Page 67 of Gifted & Talented

(“Why are you here?” asked Jamie.

“Please don’t run that article,” said Meredith. “Please don’t be the one to ruin me. Please, I can survive it. Just let it be anyone else but you.”

Jamie looked at her for a long time.

“You almost had me,” he said after a moment, and clinked his cocktail glass against hers.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Well, it was worth a try.”)

“No, I’m not breaking up with you,” said Cass. “Actually, I’m proposing to you.”

“Oh,” said Meredith. “Really?”

“We’ll sign a prenup,” he promised her. “You keep your money, I’ll keep mine.”

“That’s not really my concern.” Well, not completely. She couldn’t honestly say the idea of money hadn’t crossed her mind, but there was something both unromantic and yet deeply sexy about him bringing it up right away, as if he was promising to uphold her agency, her personhood. As if to saywhat’s yours is yours,which wasn’t wholly unwelcome even if it lacked the wholesome shine ofwhat’s ours is ours.

“I figured not, but I wanted to be up-front.” Cass shrugged. “I told you, I’ve done this before.”

“When you proposed before, what was it like?” asked Meredith. She leaned over to run her fingers over his chest, over the tattoo ofSPQR, like a Roman gladiator. He said he’d gotten it when he was twenty, in Italy, too busy being romantic about being a battler, about his willingness to fight to the death.

“Well, we were in Paris,” said Cass. “I brought fresh bread and a bottle of champagne and I got down on one knee while the lights were twinkling on the Eiffel Tower. And afterward we went to have dinner at this beautiful place. Had the best steak of my life.”

“Best sex of your life?” asked Meredith, like shoving her finger in a bruise.

“No, that was a threesome in Bali.” Cass smiled vacantly at nothing.

“Stop reliving it.” She jammed a nail into his rib cage. “I’m right here.”

“I like sex with you. Hence the offer to do it forever.” He rolled to faceher again. “But you’re younger than I am. Hungrier. You still have a little romance left in you.”

“No, I don’t,” said Meredith. “I’m old, really. Very crone-like.”

He reached over. Eased a thumb over one bare nipple. “I beg to differ.”

(“We should really have sex,” Meredith told Jamie. “Just to get it out of our systems. Then we can fight, which we’re obviously going to do, and you can send the article to your editor in a fit of rage, and I can call up my personal contract killer and have you taken out.”

“I already turned in the article,” Jamie said.

Meredith rolled her eyes. “You’re bluffing.”

“I’m not bluffing. I sent it over today. Why else would I have been proofreading it this morning?”

“You don’t honestly want to destroy me.”

“No, I don’t, but this is my job. And I keep waiting for you to tell me the truth, but you won’t do it. So yes, I’m publishing the article as a matter of public interest. It’s not just about you, Meredith, it’s about Tyche. About corporate ethics.”

“But it’s my name you’ll be printing.”

He took a long pull from his glass. “Yes.”

“But you love me,” said Meredith, stung.

Jamie looked her pointedly in the eye.

“So?” he said.)

“Do you really want to be married to me?” Meredith asked Cass. “I have a feeling I’m only going to get worse as I get older.”

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