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Zach studied her face, wanting to memorize every line of it. Who knew how long it would be before he saw her again, if he saw her again? Her green-gold eyes glimmered strangely in the lamplight. What did he want? He knew but wouldn’t say it aloud.
Nora tilted her head and gave him a slight smile. She brought the glass to her lips and drank slowly.
She lowered the glass and her lips shimmered wet with the white wine.
Zach reached out, laid a hand on the side of her neck and kissed her. She didn’t seem the slightest bit shocked by the kiss. She opened her mouth to him and he tasted the wine on her tongue. The Chardonnay-sweetened kiss was more intoxicating than the alcohol. She kissed back…slowly, deeply and with breathtaking expertise. She bit his bottom lip, teased his tongue, drew him in farther and faster. And then she abruptly stopped and pulled away. She crossed her legs and picked up the hard copy of her novel.
Breathless and aroused, Zach sat next to her and panted a little.
She glanced at him and opened her book to the same page he was on.
“What’s next?” she asked.
Zach swallowed and glanced down at his screen.
“Page three hundred and eight,” he said still a little breathless. “We need to cut this scene down.”
“Swollen, is it?” Nora asked without the slightest hint of irony although he knew now nothing had a single meaning with Nora.
“Quite. We should take care of that.”
“Yes, sir,” she said and flipped to that page. “I’ll chop that scene right off.”
* * *
Zach yawned and checked his computer clock—
3:37 a.m. He blinked and stretched out his neck. Next to him on the sofa, Nora lay curled up and sleeping. Zach closed his laptop and reached for Nora’s hard copy of her book and flipped to the last page—William’s goodbye to Caroline—and read it for the first time.
My Caroline,
If you’re reading this endnote then I can assume you’ve suffered your way through the story, our story once again. I suppose having you relive our time together is the ultimate proof of my sadism, as if you of all people needed further proof.
At the end I find myself surprised by how easy it was to write this book about us. I found I missed you so much that a terrible vacuum had formed; all the words came and filled it and for a little while you were home with me again. I didn’t want it to end but a story must have an end, I suppose.
I have no secrets to reveal on this final page. I loved you. At least I tried to. And I failed you. I failed you with great success. Forgive me if you can. I will not apologize anymore.
I’m done writing now. I may go into the garden and read until evening. It isn’t quite the same without your head on my knee and your ill-informed criticisms of my reading material, but I shall carry on alone, page by page, until the end. And when evening comes and the sun is sitting on the edge of the earth, I will look out, searching for a break in the horizon as that father did once so many thousands of years ago…the father waiting for his prodigal child to return.
I hope you are happy. As for me, I…continue. If you ever miss me, miss… But some things are best left unwritten. Just know I have kept your room for you. I’ll say no more. I know I sent you away. I know it was the right thing to do. But I also know that perhaps not every story has to end.
Love,
Your William
Zach turned to look at Nora’s sleeping form. She looked so young right now, so defenseless. She looked like a child sleeping on her stomach, her arms tucked under her. What a fool he’d been. First he’d pushed her away out of grief for Grace. Then he’d pushed her away out of anger at himself. Adrift and unmoored, she had tried again and again to throw him a rope to save him from the raging waters. And now he no longer felt like a drowning man at sea. Nora…the siren and the goddess, the ship and the wine-dark sea. She would either save him or end him. Right now, with her words singing in his ears, he didn’t really care which.
Standing slowly so as not to wake her, Zach found his messenger bag and dug through it. He pulled out her contract and returned to the sofa. He knelt beside her sleeping form and flipped to the last page. Taking up his pen, he laid the contract on her back and with a sure hand and absolute certainty that the book would outsell anything Royal had ever published, he signed his name, Zechariah Easton.
Nora stirred and opened her eyes.
“Zach?”
“Here.” He handed her the pen. “Your turn.”
Nora took the pen and only stared at him for a moment. Then she rolled up, took the contract, laid it on his back and signed Eleanor Schreiber on the line.
“It’s done,” she said.
“It’s good. Nora—” Zach placed a hand on the side of her face “—it’s spectacular.”
Nora smiled. And then the smile was gone. They only looked at each other. Nora leaned forward and kissed him.
He didn’t think it was possible but their second kiss was even more intoxicating than their first. He was still on his knees, and she sat in front of him on the edge of the couch. He started to stand, started to push her onto her back.
“No.” She stood up abruptly. “I wrote the book your way. If we’re going to do this, we do it mine.”
Zach didn’t have to ask what she meant.
“Safe out and send me home, Zach. Or come with me. Those are your only two choices.”
Zach rose off the floor and made the most terrifying decision of his life.
“I’m with you.”
Nora headed to the bedroom.
He stood alone in his living room and breathed for a minute. Grace… Her name echoed hollowly in his heart like an unanswered prayer.
