Swallowing, I start from the beginning. “I can’t really explain that without explaining some of Scott, to be honest. We met when we were eighteen. Freshmen, aspiring bachelor of science honours in paleontology students at the University of Alberta. BIO 108—Introduction to Biological Diversity. We shared a lab bench.” I sniff, looking over Miller’s shoulder, studying the stitching along a pair of frayed denim wide-leg pants. “I was, uhm, lonely. I think I’d been lonely for a long time ... and he looked at me, and you know, I thought it was like the movies?”
I wait for lines of laughter to sketch across Miller’s face, hilarity at this idea that young, eighteen-year-old Ren was that naïve. But the drawing never comes, and he waits, unblinking with a straight set of his jaw, his thumb skating across my calf again.
“Anyway—” I wave a hand. “Lab partners who both loved dinosaurs. We shared a lot of the same interests. Friends. Extracurriculars. We were together by Christmas.” I skip over the good parts. Or, what I thought were the good parts. I’m not sure if they ever were—it’s a bit hard to say, when they were painted a different colour by all the bad years. “He had an interest in theTyrannosaurus rex. I was really interested in studying the social behaviour of velociraptors.” Leaning forward, I wrinkle my nose and try for conspiratorial. “It’s not what people think. They were tiny and covered in feathers, and they weren’t highly coordinated.”
The corners of Miller’s lips twitch.
“And lo and behold, we could study those things together at UC Berkeley. We moved to California. We moved in together—this tiny, horrible apartment. Neither of us could afford to live alone.” It’s harder to pretend when I get to this part. The good years shifted to the bad, and it’s a double-edged sword, for me to think about sitting knee to knee with Scott on the crappy carpet in that even crappier apartment, eating ramen for the fourth night in a row because that’s all we could afford, too. Our laughter was what kept us full. That, and the pursuit of dreams we crafted together. Until slowly, he decided to use me in a different way, to fill the still-empty spaces of him.
Forcing a smile, I press a cheek to my shoulder. “Anyway, two years go by and then it was time for our PhDs. We both wanted to go to the University of Kansas. They have a fantastic program.” Fresh embarrassment, like it was yesterday, burns across my cheeks. “He got in. I didn’t.”
Miller makes a noise in the back of his throat, the first sound since I started talking.
“What?” I blink.
He shrugs. “Admissions committees are probably made of people a lot smarter than me. But that seems like a pretty stupid decision on their part.”
“Thank you,” I say softly, before I shrug too. “We didn’t want to be apart—honestly, I don’t think we knew how to be. I couldn’t ... I needed him. So, I pivoted. Applied to the museum studies program at KU, too. I liked it. I thought it would be a great way to pad my resume for when I applied again. But I ... never did. I didn’t think ... I could move somewhere without him. I hadn’t been without Scott since I was eighteen, and I was too nervous to apply at KU again.” Tears well along my lash line. “And he made it ... seem like I couldn’t be without him. That I wouldn’t get in, anyway. In that special way of his.” I snort dryly, shaking my head. “So, I stayed. And he still liked it, I think. How dependent I was on him. How ... needy. It filled a void he needed filled, and it ... filled me too. But when that particular baggage of mine, this need to be chosen, this deep fear of being alone ... being left behind like I was as a kid became too much, he started picking it apart. Picking me apart.”
I hold both my hands open in a poor version of presenting myself with a lacklustre ta-da!—Ren Jacobs, Not Really Anything at All. “And ... here I am. The years passed. He finished his PhD and started pursuing the dreams we used to share. Fieldwork. Digs. Research. But ... it was like they were only his dreams. Like I never had any at all. And he started to tell me things like that. Like we hadn’t been in the same rigorous programs almost our whole academic careers. That I didn’t really have drive, and if I did ... I’d have tried harder to find a doctorate program. That I wouldn’t ... need him the way I did. That the way I’d always been so silly to his serious was all a bigpart of it, too. One of my failures. Eventually, I left. Came back to Canada and started working at the museum.”
The lines of Miller’s throat work with a measured swallow. He considers me with a slow, almost imperceptible nod before he says, voice firm, “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Ren.” His thumb taps against my leg before his wide, calloused hand splays across my bare skin. “He’s not the first man to make a woman feel small. Doubt he’ll be the last.”
