverted all the water to our girls, leaving me parched at the bottom of a depleted riverbed. She gave the bare minimum so I didn’t die of dehydration. Which was exactly what that scene was about in our suite. The first time we’ve had sex in nearly a year.
She thinks having sex one time fixes everything? Where’s the intimacy? Where’s the investment? If she wants to be forgiven for the blinders she put on after the baby, it’s going to take more than this. More than sex on her terms because the girls aren’t here. That’s not real life. And it’s not real love.
I grab a beer from the stocked fridge and poke around the house, looking for the library Margot mentioned, but I never get past the view. The sun is huge and round, buoyed above the water. The sky is blazing orange and pink. I leave my laptop and notebook on the dining room table and open the French doors. Outside the air smells salty and fresh. A few early crickets sing as I walk to the dock. I pick up a discarded clamshell dropped by a seagull and skip it across the dark water.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a woman exit the small cottage south of the main house. Assuming it’s the host, I wave. The woman registers me but does not acknowledge my friendly gesture. I lower my hand and rub my head to cover the rejection. That kind of bad attitude might earn her a gruesome death in my next book, perhaps as an innocent bystander taken out as my lead rescues his love interest from danger.
On the dock, I attempt to soak in the beautiful sunset that pulled me outside, but I’m agitated by mosquitoes.
“Hey, bud.”
I hear my brother-in-law’s voice behind me and realize I’m not alone. I kick another broken shell into the water. It lands with a plop.
“Hey, Ted,” I say.
Ted trails his best friend, Rick. They carry triangular pieces of wood with a small round hole in the top. The sight shifts my mood.
“You guys playing cornhole?” I ask.
