Sky High (Three Contemporary Novella's) (17 page)

Meg blinked rapidly. To his horror, tears were welling in her eyes.

“Jesus, are you
crying
?”

She swiped angrily at her cheeks. “Not really. Only, you know when you were a kid waiting for Christmas to get there? Imagine you woke up Christmas morning and your parents told you that Christmas had been rescheduled for next week. I’m just a little overly emotional about this whole thing.”

Garrett nodded, feeling oddly chastised. He might hate her reasons, but he understood how she felt. “Yeah, I get that. But you’ll be there tomorrow morning at the latest. Not the end of the world.”

She threw him a watery smile. “Sure, I know. I guess I’d better email him and let him know, huh?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some plans to change, too.”

Garrett pulled his laptop from his bag and paid for the airline’s exorbitant internet access so he could email the agent who was supposed to meet him with the keys at his corporate apartment rental. Then he rebooked on the next available flight, which was indeed the next morning. After that, he was done. There was no one else to tell about his changed plans. His editor at the AP wasn’t expecting to hear from him until later in the week after the trial had started. Garrett had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that this plane could crash and it might be days and days before he was missed. He didn’t even have a cat that needed to be fed or plants that needed watering. He was practically a ghost. A ghost with a byline.

“Well, that’s that,” Meg sighed. “Nothing else until tomorrow morning. Does this happen to you a lot when you travel?”

“Not volcanoes, exactly, but unexpected delays? All the time.”

“Must be hard, being away from home so much.”

“Not really. Home is just me, so it’s pretty much wherever I make it.”

“You’re not married?”

He shook his head.

“And no girlfriend?”

He scowled at the fleeting memory of Serena. “Nope.”

“And no boyfriend?”

“Never had one of those.”

She let out a breathless little chuckle. “I didn’t think so. I mean, you can never tell, and I didn’t want to just assume, but you didn’t seem… You’re so…”

“I’m so what?”

“Nothing. Not gay. I didn’t think you were gay, that’s all. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

He smiled as she babbled nervously and twisted the hem of her skirt around her fingertip. This suddenly felt very much like flirting, and it really shouldn’t.

“No, nothing wrong with that at all. But I’m not.”

Her eyes flew up to his, wide and full of…something. Something he would be foolish to try to name. “You’re not,” she said softly.

She took a deep breath and promptly changed the subject, which was for the best. “So you live in New York?”

“I have an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen that I’m almost never in. I’m more comfortable in hotel rooms than my bedroom.”

“Wow, I can’t imagine that. But you’re doing what you love, right? Your job must be really fulfilling.”

He laughed bitterly. “Maybe once, a long time ago.”

“And not now?”

He hesitated for a second and then passed a hand wearily over his eyes before speaking again. “You go into journalism because you’re passionate about shining a light on the world’s injustice. I was going to dig deep, report on all the bad stuff that goes on in the world, and expose it for everybody to see.”

“And that’s not what you do now?”

“No, that’s exactly what I do now. But what they don’t teach you in college is that a year later, a new bad guy shows up doing the exact same shit. Or in six months or in three. People don’t change. The world doesn’t change. And the outrage I stir up in readers doesn’t fix anything.”

Meg was quiet for a moment. “Wow, that’s…bleak.”

“The world is bleak, Meg. I just report on it.”

“I think it’s rubbing off on you.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Probably. Doesn’t matter. I find it’s easier to take when you go in knowing what to expect.”

“And you expect the worst?”

“I usually find it.”

“Maybe because you’re already looking for it.”

“Or maybe because the world is fucking full of it. You can’t take a step in this life without running into a million examples of mankind at its worst.”

“So you’ve stopped hoping?”

“Hoping for what?”

“I don’t know. Something better? Something good?”

“Something good? No, I don’t hope for something good.”

“You don’t think anyone out there ever acts out of unselfishness or kindness?”

“In my experience, no. People are mostly selfish assholes. They don’t do anything unless it benefits them in some way.”

“Well, I don’t agree.”

“I guess that’s why you’re the one moving to Mexico to marry a stranger.”

“He’s not a stranger,” she said reflexively. “And I suppose I’d rather take a chance on happiness than spend my life alone.”

Like you.

She didn’t say those words out loud, but she didn’t have to. They were clear.

He gave her a strained smile. “Well, maybe you’re right and Prince Charming in Mexico will make sure you never do.”

Her shoulders dropped a little. “He will. I’m sure of it. I think I can see where you’re coming from, though.”

“Oh? You agree that Spencer might be a work of fiction?”

