“You sure?”
“No. But yes.”
“I’ve got you. Before and after.” He snapped the dishwasher closed.
“I planned on that, Mariner.” The decision was exhilarating. And scary. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but for now, Caleb tasted like orange juice, and so did I.
I didn’t trust myself enough to not behave in a way that would make some D-list tabloid if we met at a restaurant, nor did I want Wells in the safety of my space. I also had zero interest in ever stepping through the threshold of my old life. I asked him to meet me in Central Park, by the renovated playground where Judy Blume had supposedly had her character Fudge break his teeth. I’d told Wells this anecdote probably a dozen times through the course of our relationship, but he never remembered. Plus, a growing part of me wanted to break his teeth, so I enjoyed that private irony.
I arrived first. The park had that November feel, ochre and sepia. Curled leaves skittered the cement, sand and salt crunching beneath my boots. Unlike in recent years, late fall had brought cold spells, so I’d wrapped myself in a warm coat and donned fuzzy gloves.
He showed up with the decency of looking remorseful. My whole body vibrated with anger. As we walked, I formed a half-dozen lines on my tongue before I spat out the one that kept me up at night.
“It wasn’t enough that you cheated on me.” I was so mad my voice shook, but there was nothing I could do about it. My tears didn’t spill over. They made my eyes hot. “You manipulated my entire life to try to get me back with you. How one human being could ever do that to another is just—” My face crackled with energy. “Beyond me.”
“I thought you figured it out,” he said, glum. “And that’s why you broke up with me.” He sighed. “I knew I was getting off too easy.”
“What you did goes past deceitful.” It was evil.
“Yeah. I know.” His jacket was open against the cold, his neck red. The scent of his shaving cream turned my stomach.
“How could you?” I shook my head. He wasn’t going to answer that. He was going to do whatever he could to have the life he wanted. I couldn’t imagine living without a conscience the way he did. “Whoisyour soulmate, then?”
His mouth screwed up, his face an instant scowl. I used to think the early rakes beside his eyes were from laughing, that they would only make him appear distinguished as we grew old together, but now they made him look tired.
The same way I could sense a storm coming in my parents’ home, I could take Wells’s emotional temp. He was angry about whoever his soulmate was. That, combined with the idea that his real soulmate didn’t leak out from behind a curtain to come after him. “Your mother?” I guessed.
When his expression didn’t change, I threw my hands in the air. “Wow. She must love that.”
“Not her,” he said shortly. “It’s my dad. My father and I are apparently endgame.”
“Oh.” Bitterness fell, swirled, landed. “Oh. Well. She must hate that, then.”
“Said we were two peas in a pod,” he muttered.
“That makes sense,” I said evenly. “She loves to communicate in clichés. Plus, you’re two people who only care about themselves and the money they make. Sound well-suited for one another, no?”
His flinch. I was prepared for it, but even after all this, hurting him—it still hurt me, too. Someday, I’d better examine why that was, but for today, I’d let it sit between us.
At a crosswalk, Wells hovered his hand in front of me. It was the protective gesture a parent gives a kid in the front seat of the car when they stop short. A horse-drawn carriage clomped by us, the tour guide shouting into the brisk air so the couple woven around one another in the plum velvet seat behind him could hear.
I wondered if I hadn’t found out about Cambrey, if Soulmail had never been a thing—if beneath that veil, I would’ve been happy with Wells. I could’ve been. But not this version of me, the one who said and did what felt right. “I don’t envy you. It must be hard to go through life lying to everyone you love.” So much metaphorical weight to carry.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “It’s not like I recommend it.”
I waited for more people to cross, then forged through an open gap of traffic. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“I did it for you,” he said.
I was desperate to feel better about this, but it wasn’t working. I walked faster than I intended. “I’m not even that great!” I shouted. “I am perfectly okay. That’s it.”
“You’re right. That’s exactly it.”
I pulled a face. “Groveling looks great on you.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Clearly not.”
