Page 73 of The Dazzling Heights
Avery was silent with shock. “Are you sure?” she asked finally.
“I know. I didn’t want to believe it of Eris either. Let alone my dad.” Leda couldn’t even look at Avery’s face right now, couldn’t face the shock, the disgust, that was surely written there, or she might burst into tears. She busied herself tapping on the surface of the table to place their order. “Medium or spicy guacamole?”
“Spicy. Plus queso,” Avery added. “God, Leda … I’m so sorry. Does your mom know?”
Leda shook her head. “I never told her.” Avery of all people would understand how painful it had been, keeping something that big from her family—how Leda had felt stretched thin by the secret, which pressed slowly and inexorably down on her, never relenting even for a minute.
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.” Avery traced a circle on the pristine table. She didn’t seem able to make eye contact either. “How can I help?” she asked finally, looking up. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
Typical Avery, thinking she could take on all the problems of the world. “You can’t solve everything, you know,” Leda said, as a hovertray whirled over to deposit the guacamole on their table. It was chunky and fresh, made with real avocados, not the infused algae-protein cubes that they mashed up in midTower and called guacamole.
“I know. That was always your job.” Avery wiped at her eyes and sighed. “God. I wish we’d never fought in the first place.”
“Me neither!” Leda agreed. “Atlas wasn’t worth it. I mean, not to me, he wasn’t,” she fumbled to explain.
Across the table, Avery’s eyes were very blue and very serious.
“I never loved him. I realize that now,” Leda went on, bravely. She knew this wasn’t what Avery wanted to talk about—that it would be safer to avoid it altogether. But talking was the only way to make things right. Leda imagined her words spanning the space between her and Avery, like the etherium bridges that built themselves molecule by painstaking molecule.
“I thought I loved him, but it was just … infatuation. I loved the idea of him. Or maybe I should say that I wanted to love him, but I never succeeded in it.” That night in the Andes felt so long ago now, when Leda thought she’d fallen hopelessly for Atlas. But all it had really been was hormones and excitement.
Like what you feel for Watt?a voice in her whispered, a voice she tried desperately to silence. She hadn’t told anyone that she and Watt were hooking up. God, she andWattdidn’t even speak about it. But in the few days since they’d come back from Nevada, he’d come over to her place every night. She never even asked him—he just showed up the first evening and she let him wordlessly in the back door, and then they collapsed together onto her bed in a tangle of silent, crushing need.
Still, Leda hadn’t let Watt get too far. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. She kept holding something back, out of self-preservation.
Because she was developing feelings for him, and that was the one outcome she had never expected.
Next to Watt, what she’d felt for Atlas felt long-ago, and childish. She realized that she no longer even cared whether Avery dated him. Hell, why not? It wasn’t any more fucked-up than anything else in this crazy, fucked-up world.
“Youlove him, though, don’t you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes,” Avery said, with more pause than Leda had expected. She let out a great breath. “But he’s really hurt me.”
“By hooking up withme?” Leda demanded, and immediately winced at the baldness of her words. “That was so long ago, it’s ancient history,” she added, more tactfully.
Avery seemed almost not to have registered her outburst. “No, it’s not that … he’s been with someone else. More recently.” Her eyes flicked downward. “I’m pretty sure we’re over, for good.”
“You don’t mean that girl from the gala, with the tacky dress and the British accent? What was her name, Catastrophe?”
“Calliope,” Avery corrected, with a ghost of a smile. “They met while Atlas was traveling, in Africa. She and her mom just moved here.”
“Really. She met Atlas halfway across the world and now she’s in New York. How awfully convenient.” Leda’s instincts pricked to life. “What’s this girl’s story? Where is she from?”
“I don’t know. She went to boarding school in England, I think.”
“What does her page on the feeds say?”
“I haven’t really looked at it,” Avery said reflexively. Leda knew what that meant: Avery didn’t want to look at it, because the moment she did, Calliope became real.
Thank god Avery was so pretty, Leda thought, because otherwise this world would destroy her with its unforgiving ruthlessness. And thank god that Avery had Leda, to protect her. “Here,I’lllook her up,” she offered, and muttered to her contacts. “Calliope Brown, feeds search.” When she found the right account, way down the page, she gasped.
“What is it?” Avery asked.
“Send link to Avery,” Leda said, and watched as the page appeared on Avery’s contacts too.
Calliope’s page only dated back a couple of months. There were pictures of New York, a few from Africa, and before that—nothing.
“Maybe she’s new to the whole feeds thing,” Avery said, but even she sounded dubious.
