Page 109 of Due Diligence

Marcus’s focus shifted back to my face and a frown took over his expression. “Fuck work. Due diligence ends in sixteen days.” Ignoring my narrowed eyes, he climbed over me and kissed me deeply. I let his lips mesh with mine before I broke the kiss, urging him to slide over. Much like his cat, Marcus climbed off me with reluctance.

When he was lying next to me, he swiftly tugged on the sheet and exposed my breasts again. Before I could cover myself, he began to absentmindedly finger one of my nipples—and I just couldn’t bear to stop him.

“I wasn’t actually an overachiever,” I mentioned after luxuriating in his touch for a few quiet seconds. I faced him. His head was on my pillow, cheek flat against the silky white fabric. When he heard my voice, his eyes blinked open and his fingers stilled.

“Hm?”

“You said it a few seconds ago,” I reminded him. “You said I was an overachiever.” I shook my head. “It probably came off that way to you, but I actually didn’t work that hard.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m serious.” I rotated my body so I was on my side, turned in his direction. “School was easy for me. I didn’t study very often.People just assumed I did because I was doing so well, but in reality…I was insanely bored, Marcus.”

Silently, he frowned as he took in my confession. That frown danced between confusion and disbelief in a tango that lasted only a moment before he said, “Back the fuck up and tell me how thevaledictorianof an Ivy League school didn’t study very much.”

It had been years since I admitted this to anybody, but I found the words teetering on the tip of my tongue. They wanted to come out for Marcus. Those words were champing at the bit, just yearning to introduce themselves to him. That urgency didn’t surprise me. For years I’d held these words back, imprisoning them in the recesses of my identity. Marcus was different though. I had trusted him with everything—with my body and my heart. Of course these words would recognize that. Of course these words would want to become yet another one of his firsts.

“If you had to call it something,” I said slowly, looking up at the ceiling as I tried to conjure up the right way to put it, “I suppose you could say I was…a prodigy. Maybe I still am, by some accounts. I don’t know.”

Marcus’s hand flinched on my breast. His frown deepened before it relaxed. “Really? That’s not a metaphor. You mean that literally.”

Without another word, I nodded. Then I had to force myself to look away again and fix my eyes on the ceiling. I couldn’t witness the moment when he saw me for what I was. A parlor trick. A show pony. A waste of a curse that so many others called a gift.

“As in…” He shook his head after a beat. For once, he was at a loss for words, and that hit me harder than any reaction I had received before.

“This was a mistake.”

“No,” he objected hastily as he hoisted himself up on his elbow. “I’m not reacting. I’m just trying to process this the rightway. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, Cass, and you know how I feel like I say the wrong thing—”

“Just say the wrong thing then,” I cut in, frustration rising. That wasn’t right though. I couldn’t get mad at him for being honest. I forced myself to collect my thoughts before I nodded at him. “Just say the wrong thing and trust that I’m going to forgive you if it hurts me.”

Marcus paused, but I could tell that my guidance offered him some mild relief. After a few more seconds had passed, he wet his lips with his tongue and earnestly asked, “Are you a genius?”

Then it was my turn to shake my head. “No. Hardly. Well…maybe. It truly depends on your definition. To put it simply: I remember everything—and I mean that in a literal sense. I can truly recall anything in exact detail.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” I confirmed. “The medical term for it is hyperthymesia. It’s rare. And relatedly, I have a fairly high capacity for processing in my head, which is probably a result of that infallible memory. In tandem, those skills make it easier for me to do a lot of things that some people find hard.”

While Marcus’s unreadable expressions were usually endearing to me, his mien in that moment anguished me. He was staring at me with his green eyes unblinking and his gaze moving over my face. To my relief, he eventually slid his hand over and began to gently run his finger over my forearm. That touch kept me on earth. That touch brought me back to the bed and to the sheets, instead of spiraling fifty feet above us like my mind so often did.

“You don’t have to be comfortable with it,” I said. “I sure as shit don’t feel comfortable with it.”

“Can you show me?” he asked. “I know it probably makes you feel really different when people ask you to do that, but I’m just curious.”

“I’ll always make an exception for you. Can you ask me something? Pick a day or a topic or…”

“Econ 100, freshman year. We were both in that class. Tell me what happened during the second lecture.”

I paused for a moment, thinking back to the lecture. I could see it clearly, one end of the lecture hall to the other. I could recall the smell of the old wooden seats and the way the light filtered in through the glass windows on the left side of the room. “It was Tuesday at 9am in McCosh 50. The professor wore a white button down and navy slacks with black shoes, which I thought was a daring sartorial decision. We talked about the basic law of supply and demand. That was the day that while he was trying to draw the supply curve in red and the demand curve in blue, his red marker ran out. He tried to use green, but that one was dead too. So he told the grad student sitting in the front row to get him a new one. She was wearing olive Hunter rainboots and black leggings, which was what every basic bitch wore—me included. Should I keep going?”

“Do you remember who asked a question about monopolies?”

“You did,” I replied, not missing a beat. “Balcony, second row on the left side. Your voice wavered when you spoke, but the professor was nodding the entire time and he told you that you were putting all the right pieces together.Youremember that?”

Marcus’s lip curled at the side. “It was the only time I ever raised my hand in lecture. I was so nervous afterwards that my hands were shaking.”

I couldn’t help but kiss his forehead when I heard that. Then silence settled between us—a much needed silence.

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