Page 68 of Open Water
She continued. "They had a very short list of acceptable lives and I wasn't on it. So." She shrugged. "They made a choice and I made one and we don't talk."
The wine tasted so bad.
"Do you—" I stopped.Don't ask.I did anyway."Do you ever miss it?"
"The money or the people?"
"Either."
She thought about it.
"The money, sometimes. When the car breaks. When a film falls apart because I'm twelve grand short." She drank. "The people, no. And that surprised me, the people part. Took me a while to figure out why." She set the cup down. "Turned out the peoplewerethe money. Same thing."
I couldn't say anything. My father's voice was in the room with us, calm, patient, the way it came through the speakerphone in Patterson's office.Do you want to end up like James? No family. No funding. No future.The picture I'd been shown so many times it had stopped being a picture and become a fact about the world. The thing at the bottom of the well.
And here it was. The thing at the bottom of the well. In combat boots, drinking wine out of a box, telling me she'd do it again.
"Was it worth it?" I said.
She laughed.
"Worth it's the wrong question," she said. "That's their question. Cost-benefit." She picked the cup back up. "It's just my life, kid. I like my life."
Then she was already turning, because someone across the room had called her name. I stood there holding wine I wasn't going to drink with my heart going like I'd just finished a regatta.
Ethan found me by the window twenty minutes later, already half-turned toward the door, phone in his hand.
"Two minutes," he said as he stepped outside.
I watched him through the glass. He stood on the sidewalk in the cold with no coat, breath fogging, and whatever the person on the other end said made him put his free hand over his face and laugh.
When he came back in his ears were red and it wasn't the cold.
"Remy," I said. Not a question.
He opened his mouth. The deflection was right there, I could see it loading. And then he didn't. He looked at me, and maybe it was the movie still in him, the residue of having shown a whole room his insides, but he let it go instead.
"You know what's stupid?" He dropped into the chair across from me. "The bus."
"The bus."
"To the Charles. Six hours up. I got stuck next to him because you were sitting with Liam." He turned a bottle cap over in his fingers. "And we just — talked. The whole way. About rowing. About the film. About nothing. And I kept waiting for it to get boring, because it always gets boring, and it didn't. Six hours and it didn't."
"Ethan."
"Then in the hotel room." He glanced up. "That was him, by the way. The swap. He moved the rooms around so Liam could have the night with you. Didn't even tell me until after." A short laugh. "Who does that. Who quietly fixes someone else's whole night and takes no credit."
"So you and Remy ended up—"
"In a room. Yeah." He looked at me straight, which Ethan almost never did. "And nothing happened. I mean it. We just kept talking. Sat on two separate beds and talked." He shook his head, like he still couldn't account for it. "And it was better than if something had. That's the part I can't explain to anyone. It was the best night I've had in years and all we did was talk."
I didn't say anything. I didn't need to.
"So that's — yeah." He shrugged. "We're a thing now. It's new. He's good, Alex. He's really good. He looked up an artist I mentioned once and sent me the guy's exhibition in Munich. On his own."
"You told me that already. In the car."
"Well, it's still true."
