Chapter 11 #4
Annie’s quiet for a long moment, and I can feel her thinking, processing. The rain continues its steady percussion against the windows.
“At least you’ve been in love,” she says finally, and there’s something wistful in it that catches me off guard.
She sighs, still not looking at me. Still winding that thread around her finger. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love at all.”
That doesn’t make sense. She’s twenty-two. She walked away from everything to come here, which means there had to be something—or someone—she was walking away from.
“I was engaged before I moved here,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. “You were engaged to someone you didn’t love? Why?”
“If you knew my parents, you’d know why.” She lets out a dry laugh, bitter and sharp.
I wait. I’m curious. More than curious, actually, and I want to understand, but I don’t want to push.
She takes a breath. “Our marriage was mostly arranged by our parents. Not in some archaic way, but close enough. They set up our first date. They made sure we kept seeing each other. They made sure everyone in their social circle knew we were together.” She’s pulling that thread tighter, her fingertip going white.
“Daniel seemed perfect at first. He worked for his father’s company, made obscene amounts of money.
He was handsome. Charming. Everyone loved him, knew him or wanted to know him. ”
The way she says it—past tense, distant—tells me she’s describing a stranger.
“But he didn’t know me,” she says, quieter now.
“He never tried. He wanted to check off all the boxes—career, wife, kids, house. Multiple houses, actually.” She swallows.
“He had no idea what I wanted to do with my life beyond being his wife. He couldn’t tell you what I was afraid of or what I dreamed about, that I wanted to be a journalist one day.
He didn’t know what made me happy or what made me cry.
My favorite childhood memory, why I left college, what I believed in, what shaped me into who I am—he had no clue about any of it. And I don’t think he wanted to know.”
Things you should probably absolutely know before getting down on one knee and proposing marriage to someone, I think.
“And he worked all the time,” she says. “When we went out, it was never just us. It was always some formal event. Dinner parties, galas, charity things. Networking, he called it. Like our whole relationship was just another opportunity for him to make connections.” Her voice gets an edge to it.
“And he’d make these little comments in front of everyone, people whose opinions he cared about.
He would tell me I should smile more because I looked too serious, or that I’d look better with my hair down.
He would suggest I should watch what I was eating because my dress was getting snug. ”
Something hot flares in my chest before I can stop it, and it’s anger, which is absurd.
Completely ridiculous. Three weeks ago this woman was literally fighting me for a cab, physically trying to climb back into it while I dragged her out by her ankles.
I’m pretty sure she still thinks I’m controlling and overbearing and possibly the worst person she’s ever met.
But the idea of someone talking to her like that, diminishing her in public, making her feel small and inadequate in front of people, people she had to face again and again—what an asshole.
It pisses me off in a way I wasn’t expecting, in a way that doesn’t really make sense given our history.
I don’t say anything, but I must make some kind of face because Annie glances at me quickly, then looks away.
I can’t wrap my head around it. This Daniel person got to date someone like Annie—actually got her to say yes to marrying him—and all he did was spend his time criticizing her?
Women like Annie aren’t women you find every day just walking down the street, especially in New York City.
I know I downplayed it when I was talking to Joe and Allison, but Annie’s drop dead gorgeous.
Probably one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met, and that’s not an exaggeration.
It’s a natural prettiness that doesn’t require maintenance or effort or three hours in front of a mirror with an arsenal of products.
And there’s something about the way she carries herself, like she has absolutely no idea how attractive she is, that makes it almost refreshing.
I’m convinced that if she knew, if she actually understood the effect she has on people, it would be completely unbearable to be around her.
But she doesn’t know, so instead it just makes her more attractive somehow, which doesn’t even make sense but there it is.
A girl like Annie would be completely out of my league. I’ve known that from the very beginning, from the second she showed up at my door. Daniel must be a blind man. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
I clear my throat. “Journalism?”
Annie blinks at me like I’ve just woken her from a daydream. “What?”
“You said you wanted to be a journalist.”
“Oh. Right.” She swipes her bangs out of her face, slightly flustered. “That’s what I studied. At Stanford.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Stanford?”
It’s one of the best universities in the country.
One of the most expensive, too. So Annie comes from serious money, which doesn’t totally surprise me.
With my students, I can usually tell within the first week who comes from money and who’s scraping by on loans and scholarships.
It’s not always the obvious things—the designer backpacks, the new laptops they don’t treat like precious cargo, the expensive coffee they buy between classes without thinking twice.
Sometimes it’s subtler than that. It’s the ones who talk about summer break like everyone spends it in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard.
It’s the students who take unpaid internships without worrying about rent.
It’s the way they handle stress differently, like they know there’s a safety net waiting for them even if they fail spectacularly.
The ones working their way through school have this hunger to them, this edge.
They show up to office hours more. They care more. Not always, but usually.
Annie nods. “I took a lot of broadcast journalism courses. Documentary production. A whole class on ethics in international reporting. Foreign policy.”
“What kind of journalism would you want to go into?”
She hesitates, worrying that thread between her fingers again. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Leo.”
“What? You’re asking me to make a promise without knowing what I’m promising. That seems like a terrible idea.”
She gives me a look that’s half exasperation, half amusement. “Fine. Then I’m not telling you.”
“Come on.”
“Nope.”
“Annie.”
“You have to promise.”
“What if it’s genuinely funny?”
“It’s not funny.”
“Then why would I laugh?”
“Because most people do. They think it’s not serious or that I’m not capable of it or something.”
I hold up my hands. “Okay. Fine. I promise I won’t laugh.”
She studies me for a moment like she’s deciding whether to trust me. Finally she says, “I want to be a news anchor.”
I don’t laugh. I can’t help but smile a little, though. “Like Barbara Walters? Peter Jennings?”
“I love Barbara Walters,” she says, and there’s this sudden shift in her voice, this brightness that wasn’t there thirty seconds ago.
“But the person I’m really obsessed with right now is Christiane Amanpour.
Have you seen her reporting from Bosnia?
Or Rwanda?” She leans forward slightly, and her whole demeanor changes.
“She’s not sitting behind some desk in a climate-controlled studio reading off a teleprompter.
She’s on the ground. She’s in war zones, in refugee camps, in places where history is actually being made.
And she’s telling the stories of people who never get their stories told.
People who need someone to speak for them, to show the world what’s happening to them.
She asks the questions everyone else is too scared to ask.
She holds people accountable—governments, militaries, corporations, whoever needs to be held accountable.
” Her eyes are brighter now, more focused.
“That’s what I want to do. I want to do work that actually matters.
I want to report on things that could make a difference, that could change how people act or think or vote.
Not celebrity gossip or human interest fluff pieces. Real news. Important news.”
While she’s talking, something shifts in her entire physicality.
Her hands stop fidgeting with that thread and instead she’s gesturing as she speaks, using her whole body to communicate.
Her shoulders have relaxed. There’s color in her cheeks.
She’s leaning forward like she can’t help but move closer when she talks about this.
I thought she was pretty before, but watching her talk about journalism, about Amanpour, she’s even prettier.
Her eyes are lit up from the inside. Her face is more animated, more alive.
There’s an energy coming off of her that makes her seem bigger somehow, like she takes up more space in the room than she did five minutes ago when she was talking about Daniel and looking small and defeated.
This is what Annie looks like when she’s not trying to shrink herself down to fit into someone else’s idea of who she should be. This is what she looks like when she’s passionate about something, when she’s allowed to want something for herself.
This is what Daniel was missing. This exact version of her.
What a fucking idiot.
“I think you’d be fantastic at that,” I say.
Her eyebrows shoot up so high they almost disappear into her hairline. “Really?”