Page 96 of Gifted & Talented

Didn’t you worry for even a second that I would hate you for this?

“Do you?” he asked. “Hate me for it.”

“I think I hoped you’d be the one to hate me,” she said. “Seemed easier.”

“Probably would be.” He looked at her again. “So, do you hate me?”

“I think you chose to enter a dying industry and that’s on you,” she said. She took a sip of her coffee, getting to the bitter grounds near the end. “Lots of other ways to earn a paycheck.”

“Such as fraud?” Jamie took an audible sip from his cup.

She turned to him. She looked at the edge of the path, the precipice of the cliff. He tracked her eyes, watching her as if to sayI see the danger, I always have. She thought about her marriage to Cass, the simple white dress she would probably wear, because she was sort of traditional—guiltily, she did have some old-fashioned dreams. The cut of the dress would be classic, maybe tea-length, something vintage to match the aesthetic of caring about happily ever after, the thing she had very deliberately spat in the face of for so many years.

She thought about being married to Cass in a world where Jamie Ammar still lived, still breathed, still fucked people who weren’t her. Someday Jamie would fall in love again, it was inevitable; even if it was love like the kind between Cass and Meredith, it would still be the kind of love you could shrug on forever, like a very good winter coat. Solid, dependable, comforting, dear god how many women would love Jamie Ammar, how many would happily give him a family, a home? Thousands! Hundreds of thousands! The thought was excruciating. Even if Jamie loved no one else how he loved Meredith—even if there was no such thing as the same love between two people because people were always different people—even if every pragmatic sense suggested Meredith could live without him, had lived without him for years and would continue to do so—the idea that Jamie would live a life with some not-Meredith who would bury him someday when they were old, after they’d made a home together and told each other the same stories ten thousand times, hundreds of thousands—even if Jamie got married and divorced five times over—even if he never again promised his life to someone else but still spent his time with other people—she understood that it was untenable, absolutely fucking unbearable. It made her physically ill, it made her stye pulse independently, as if it were the living manifestation of her grief. She could not walk this earth if Jamie Ammar was alive, if he lived separately from her. By the metrics of Meredith Wren’s ego, no greater tragedy could ever exist than the one where Jamie’s story kept going without her in it.

So she looked at the edge of the cliff, the proximity of Jamie to the bottom of the fucking ravine, and she reached out with both hands and she pushed.

48

Oh my god, I’m just kidding! You believed me, though, didn’t you. Meredith absolutely would. I thought it would be funny if I just did a little untruth there as a personal treat, hope you’re not mad.

Anyway, that’s not what Meredith did. She reached out and she pulled him to safety, and she kissed him like she used to kiss him, without really thinking about it. Initially, the kiss was very forgettable, the kind of kiss you part with without even really noticing because you feel sure it will happen again—that you’ll see each other at home at the end of the day. The kind of kiss that doesn’t usually get a story because it’s part of a bigger story, something vibrant and everlasting. The prelude-to-forever kiss. The gods-are-smiling-on-us kiss. The kiss that saysI knew, I always knew, that it was you. Maybe not the most mind-blowing of kisses, unless you consider that this is Meredith Wren, who doesn’t technically have any sweetness living in her.

But the thing is, right when Meredith did this, the sky went prophetically black.

49

Oh—I’m just remembering that someonedoesdie in this story.

Just not Jamie. Can you imagine! Ahaha. Okay, sorry, continuing on.

50

The sky went black, and Meredith stumbled. At first she assumed that it was just her, that this was finally the karmic punishment she deserved, that the stye in her right eye had always been a prequel to the way the heavens would ultimately decide to push her out. She waited for the rumble of cosmic thunder, the lightning bolt from fate saying haven’t we given you enough, you had love and success all before you were thirty, did you really think that was normal? Didn’t you wonder, all that time that you were treating thirty like the finish line, didn’t you think it was possible, that it was inevitable, that if you rushed through everything in your life, then of course you would pay for it, because you only get so many wins?

But Jamie kissed her back, and kissed her again, and then he pressed her safely away from the edge of the trail. He kissed her with a growing heat, a thickness, like a binding ritual or the prologue to sex. He kissed her again, again, again again again until the coffee cups clutched in their hands became active enemies of state. He couldn’t touch her the way he wanted to; there was too much standing between them, like, for example, a fiancé. He stepped away forcefully, winded with the blow of a gut punch and said, “No. No, no.”

“I’m sorry,” said Meredith, feeling blindly for his face in the dark, meeting the edge of his cheek with the tips of her fingers; self-flagellation of the slightest, lightest brush. “Jamie, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t be sorry about this, this is fucking—fuck you, Meredith.” He was breathing hard, his voice rotten with pain. “Fine. Fine, I won’t do it.”

Fear tightened around her heart. “What?”

“The article, Meredith.” Her straining reach found his wrists as he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fine, Meredith, you win, I love you, I don’t want a life without you, tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. I’ll do it, okay? You win.”

Meredith felt bereft, bewildered, like she’d woken up that morning and everything was upside down, like she no longer knew how to read, like everything around her was suddenly gibberish. The darkness seemed like an afterthought, as if it had always been this way and she had only just noticed.

“But you can’t pull the article,” Meredith said. Her eyes were adjusting, but barely. Jamie was still only outlines and muscle memory, still the partial projection of who he’d once been. “You already told me it’s going to print.”

“Right.” Jamie’s chin lifted, looking miserably at the sky. “I did say that.”

“You’re publishing it because you love journalism. Because Tyche is violating social ethics and the public deserves to know.” The darkness seemed convenient, then. As if there were no further reason to lie because nobody could see. All of this was secret-telling now, the clandestine whispers of two lovers in bed.

“Yes,” said Jamie. “Fuck.”

“You need the money,” Meredith pointed out.

“Fuck. Yes, I really do.”

---