20. Maren
Maren
My sister figures out there’s a man over takeout, because Posy has always been able to read me the way I read everyone else, which is the one talent in this family I didn’t get a monopoly on.
She’s on my couch with her shoes off and a carton of lo mein, telling me about a disaster at her job, and somewhere in the middle of it she stops and looks at me, really looks, the way she did when we were kids and she’d caught me lying about something to protect her from it.
“Okay,” she says. “I know there’s a him and I’ve been very patient.
But you’re different tonight. You’re weird and glowing, which is a new flavor of weird, and you keep checking your phone like it’s going to either save you or bite you and you don’t know which.
” She points a chopstick at me. “Something happened. He said something. What did he say?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Maren.” Just my name, flat, the way only a person who’s known you forever can say it.
So I tell her the shape of it. Not the folder, never the folder, I won’t put that weight on her.
But the rest, the part I can give: that he said he loves me.
That he said it plain, no music to it, like a fact.
That he said he wants me for the part of me that’s no use to anyone, and that I’ve been carrying those words around for two days like a stone I can’t put down because nobody has ever in my life said they wanted the useless part, everybody’s only ever wanted the useful one, and I don’t have a shelf for it.
Posy sets down the lo mein. Her eyes are wet, which is annoying, because then mine get wet.
“He wants the useless part,” she repeats.
“Mare. Do you hear yourself? You just called the actual you ‘the useless part’ to my face like it’s a known quantity we both agree on.
” She scoots closer. “That’s the whole thing.
That’s the thing I’ve been trying to say to you since I was old enough to say things.
There is no useless part. There’s just you, and you’ve spent your entire life convinced the only lovable version of you is the one holding everybody’s stuff, and now there’s a man looking straight at the part you’ve been apologizing for your whole life and saying that one, I want that one, and it’s breaking your brain because it doesn’t fit the math you’ve been running since Mom left. ”
“It’s complicated, Pose. It’s so much more complicated than —”
“It’s always more complicated than. That’s your whole personality.
‘It’s more complicated than.’” But she says it gently, and she reaches over and takes my hand.
“I’m not asking about the complications.
I’m sure the complications are real; you don’t do drama for no reason, you barely do drama for good reasons.
I’m asking about the one simple thing under all of it. Do you believe him?”
And that’s the question, isn’t it? Not is it smart, not will it survive, not what’s in the folder. Do I believe that someone could want the part of me I’ve never once let anybody hold.
“I want to,” I say, which is the most honest thing I’ve said out loud in weeks.
“Then start there.” She squeezes my hand.
“Whatever the complicated stuff is. If he’s worth all this fear, he’s worth the truth, all of it, the complicated part too.
And if the truth ends it, then it was going to end anyway, just slower and with more lying in the middle.
You taught me that. About boyfriends. You’re real bad at taking your own advice. ”
I don’t tell her she’s right. I don’t have to. She can see it land.
***
He calls at ten, after she leaves, and he’s different. Lighter. I can hear it in the first word.
“Tobin cornered me at Sully’s,” he says. “Bought me a club soda and called me a coward for ninety minutes.”
“That sounds like Tobin.”
“He’s right, though. That’s the thing about Tobin.
He’s a pain in the ass and he’s right.” There’s something in his voice I haven’t heard before, a resolve that’s almost happy.
“He’s facing his own last couple seasons, you know.
He talked about it tonight, which he never does.
Said he gave the game everything, and the game doesn’t visit you in the home.
He watched me do the exact same thing with my marriage and my kid, and he can’t stand to watch me do it twice.
Said, ‘You found a person, Merce. I can count on one hand the guys our age who found a person. Don’t you dare coach your way out of it.
’” A pause. “I’m not ashamed of you, Maren. I’m done acting like I am.”
My stomach drops, because I know what’s coming before he says it, and I can’t stop it from coming.
“I’m going to tell Caden,” he says. “About us. I’m going to do it like a man, to his face, before it leaks and makes liars of both of us. I’d rather he hear it from his father than from a photographer. I’ve cost that kid enough surprises.”
And there it is. The fuse, lit, in a voice full of hope.
Because here’s what Rhett doesn’t know, what he can’t know, what I haven’t found the courage to hand him: Caden is on the memo.
Caden has been cc’d on the file that’s built to destroy his father since before I ever found it.
If Rhett walks into his son’s office and says I’m in love with the comms lead, he is walking straight to Caden, who is already, secretly, the architect of his ending, and the second Caden knows about us, the relationship becomes the cleanest possible cause.
Coach is sleeping with the staffer who writes his performance reports.
They wouldn’t even need the playoff clause anymore.
They’d have the scandal. They’d have me, the doctored reports, the conflict of interest, all of it, gift-wrapped, the day Rhett tells his son he loves me.
I have to tell him. Right now. On this phone. Rhett, don’t tell Caden anything, there’s a file, you’re being set up, your son is in on it, I’m the weapon, please, just don’t talk to Caden until I fix it.
It’s right there. The whole truth, finally, in a moment when it actually matters.
“Not yet,” I say instead.
Coward. Coward. Posy’s voice in my head, an hour old, and I do it anyway.
“Maren —”
“Not at the trade deadline.” I grab the first real reason that floats by and I hold onto it like a life raft.
“It’s in four days. The whole building’s going to be chaos, the front office is going to be underwater, the media’s going to be insane.
If you walk into Caden’s office in the middle of deadline week and drop this on him, he can’t give it the attention it deserves, and it’ll come out wrong, and the timing will look insane to everyone watching.
Give it two weeks. Let the deadline pass.
Then tell him, when there’s air in the room, when he can actually hear it.
” I’m talking fast and it’s all true and it’s all a lie of omission, the worst of both, my specialty.
“Please. Two weeks. For the timing. Let me get the timing right. Getting timing right is the one thing I’m actually good at. ”
The line is quiet for a moment. When he speaks, he’s gentle, and the gentleness guts me, because he thinks he understands and he understands nothing.
“You’re scared,” he says. Soft. “It’s okay to be scared.
I’m asking you to let me blow up the careful thing you’ve built, and you’ve spent your whole life keeping things careful so nobody could take them from you.
I get it. I’m not going to rush you off the cliff.
” A breath. “Two weeks. After the deadline. But then I’m telling him, Maren.
I’m done being a coward, and I’m not going to let your fear make me one again, not because I don’t love you but because I do. Two weeks.”
“Two weeks,” I agree, and I hate myself, and I love him, and both have never been heavier.
We hang up. I sit in my apartment with the lo mein cartons and the stuffed mascot and the ghost of my sister telling me to put the heavy thing down, and I understand that I have just bought myself fourteen days to do the impossible: defuse the file, find the proof, kill Brunner’s whole machine, and tell Rhett the truth, all before he walks into his son’s office and lights the fuse himself.
Fourteen days. The trade deadline in four. A man who loves me counting down to honesty I’m terrified of. And a folder, sitting where it sits, patient as a landmine.
I don’t sleep. I make a list instead, because making lists is what I do when I can’t have the thing I want, and at the top of the list, underlined twice, I write the only words that matter:
Tell him before he tells Caden.
I underline it twice, like underlining makes it likelier.
Fourteen days. Four until the deadline scrambles the whole building.
A folder, a fuse, and a man I love counting himself down to a truth I have to reach first. It’s enough time.
I tell myself it’s enough time, the way I tell myself everything I need to be true, and I turn off the light before I have to hear how thin my own voice sounds saying it.