Surprise Me by Deena Goldstone

as though she is running a low-grade fever, just enough to make her normal reality seem glassy and unreal. It doesn’t matter. All Isabelle cares about is the world she is creating with her words, the one she shares with Daniel. Everything else falls away. Waking up, eating, sleeping, are only valuable because they enable her to write and then deliver those pages to Daniel on Tuesday mornings.
    One hour a week, and yet each week whatever occurs in that room sustains her, pushes her, and finally rewards her. She doesn’t stop to examine the mechanics of how that happens. She only knows the whole transaction feels private, her words almost a transfer of a secret language that only Daniel will be able to decipher. Pure in a way nothing else in her life has ever been.
    And yes, there’s a freedom she’s never known. Daniel was right: the freedom to express exactly what she wants to say without a filter, and the freedom to be received with generosity, because Daniel is capable of great generosity, at least with her.

    Each Tuesday session begins with Daniel behind his desk as he always seems to be, reaching out and telling her, “Hand ’em over,” as she steps into the room. No preamble. No How are you, how was the writing this week? Simply his large, open hand reaching toward her, a gesture of giving— Here is a place for your words —as much as asking— Tell me, tell me what’s in your heart.
    “Be kind,” she wants to say, and sometimes does as she hands over her pages.
    “I will not,” Daniel tells her.
    “Then be honest.”
    “That I can do.”
    And she sighs with relief—that’s exactly what she wants to hear, and he knows it. They are united in common purpose; they are on a mission and they’ve set a goal. She will have the first three chapters finished to his satisfaction and hers by the time she graduates in May.
    Nate has no idea what has become of the calm, steady, reliable Isabelle he’s known since high school, but he particularly doesn’t like how unavailable this new Isabelle has become. She no longer listens to the stories he wants to tell her, has no patience at all if he begins to complain. She cuts him off when he wants to discuss the pros and cons of the various law schools he’s applied to. She needs to work. She has to finish these chapters before graduation.
    “What difference does it make?” he asks her, annoyed, one night over dinner, which he has had to make because she’s been too busy to shop or even think about what he might like to eat.
    “I made a promise to Daniel that I’d be finished by graduation, finished so that he agrees it’s finished.”

    “And if you don’t?”
    “That’s not an option. I promised Daniel.”
    “So fucking what?”
    “So honoring that promise means more to me than anything else.” This is said very calmly. She’s not baiting him. She’s simply stating what is.
    “There’s something whacked about this.”
    She stands up, plate in hand. She’s had enough of him and this conversation. “I’ll eat while I’m working,” and she leaves him alone at the kitchen table.
    “We’re having dinner! Hey, Isabelle, we’re eating here!” He’s yelling. She can hear the exasperation in his voice, but she ignores it as she closes the bedroom door, settles herself on their unmade bed, laptop in front of her, her half-eaten dinner forgotten on the nightstand. If he comes in after her, she’ll pack up and go to the library. But he doesn’t.
    —
    ISABELLE DELIVERS THE LAST PAGES of Chapter Three the Tuesday before graduation. She comes into Daniel’s office, her long legs in denim shorts, her feet in flip-flops, her hair brushed away from her face into a high ponytail, commenting on the unnatural heat of this early May day. “They say it’s going to be a hundred and one today.” Daniel’s first thought is that she looks maybe ten years old, but he doesn’t tell her that. Instead he extends his hand as he always does.
    And she gives him