Page 22 of Wreckage and Rain

Saturday mornings used to be sacred.

No phones before ten. No work talk until breakfast. No pants if we could avoid it. The only obligations were each other and the aggressive murder of whatever song was on the radio.

We've been slipping. My phone comes to bed now. I check email before my eyes are open. Last Saturday I took a call at eight while Summer was making pancakes. She didn't say anything. The pancakes were a little burned. I don't think that was an accident.

Today is different.

I wake up to bacon and Fleetwood Mac. Summer is in the kitchen in my old rugby shirt, barefoot, singing Dreams with the pitch accuracy of someone who has never cared about pitch accuracy. She's using the spatula as a microphone. Her hair is a structural disaster held together by willpower and a claw clip. I lean in the doorway and don't do anything but watch her.

"You're killing that song."

She doesn't turn around. "Stevie would thank me."

"Stevie would file charges."

"Stevie would recognize a kindred spirit." She flips a piece of bacon with the flair of someone auditioning for a cooking show she'd never get cast on. "Sit. I made eggs."

"Scrambled?"

"Is there another kind?"

"Objectively, yes. Several."

"Wrong. Sit down."

I sit. She puts a plate in front of me. Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast cut diagonal because she swears it tastes better that way and Ihave never been able to prove her wrong. Coffee. Her bare feet propped on my lap under the table, cold against my thigh.

"Read something for me." Toast in her mouth, no question mark. Summer at the breakfast table, handing me the first read.

"The new chapter?"

"Twelve and thirteen. I restructured the second act. I need to know if the pacing holds."

"Give me an hour."

"Forty minutes. I'm impatient."

"You're a nightmare."

"I'm an artist. There's overlap."

***

I read on the back porch while my coffee goes cold next to me.

The restructure works. More than works. She's done this thing where the tension builds so gradually you don't realize you're holding your breath until the chapter ends and your lungs burn. Her villain is terrifying because he is certain he is the hero of his own story.

I tell her this with the precision she requires. Summer doesn't want it's great, babe. She wants the mechanism. She wants to know if the engine she built runs like she designed it.

"The interrogation in thirteen is the best thing you've ever written."

Her face cracks open for half a second and the composure drops and the girl underneath looks back at me. The one who is still amazed anyone thinks she's good at this. First novel at twenty-one. Bestseller list at twenty-three. And she still doesn't quite believe she belongs there.

"You think so?"

"I know so."

She ducks her head and smiles. Crooked, left eye squinting. The one that has been making me stupid since the day I met her.