“Just trying to write,” Cath said, closing her laptop before he started peeking at her screen.
“Working on your final project?” He slipped into the chair beside her and tried to open the computer. She laid her arm on top of it. “Have you settled on a direction yet?” he asked.
“Yep,” Cath said. “Lots of them.”
He frowned for a second, then shook his head. “I’m not worried about you. You can write ten thousand words in your sleep.”
She practically could. She’d written ten thousand words of Carry On in one night before. Her wrists had really hurt the next day.… “What about you?” she asked. “Done?”
“Almost. Well … I have an idea.” He smiled at her. It was one of those smiles that made her think he might be flirting.
Smiling is confusing, she thought. This is why I don’t do it.
“I think I’m going to turn in my anti-love story.” He raised his Muppet eyebrows and stretched his top lip across his teeth.
Cath felt her mouth hanging open and closed it. “The story? Like … the story we’ve been working on?”
“Yeah,” Nick said excitedly, raising his eyebrows high again. “I mean, at first I thought it was too frivolous. A short story is supposed to be about something. But it’s like you always say, it’s about two people falling in love—what could be bigger than that? And we’ve workshopped it enough, I think it’s ready.” He pushed his elbow into hers and tapped his front teeth with the tip of his tongue. He was watching her eyes. “So what do you think? It’s a good idea, right?”
Cath snapped her mouth shut again. “It’s … it’s just that…” She looked down at the table, where the notebook usually sat. “We worked on it together.”
“Cath…,” he said. Like he was disappointed in her. “What are you trying to say?”
“Well, you’re calling it your story.”
“You call it that,” he said, cutting her off. “You’re always saying that you feel more like an editor than a cowriter.”
“I was teasing you.”
“Are you teasing me now? I can’t tell.”
She glanced up at his face. He looked impatient. And let down. Like Cath was letting him down.
“Can we just be honest?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “This story was my idea. I started it. I’m the only one who works on it outside the library. I appreciate all of your help—you’re a genius editor, and you’ve got tons of potential—but do you really think it’s your story?”
“No,” Cath said. “Of course not.” She felt her voice shrink into a whine. “But we were writing together. Like Lennon–McCartney—”
“John Lennon and Paul McCartney have been quoted multiple times saying they wrote their songs separately, then showed them to each other. Do you really think John Lennon wrote half of ‘Yesterday’? Do you think Paul McCartney wrote ‘Revolution’? Don’t be na?ve.”
Cath clenched her fists in her lap.
“Look,” Nick said, smiling like he was forcing himself to do it. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done. You really get me, as an artist, like nobody else ever has. You’re my best sounding board. And I want us to keep showing each other our stuff. I don’t want to feel like, if I offer you a suggestion, it belongs to me. Or vice versa.”
She shook her head. “That’s not…” She didn’t know what to say, so she pulled her laptop toward her and started wrapping the cord around it. The one Abel had given her. (It really was a good gift.)
“Cath … don’t. You’re freaking me out here. Are you actually mad about this? Do you really think I’m stealing from you?”
She shook her head again. And put her computer in her bag.
“Are you angry?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered. They were still in a library, after all. “I’m just…” Just.
“I thought you’d be happy for me,” he said. “You’re the only one who knows how hard I’ve worked on this. You know how I’ve poured myself into this story.”
“I know,” she said. That part was true. Nick had cared about the story; Cath hadn’t. She’d cared about the writing. About the magic third thing that lived between them when they were working together. She would have met Nick at the library to write obituaries. Or shampoo packaging. “I’m just…,” she said. “I need to work on my story now. It’s almost finals week.”
“Can’t you work here?”
“I don’t want to waterboard you with my typing noises,” she murmured.
“Do you want to get together one more time before we turn in our stories, just to proof them?”
“Sure,” she said, not meaning it.
Cath waited until she got to the stairs to start running, and ran all the way home by herself through the trees and the darkness.
*