On most exes, it might be normal to hear an undercurrent of envy, maybe even reproach or anger.
But the undercurrent belonging to me just sounds like a horribly sad, slow drift of stagnant water. It’s heavy with wasted potential, and maybe a riptide or two of pathetic slinking along the sediment of forgotten dreams at the bottom.
Imani places a gentle hand on my arm. “That’s only because people don’t know the truth.”
“What’s that?” I turn to her, frowning. I half expect her to start spouting truths about Scott—as many as she has, anyway. That an eighteen-year-old me thought he was confident and brilliant, so self-assured that she was almost in awe of him, soshe placed him and his bestowed affection on a pedestal, hidden behind glass in a temperature-controlled room where nothing could possibly get to it, like the most important discovery ever unearthed.
Until she realized too late that sometimes, confidence is arrogance.
And sometimes, people love that we love them more than we love ourselves and more than they love us.
But her finger taps the silk of my blouse, and she smiles conspiratorially. “That theT. rexisn’t the most important dinosaur. It’s just the most famous. How lazy of him, really. To dedicate his entire career to fame and sheer recognizability.”
The corners of my mouth tip up, some of those riptides loosen their grip when I half whisper, “Right? Had the whole Late Cretaceous Period at his fingertips and he picked the largest carnivorous dinosaur but the one with the tiniest arms?”
“Telling.” Imani nods, with a flick up of her brows. “He couldn’t have picked hypacrosaurus and learned something about parental care?”
“Forget the nests and the eggs. Who cares about those?” I wave a hand. “Give me the one with the strongest bite force.”
Imani shakes her head slowly. “Typical man.”
My smile inches higher, and I can hardly feel the pull of any of it at all—the cookies look just like cookies now. I might even have one—not the puke-coloured one, but the purple one that looks like Chomper fromThe Land Before Time—but that typical man drops into the seat across from me.
Everything about Scott looks relaxed. The wave of golden hair cresting across his forehead. The black acetate frames resting just on the bridge of his nose, and the dark eyes, lit with amusement behind them. The top two buttons of his pressed Oxford undone and relaxed.
Lackadaisical and at ease, even, in this brand-new world and environment.
Like he doesn’t have a single care in the world, and he can sit wherever he wants, whenever he wants. And he can.
But I know Scott.
And I know it was intentional.
“Nice to see you all cleaned up, Ren.” He grins when he says it, and there’s an ease there too. Any outsider looking in would think it’s familiarity, two people who knew each other better than they knew themselves, who can laugh and poke fun.
But the familiarity isn’t kind. It’s Scott, looking down at me from the pedestal I made for him, reminding me he sees me on the ground beneath him, and it’s where he thinks I belong.
I dig my heels into the linoleum floor under my seat and try to stand proverbially taller than I feel. I force a smile. “It’s nice to be cleaned up.”
“That was my fault.” Imani waves a hand nervously. “I dropped the hot dog. And the margarita. Ren’s hands are very steady, you know. She never leaves a mess. You should see her hold a fossil brush.”
“I have,” Scott says flatly.
I steel myself for the inevitable dig to come—that he has seen me, and it wasn’t terribly impressive.
That my skills, just like me, weren’t good enough in the end.
But instead of being admonished and picked apart in that unique way only Scott’s hands are capable of, I’m saved by Graham folding himself down in the chair beside him.
“Ren. Dr. Juma.” Graham nods at each of us in turn, and there’s a barely discernable twitch of what might look like laughter, but I know it’s just cruelty sketching across Scott’s freshly shaven jaw.
“Morning.” I try to smile, blinking too much at Graham, resolutely staring away from the cookies that seem like their wide smiles are turning to snarls in my periphery.
Imani shifts in her seat, sympathy tugging the corners of her mouth down when she watches me out of the corner of her eye, but she looks to Graham, offering a quiet “Good morning.”
If he realizes he somehow discredited me and drew attention to my general lack of credentials in front of the man who usurped the position that I wanted so very badly, he doesn’t show it. Graham sets his briefcase on the table, the tarnished brass buckles groaning ominously as he clicks it open.
But his eyes find us again, almost disinterested and like he’s really not very good at making small talk—he’s not—and he asks, “I trust you’re making our new curator feel right at home?”
