29
A few days later, I wake up to the sounds of birds chirping outside John’s bedroom window and the quiet glug of the fish tank
on the opposite side of the room. Fish 1 and Fish 2 are swimming lazily while Fish 3 hides in his (her?) favorite spot under
the rocks.
“Is Fish 3 a boy or a girl?” I ask John, as he walks out of the bathroom.
“Which one is Fish 3 again?”
“The shimmery gray one.”
“The Geophagus ,” John says.
“The geographer.”
“ Geophagus .”
“Geology.”
“I’m getting coffee now.”
“Get me one too, please!” I call after him.
I crawl to the edge of the bed and stare at Fish 3. “Don’t let him bully you,” I whisper. “You’re not a genealogist. You’re
a good little fish.”
“Are you a bit insane?” John asks, reappearing with two cups of coffee.
“Little bit. But you love it.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”
The tips of his ears have gone slightly red. I hide a smile. I have this tiny, sneaky feeling that John and I are creeping toward say ing “I love you” to each other. There’s this way that he looks at me these days, with a fond sort of crinkling at the corners of his eyes that makes my heart beat funny. It’s probably still a few weeks away, but we’re definitely inching our way closer. Thinking about it makes me feel warm and slightly giddy, like I’ve drunk a bunch of coffee really quickly.
“Wordle?” I ask.
“Wordle,” he agrees.
I curl up next to him and take a sip of coffee.
“First word?” he asks.
“LOVES,” I say, because it’s fun to nudge us a little closer. “As in, John loves how crazy Emily is.” I type it in. “Crap. All wrong. I hope that’s not a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“A sign that Wordle doesn’t think we should be together!”
“We’ve talked about this,” John says. “The Wordle answers do not hold any deep, secret meaning for your life.”
“Um, what about the time the answer was brOKE and I broke my nail two seconds after I got it?”
“You broke your nail because you were spinning around on your chair like an idiot.”
“Well, what about the time the word was PANTS, and I was wearing pants?”
“Okay,” he says. “Quiet time now.”
I chuckle, then turn back to my phone. LOVES was all wrong. I need to rule out some other letters and figure out what vowel
is in the word.
brAID, I type. If it’s right, I’m totally wearing my hair in a braid today.
Shoot. Only the A is yellow.
I study the letters, hyper-focused, and type in a few more words. I get a few more letters right... a Y, a C, an H...
Aha! It’s YACHT!
This is totally a sign that John and I are going to own a yacht someday. I’m going to tell him that once he’s done, just to
annoy him.
I swipe open my email while I wait for him to finish. A bank statement, a few emails from shops I bought stuff from a hundred
years ago that I’ve been meaning to unsubscribe from...
I go totally still.
There’s an email with the subject line “Your NYU Admissions Decision.” Then below it, an email from the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, with the subject line “Re: Internship Application.”
Oh, god.
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
I put my phone down before I can accidentally see the little preview of the emails. I can’t do this right now. I can’t face
the rejection. It would’ve been bad enough to just get one email, but both ? Did NYU and the Met conspire on this or something?
“Did you get it yet?” John asks. “Is there a double letter?”
“Did I—what? Oh—yeah. I mean no. No double letter.”
He looks at me. “You look weird.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean you’ve got a weird look on your face.”
“Do I?” I say thinly.
His brow furrows. “Em.”
Crap.
I have to tell him.
I take a nervous sip of coffee. “I just... got an email. Two emails.”
He puts his phone down. “About?”
I lick my lips. “Well... you know how I’ve been trying to sort out what I want to do with my life? All that... dream
job stuff?”
He nods slowly.
I swallow. “Well. I ended up applying to NYU a while ago, back before we were—you know, dating. And there’s an internship
program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that I applied for too.”
Oh, god. He looks so serious. “And?”
“And... I don’t know. They’ve both just emailed with their answers.”
“Did you get in?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t read them yet.”
He stares at me. “Are you going to go, if you did?”
“I don’t know,” I say again. My voice sounds high and strange. “They’re probably just rejections. There’s no way my university
grades are good enough for NYU, and the Met thing probably gets thousands of applications—”
“But if you get in,” he repeats, “will you go?”
I attempt a thin smile. “Shouldn’t I look at them first? If I didn’t get them, it won’t matter.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “It matters to me.”
Well, fuck.
I break his gaze and fiddle with the handle of my coffee cup. I want to say, “No, of course not!” I know that’s what he wants
me to say.
But... what if I got in? The Met internship is a long shot, but it’s not entirely impossible to think that I might have gotten into NYU. And if I did... will I go?
“I... I think so,” I say haltingly. “Yes.”
A thick silence falls, then he lets out a short, disbelieving breath. “Seriously?”
“Well—yes,” I say, defensiveness slipping into my tone. “It would be a huge opportunity—”
“A huge opportunity.”