But there was no going back. The wind took hold of the sails. Zach followed Nora into his bedroom. She struck a match and lit the single candle he’d left next to the bed.
“A bottle of wine and a candle…” Nora said. “You were looking forward to this night, weren’t you, Zach?”
“Yes,” he confessed.
She came over to him, unknotted her tie and took it off. She brought it over his eyes and tied it around his head, blindfolding him. He tensed at his loss of his sight.
“Relax.” Nora’s voice was calm and soothing as if she were talking to a child. “Trust me, please.”
“I do,” he said and knew he meant it.
He stood still as Nora unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it down his arms. But she didn’t take it off completely. She used the shirt to tie his hands behind his back.
Zach sensed her step away. He heard her soft laugh.
“Ecce homo.” Zach remembered the painting in the church. “Behold the man.”
“Nora…” Zach said, worried he was about to get crucified.
“How do you feel?”
“Disoriented.”
“The blindfold will do that. Don’t breathe too deeply and don’t lock your knees.”
He nodded and tried to relax his legs.
“Do you know why I’ve done this, Zach?”
“No.”
“I could say it’s because I want you. I do want you. I have rarely been so attracted to someone in my life. But if I just wanted you I could have had you the day we met. Yes?”
Zach knew she expected an answer. He decided to save them both time and simply go with the truth.
“Yes.”
“Do you know why I didn’t let that happen? Why I stopped you before you could ask me up that night in the cab?”
Zach experienced a mild wave of vertigo. Nora moved as she spoke and the words seemed to come from everywhere at once.
“Why?” Nora had never made her attraction to him a secret. Why she’d turned him down the one time he’d come on to her was something he’d wondered about since that night.
“Because when you said Grace’s name you had so much pain in your eyes. I knew you didn’t really want me. You just wanted to not think and not feel for a few hours. Yes?”
“Yes,” Zach admitted.
“I do want you, Zach, but I also want to know you.”
“You do know me.”
“You’ve kept half your life from me,” she said. “I don’t want half. I want all. You know my secrets now. Time to tell me yours. It’s all or nothing tonight. Say ‘all’ and we go on. Say ‘nothing’ and this ends now and forever. You decide.”
He felt the floor rock underneath him. On the wood floor and in his bare feet, he imagined for a moment he was on a ship in a storm.
“All.”
“Good,” Nora said, sounding relieved and yet determined. “Now…tell me about Grace.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Then say your safe word and end it. But that will end it. It and us. But if you don’t want to end it, answer the question.”
For a terrible moment Zach considered his options. There were some things he simply did not talk about. But they’d come so far now…it would be a more difficult journey back than forward. Zach took a few short, shallow breaths and used the street sounds below to orient himself.
“Grace was eighteen when we met.” He gave up the words like precious possessions to a thief. “I was…older.”
“You were teaching at Cambridge then, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Grace was your student?”
Zach swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“That explains why my relationship with Wes made you so uncomfortable at first. Dеj? vu, right? It seems so unlike you, getting involved with a student.”
“All teachers nurse attractions to the occasional student. I never intended to act upon it. Grace was lovely beyond words, twice as bright and talented as any student I’d ever taught. She wrote poetry, good poetry. No eighteen-year-old in history has ever written good poetry. But she did.”
“What else did she do?”
“She brought me her poetry sometimes and asked for my opinion, my help.”
“You were her editor.”
Zach laughed bitterly.
“I suppose I was.”
“She loved you.”
“As much as a girl of eighteen can love her thirty-one-year-old teacher. At the time, I simply assumed she cared only for her writing.”
“Eighteen means she couldn’t buy booze in the States. It doesn’t mean she couldn’t love you.”
“It does mean I shouldn’t have loved her back.”
“But you did.”
“Foolishly, yes.” His stomach churned as he relived that year, that nightmare of a year. “Or what passed for love at the time. But I never acted on it. I loved my work, loved teaching, loved my life.”
“What happened?” Nora’s questions were as relentless as any assault.
Zach took another breath. He never even allowed himself to think about that time, much less tell another soul about it. It was his burden alone.
“I was in my office late on a Friday night. I had a hundred exams to grade that weekend. I suppose I’d complained about this in class. Somehow she knew I’d be there.”
“She came to your office?”
“Yes. I was exhausted.” Suddenly Zach was back in that cramped third-floor office again. His sleeves were rolled up; his fingers were tinged with red ink. His head ached from the hours of reading, the endless concentration. He yawned, stretched, heard a noise in the hallway. “I heard footsteps in the hall and looked up. She was standing in my doorway.”
“She came to your office late at night. Shall I assume the inevitable happened?”
“It felt inevitable. She came inside without waiting for me to ask her. And then she closed the door behind her.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘I don’t have any poems tonight.’”
