Page 97 of Gifted & Talented

“You were willing to destroy me this morning, weren’t you?”

“Yes, yes, I know, I still kind of am.” Jamie sank blindly into the dirt, crouching on the edge of a rock, one hand still wrapped around his coffee cup. The other still in hers.

Meredith sat numbly beside him, an untranscribable whorl of nonsense in her head.

“The thing is,” said Jamie, “I love you too much to hurt you.”

She waited, and of course he said it. “But.”

That word, the inevitable one, was deafening. On-screen, the captions would say something likeI love you, but I love my conscience more. In French, presumably.

Jamie swallowed, hanging his head as he looked at their joined hands, safely blanketed by a sunless void of unintentional apocalypse.

“I’ll pull my name from the article,” he said. “I’ll have my editor take the credit, he’ll be happy to do it.”

“No,” said Meredith, tightening her grip. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Yes,” Jamie said. “I’m not going to be the one who does this to you. I’m not letting theNew York Timesrun ‘et tu, Brute’ when I marry you. I’m not promising my life to you or asking you for yours knowing that my name is forever tied to yours by something ugly like this.”

It hit her like a shotgun blast to her sternum.

“When you marry me,” Meredith echoed.

“Yes, when I marry you.” He reached over and kissed her brutally, with the savage adoration of a man who knows only one thing about the world, that the sun could snuff out like a light and he would stay there, kissing her. “You’re not marrying anyone else, Meredith Wren. I’m not letting you. You told me you love me and I’m holding you to it. You’re going to be accountable for at least one fucking thing in your life, and if it won’t be federal prison time then it’ll be me, goddamnit.” He kissed her like she’d rear-ended him on the freeway, like she’d stolen his parking spot, like she’d cut him off at the light. “It’s me.”

Oh Jesus, thought Meredith, who kissed him back and realized she’d never been so turned on, not ever, not once in her goddamn life.

“No.” She struggled to pull away, but managed it. This was important. “Jamie. That report is going to win awards, I’m not joking. And you have a chance to take down Tyche for real.” She swallowed hard. “You have to take me down with them.”

“But—”

“I’m not saying I won’t fight. I’m saying put your fucking name on it.” Her eyes were swimming, they leaked out helplessly, she realized her nose was running only when she felt it drip onto her lip. “All that work, Jamie. Take the payday, cash out, love me or hate me or both. Have it all.”

“Meredith.” He frowned at her.

“It’s my fault. I did this to myself, you were right, it’s my fault.”

“Meredith, I don’t care whose fault it was—”

“Yes, you do. Yes, you do care, youshouldcare. I want to be happy. I want to be happy, I wantso badlyto be happy, but it isn’t real, it never worked.” She was gasping it, convulsing with sobs. “It isn’t real and I knew it. If I ever actually believed that happiness was real, I would have made a different choice. I didn’t wanthappiness,for fuck’s sake—I wanted an A!” She felt sick with herself, with the repulsion of having seen her insides. “I wanted to get a good grade in life, in adulthood, inexisting—but who was ever going to give me that?”

She was babbling now, giving into her instincts for absurdity, the thing she’d known was the problem all along. She’d wanted to make things better—how many times had she said that? She’d wanted to make a world where her mother lived, and lived and lived and lived, and yet she also wanted her father to think she was worthy, to think she wasworth it,and ifthere was a Venn diagram, a space where both things could be true, Jamie had always lived outside of that. Jamie, her love for him, that was irreconcilable with her potential, with her genius. Jamie was her failure, he was her downfall, and it seemed only fitting, only right, that she should suffer for choosing him now.

“I always knew that choosing you would hurt,” said Meredith, whose chest ached with pain, sharp throbs of it. “I knew it would hurt but I want it, I deserve this.” She couldn’t breathe, wasn’t confident he understood her. “I deserve it.”

“No,” Jamie said, and his hand was on her heart, a weight to hold her steady. “No, Meredith, I’m not going to hurt you.”

Yes, she thought, yes you are, you already have.

He kissed her gently, so softly it was like a child’s wish, like a prayer before bed. She kissed him back, the cyclone between them tightening, closer and closer, threads of fate inseparable, more tangled up than sweet. Like someone had dropped them on the floor and lived a life before picking them back up again years later, entropy and carelessness having formed, however unintentionally, an inseverable knot.

His hand found the waistband of her yoga pants, hers found the hem of his shirt. Skin on skin was feverish, burning. Everything was dark and hot, fresh earth and primal screams. Into his mouth she pantedplease,he licked backmine,she let out an animal whine offorever,he gritted his teeth withyes. Coffee spilled into the dirt, forgotten. The apocalypse carried on, irrelevant. Overhead a bird took flight, uninvested. The black of midmorning was godless, divine.

51

While Jamie Ammar and Meredith Wren lost themselves in the dark, Philippa Villiers-DeMagnon stepped out of her taxi into the intersection of Stockton and Pine.

52

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