“Of course! You know I’ve always wanted to live in a city—to do something big—”
He puts his coffee mug down. “I thought you’d decided to stay here, actually.”
“I—this is stupid,” I stammer. “There’s no point in arguing about it before I’ve even read the emails—”
“Are you serious? Of course there is.”
“If I didn’t get in—”
“What? Then you’ll deign to stay here with me?” He lets out a humorless laugh. “This is an acceptable fallback option, is
it?”
“That’s not—that isn’t what I said!” I push myself off the bed.
“Yes, it is,” he snaps. “If you got in, you’re going to go.”
“Okay, well—why shouldn’t I?” I demand, anger coming to my defense. “Don’t you want me to be happy? Don’t you want me to find
a job I actually love ? That I care about?”
He exhales impatiently. “Of course I do. But you can find that here. I know you, Emily. You like it here. You’re happy here.
You’re just still convinced you’re too good for it, or that there’s some bigger, better life somewhere out there—”
“Well, there might be!” I say, gesturing to my phone.
“So you’re going to throw away your whole life here just on the off chance you’ll find something better?” He stands up and takes two angry steps away from me, dragging a hand over his face. “For fuck’s sake . I know things have been a bit hard lately, with that lady breaking her hip and the museum stuff—”
“Yeah, they have been hard,” I snap.
“—but I thought you’d decided you were going to make a go out of your caregiving business. Or was that just a second-rate
fallback plan too?”
“I—no. Not exactly.” I throw my hands up in frustration. “Why are you making this so hard? It’s not like this means we have to break up—we could do long distance, it’ll only be for two or three years—”
He scoffs. “Only two or three years? You’re telling me you’re going to get a fancy museum degree and do a prestigious museum
internship, and then after all that, you’ll come back here to Waldon to live happily forever? Come on .”
I hug my arms around myself, frustrated tears pricking at my eyes. He’s right. Of course he’s right. If I do this, my goal
is to end up working full-time at a museum in a city like New York or London.
“This is my dream ,” I say tightly. “Can’t you understand that? This is what I’ve wanted, for as long as I can remember.”
“As long as you can remember?” he repeats acerbically.
“Oh, don’t do that,” I snap. “The museum bit is new, fine, but I know that it’s what I want to do. I’m not like you, John.
I can’t be happy with settling .”
“Oh, good,” he says. “This again.”
“Yes! This again. You aren’t happy, John. Not as happy as you could be.”
“Oh, what? Because I should have been a rich, stressed-out businessman like my father? Or a burned-out doctor like my mother? Grow up, Emily. Just because you think my job is beneath you—”
“I don’t think it’s beneath me!” I throw back. “But you don’t like it as much as you pretend to. You say you know me, well,
I know you too. You’re bored with all the stuff Fred makes you do, but you don’t have the guts to stand up to him, or leave
the shop to start something up on your own, doing the things you want to do—”
John is shaking his head back and forth dismissively—I’m not sure he’s even listening to me.
My hands curl into fists at my sides. “I know you think I’m a snob, that my dreams are idealistic and stupid, but you know
what? I don’t care. I finally have a job I can see myself doing forever, and to do it in New York City—to intern somewhere like the Met—” I throw my hands
up incredulously. “Do you really expect me to turn all that down?”
He stares at me for one long, painful moment.
“I would have,” he says. “Yeah.”
My heart is beating loudly in my ears. My anger is fading, replaced by something ugly and painful. “Well... I can’t. If
I got in... I’m going to go. And if I didn’t...” I shake my head, and two hot tears slip down my face. I give a rough
shrug. “I guess you’re saying we’ll break up either way.”
He stares at me incredulously, and for a moment I feel like we’ve been transported back in time, to when we didn’t understand
each other at all.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “I guess I am.”
A silence falls, so heavy and painful I can hardly stand it. The only sounds are my uneven breathing and the glug of the fish tank behind me. Ten minutes ago, we were laughing and making jokes. Now—now—
I wipe the tears from my face and pick up my phone. I open my inbox, and I don’t have to look beyond the email previews to
know. The answer is in the first three words of each email.
Dear Emily. Congratulations.
Thump-thump, goes my heart in my chest.
“Did you get in?” John asks.
I nod stiffly.
“Both of them?”
Another stiff nod.
“Well,” he says. “Congratulations.”
The word is a barb, hot and sharp in my heart.
“Thanks.” My voice is tight, and an awful hot lump is swelling in my throat.
I look up at him, suddenly desperate for him to shake his head and relax a little, to tell me that it’s no big deal, that
we can talk about this properly. But instead, he stares at me like I’m a stranger and says, in a cool, distant voice, “I’ve
got to get ready for work.”
The lump in my throat gets ten times bigger. “Fine,” I say thickly. “I guess I’ll just... go, then.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess you should.”