Chapter 33 #2
He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m not overjoyed, I’m not thankful at all. Everything about my smile is entirely flat when I pick up the silk skirt of my dress and start towards the stairs.
It’s not a moment of triumph or vindication. It’s not something that makes me want to march up to Scott and every single person that sat on that hiring committee and told me I wasn’t enough and scream “Ha! See!” in their faces.
I’m not sure what it makes me, exactly.
Confused, maybe, to be presented with the only thing I thought would make me worthy. This thing I thought was the culmination of all my dreams.
Unsure and unsteady on my feet with the brand-new roots of a person who’s trying to learn and unlearn things.
But I do find my way towards the extinction theories exhibit, staring at the triceratops fossil in the display where a man with a tattooed hand and a broken heart and navy eyes thought I was so very, very enough and showed me there are all kinds of worthy dreams to have.
I start to have other dreams while I blink at the dinosaur, frozen in time forever.
Dreams about going to sleep beside Miller and waking up beside Miller and learning to love him properly and learning the difference between can’t and want and going back to school because I want to so very badly and despite it all I do love my job and—
“Seriously? Him?” Scott’s voice, unmistakable and sharp, cuts across the silence.
“What are you talking about now?” I turn from the triceratops and throw up tired hands.
“You’re actually . . . with him?” He laughs, cold and cruel and awful just like him.
“You’re together? You and the playboy athlete—sorry, former, maybe you’ve reformed him, Ren.
” He says the last part like it’s somehow a statistical improbability—that there wouldn’t be anyone in the world who might want to change for me because he couldn’t.
And he stands there, one brow arched, hair artfully styled, baleful blue eyes staring at me from behind glasses, and despite all my best efforts, I think he still has all these pieces of me, and I want them back so badly, but above anything and everything, I don’t want him to have Miller, too.
So I say this thing that feels like a horrible, leaden lie on my tongue, and I try to stand tall under someone who’s always going to be holding a carving knife to my throat.
My chin tips up, and I try to keep my wobbling mouth in a straight line.
“No. You are so far off base, Scott, as per usual. We aren’t. We’re not together.”
“Off base?” He snorts. “You’re using sports analogies now?”
“Off base as in mistaken.” I try to emphasize the last word. “You are mistaken.”
He gives me an amused look that’s really all lines of cruelty. “Oh? What about all those pictures online and the flirting? That kiss downstairs?”
“Yes. It was . . . all for show.” I almost choke on those last words.
It wasn’t, even when it was. Not for a single second, I don’t think.
“But it wasn’t just for show, was it Renny?
” He gives me a sort of patronizing smile that makes me want to dismantle the exhibit behind me and try to pick up the triceratops femur so I can throw it at him.
“As much as you like to pretend otherwise, I know you. And I saw you looking at him downstairs. All moony eyed. Ready to give anything and everything up for him. Ready for someone else to choose you.”
“No. No. I choose me.” I start to shake my head, and I feel like I’m unspooling, somehow.
Like I’m scrambling to keep hold of all these pieces I worked so hard to pick up and they’re all falling out of my arms, tumbling to the ground, and shattering at my feet, so I throw the only one at Scott I think he could possibly understand—even though it’s another lie.
“Graham just let me know I actually got the job at the Maritime Museum, and you know what? Thank fucking god—maybe I’ll finally be free of you because Dr. Scott Saunders and his endless fucking list of accomplishments wouldn’t deign to follow me there! ”
His brows lift, eyes wide and disbelieving, like he might understand something I don’t. He turns on his heel and calls over his shoulder, words laced with pity, “We’ll see.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, and I try to stop the tears from spilling over, but they do. And they don’t stop, even when I hear another set of footsteps echoing through the empty exhibit.
“Scott—go away. What else could you possibly have to say—”
But it’s not Scott who speaks.
It’s not even Scott who stands there anymore.
It’s someone else—wonderful and lovely and maybe my favourite person on the planet who’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before.
“Off base?” Miller draws out the words, like each of those seven letters is a struggle.
“Miller,” I breathe, slapping at the tears sticking to my cheeks. “How long have you been—”
“I didn’t think, uh—I thought we were—on the same page. I wouldn’t waive my clause and you’d—” He scrapes his hands through his hair, sending the waves every which way, before he rocks forward on his feet and shoves his hands in his pockets. “But I guess, uh, yeah. I was the one . . . off base.”
“No—you’re not,” I start, lurching forward, but the corners of his eyes crinkle with a wince, and I take a step backwards, my heel bumping up against the low wall of the triceratops exhibit. “Scott was just—”
“Being Scott?” he finishes flatly.
“Yes.” I nod fervently.
“What about you then? When are you finally just . . . going to be you?” He shakes his head, all sadness and resignation.
“Gotta leave him behind eventually, Ren. Whether he wants to act like that all the time or not.” He drags a hand down his face.
“I thought . . . we weren’t pretending, and I guess, stupid of me, really—”
“You’re not stupid,” I force out, before my words drop into a pleading whisper. “Please, stop saying that.”
“No, this, uh—this makes sense.” He rocks forward on his feet again, words half a choked laugh.
“It wasn’t pretend, but it was still . .
. practice. Why would you—someone like you—” He waves his tattooed hand down the silhouette of my dress, like I’m some sort of whole, wonderful, unattainable thing, when I think, really, I’m still just pieces on the floor.
“Want to be with someone like me long term? Why would you want to stay? It makes sense . . . I’m not smart like him and—”
“I don’t want him! I don’t want Scott or anyone like him!” My voice rises, cracking with a sob. “I don’t want that job, I don’t want anything but—”
“I’m not sure you know what you want, Ren.” He doesn’t let me finish, and the word rings endlessly through me.
You, you, you.
I don’t want anything but you.
He gives his head a final shake before he throws me a tired smile.
“And that’s, uh, that’s okay. Thought for a second we .
. . wanted the same things.” He blows out a breath into his fist before pulling a folded piece of paper from his suit jacket, holding it out towards me between two fingers. “Made you this.”
“Miller—”
But he hands it to me, wordlessly, before his brows give a final, half-hearted lift, and he turns, leaving me standing alone in the middle of that exhibit dedicated to living before extinction where I think he actually brought me back to life all those weeks ago.
It feels heavier than a piece of paper should in my hands, and I think the weight of it and falling for him and maybe losing him is what has me sinking to my feet, dropping against the exhibit wall.
I unfold the paper with shaking fingers, and I can’t breathe when I see his untidy scrawl, scribbled across the page.
Miller’s List of Reasons Why He Thinks Ren Should Always Be Ren
The snort you make when you laugh might be whatever Mozart or Beethoven and all those guys were talking about
You leave your shit everywhere. You should. Leave it all over me
You know how in Alaska they have those thirty days of night? You’re the sun on the thirty-first morning
You’re the best teammate I’ve ever had (even though you can only catch underhand)
I’ve never been in love, but I think you’re the best reason to give it a shot
I don’t think there’s ever been or ever will be an extinction event in the entire history of the world, and maybe the whole universe, that feels like falling for Miller and losing him all in the same breath.