“Too bad,” I mutter with an eye roll.
Miller’s cheek jumps, and then he asks, “Why him? There must have been ... something good? At some point?”
I think about those memories, the good ones painted now with swirls of bad. I think of eighteen-year-old me and the baggage I brought to that lab bench I was more than happy to saddle Scott with, and I bite down on my lip before throwing him a weak smile. “Next time?”
“Okay, at least answer me this.” Miller’s fingers scorch against my skin. “If he had a job, why’d he have to come take yours?”
“You know ...” I start, half laughing. “I have ... no idea.” I throw my hands up again. “I don’t think ... it’s not like he missed me. It’s not like he’s still in love, and to be fair, I don’t think he ever was.”
“Does he know that?” Miller scoffs.
I tip my head. “I’m not going to make excuses for Scott. But I think in his case, there are explanations for why he is the way he is.”
“Next time, then.”
I nod, before setting my hand over top of his, saying gently, “Your turn.”
His eyes pinch closed, and he gives me a rueful smile when he blinks them open. “Thanks for ... not Googling it before we got here.”
“Of course.”
He drags his tattooed hand across the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the mahogany waves, almost ebony under the dim light of our hiding place, and his other hand stays anchored to me. “Uh. Yeah. So ... Matty was the good one, you know? From the time we were kids. I mean, I was the one that got left behind, not him.” He snorts, but his jaw tightens with a wince. “But his whole life he was just ... better. Donated his time to charity. He was regimented. During the season and in the offseason. Body was a temple, all that. He actually liked pretentious grocery stores for their produce.” A ghost of the saddest smile in the world tilts his lips. “Anyway ... he rarely drank. Rarely partied. Rarely even celebrated. It was all about the next game. The next season. Until, well, we won the World Series last year.”
“Congratulations, by the way.” I scrunch my nose.
Miller laughs, and his thumb draws a line over the arch of my calf. “We had ... different reputations. Not that I had—have—a bad one, I guess. Just ... Matty was Matthew Burke. And I’m ... me. Liker of pretty girls. Good on the field, stupid off the field. People just make ... assumptions about the kind of person I am. But I don’t think ... I never thought it was wrong to be smart at one thing and maybe not others until everyone started making me feel like it was.”
“It’s not.” I offer a soft confirmation, and he tries to smile before he keeps talking.
“Matty never made me feel like that. But, uh—” He cuts himself off with a heavy swallow. “We won, and he ... celebrated. Pretty unlike him. But I think he was just happy and proud, and, maybe, uh, he finally felt like he could shed some of the pressure sitting on his shoulders to be this perfect person. Let loose, I guess.” He clears his throat. Glancing down at our hands, he flips his up, and my palm meets his. Our fingers fit together, and when he looks back up, his eyes darken with unshed tears.
“Thanks. Uh ... anyway. We partied a lot with our team. And we had this big thing up at our cottage, you know the one we bought together? It went on for a weekend. And on the last day, everyone left but Matty and me, we stayed. We were so fucking hungover.” He laughs, and a tear slips out, trailing over the sharp, stubble-dusted lines of his face. “But uh, it was ... we had a blast. It was unseasonably warm. Thought that was a sign that we should keep it going. That nothing could possibly go wrong if the sun was shining down on us in the fall like that. We ate the shittiest food we could find. We drank mimosas on the dock because we thought they might help. Switched to beer. Fucked around on our boat. We didn’t drive it. We left it, tied up. Only turned on the radio. Played catch on the lawn. Raced in the water even though it was still so fucking cold. But we were so drunk it didn’t matter. Swam for hours. Dumb shit. Kept drinking. It was the best day. Until it wasn’t.”
Miller exhales into his fist, and the lines of the inked M tug taut. His voice cracks when he keeps talking, and I think I can see all the way down into that trench where he keeps parts of himself hidden when he does. “We stayed up too late. Watched the stars. I went to bed around three, maybe? He wanted to stay out and watch. I, uh, left him on the boat. Fell asleep. Woke up around ten the next day and he wasn’t in the house. Figured he was down by the water again.” He grips his jaw, muttering. “Fuck. Uh. This ... really fucking hurts. I hate this part.”