“No
. Just…your rather dismal view of the world… You’ve seen a lot more of it than me. Maybe it’s as bad as you say. I hope not, but maybe it is. You probably see things most people don’t.”

“And I
keep
seeing them, over and over. All I can do is write it all down.”

“I don’t believe that it doesn’t change anything, though. Your reporting. You might not see the results, but somewhere, somebody reads your words and does something good.”

“That’s a pleasant thought, but I’m not so sure the numbers support that.”

Meg tilted her head, eyeing him speculatively. “Someday, someone in the world is going to prove you wrong, Garrett, and I wish I could be there to see it.”

He was pretty sure he’d just met the person who had the potential to prove him wrong, but he couldn’t tell her that. He felt like he should say the same to her, that one day she’d meet somebody who would prove her wrong, someone who would destroy her confidence in people’s intrinsic goodness. But he couldn’t say that, either, because he was pretty sure she was set to meet that person tomorrow. It was a funny thing and a little profound when he stopped to think about it. No matter what happened tomorrow, Meg’s life was about to change forever. Good or bad, she’d likely come out of the experience a changed person. In a way, he was here for the sunset of this Meg’s last day.

“Who was she?” Meg asked.

“Who was who?” It took him a minute to find his way back into the conversation. For a minute, it seemed like she was asking him to describe herself.

“The woman who made you this bitter about love.”

“I’m not bitter about love.”

“You seem to think it’s impossible that Spencer and I are in love.”

“That’s just common sense.”

“That’s just disillusionment. You don’t think it’s possible for two people to fall in love the way Spencer and I have. Why not?”

He sighed and rolled his head to the side on the headrest, staring at the ceiling. He considered not answering. After all, he wasn’t one for sharing secrets from his romantic life. In fact, he’d pretty much never done that. But hell, it wasn’t like they were going anywhere. They had tons of time before the plane landed back at JFK. And who knew? Maybe his story of heartbreak could be a cautionary tale to her.

“Her name was Serena and it was a long time ago.” When he turned his head on the head rest, Meg was staring at him. When he didn’t say anything more, she waved her hand in the air in the universal signal for “get on with it.” So he did.

“We met when we were both working for the
Boston Reporter
. I used to live in Boston, too. We were both young, just starting out our careers. We both wanted to write about international affairs. I’d gotten lucky and landed a job on the international desk right out of school, but she was having a hard time getting her foot in the door. She was stuck on Arts and Culture and she hated it. I was traveling a lot for work and she was getting tired of it. She wanted to get married and she said she wanted me home more. There was an opening at the paper in the City division and she wanted me to take it. It wasn’t what I’d envisioned for my career, but I was willing to sacrifice for her. I started writing for the City division and she promptly stopped talking about getting married. One night I came home and she was gone. Just a motherfucking note. ‘Sorry, this isn’t working out for me.’ Three years and that’s all she had to say.”

“Oh my God, she sounds awful,” Meg said. “I’m so sorry.”

Garrett sneered. “Wait. She wasn’t done. The next day at work, they announce who’s taken over my old spot in International.”

“No!”

“Oh, yes.”

“How did she get them to agree to that? Didn’t they know about you and her?”

“They did. But the last fact I uncovered was that she had been sleeping with our editor-in-chief.”

“How could she do that to you? I don’t understand how anybody could be so manipulative and cruel to someone they’re supposed to love.”

“Well, now I do. So you see, when I tell you that people are selfish and bad things can happen, I’m saying it because I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it.”

“Just because Serena was like that, it doesn’t mean Spencer is.”

No
, he thought to himself,
Spencer is probably much, much worse. Spencer is probably fiction.

“What happened after that?”

“Well, I wasn’t about to stay at the
Reporter
and watch my ex-fiancée fuck my boss and steal my career, so I quit.”

“Huh. So that’s how a cynic gets made.”

“Yep. That plus witnessing a genocide or two and interviewing a handful of homicidal dictators.”

She ignored that last part. “She didn’t manage to totally steal your career, at least. You work for the AP.”

“Eventually I landed on my feet. I’ve even scooped the bitch on a story or two. She hates it when I do that. But yeah, there were some dark days at first.”

Dark days he couldn’t remember, lost to drinking and worse. There was nearly a year after Serena that he had only patchy memories of. But people survived. He had. Meg would, too. He just hated the thought of what it would do to her. He’d made it through, but he was not the same. She wouldn’t be, either. And that was too damned bad, because he was growing pretty fond of this Meg.

“Listen, Meg,” he said, mustering every bit of his rusty sincerity and turning to face her. “I told you all of that to show you that people aren’t always what they seem. I lived with Serena for three years and she had a side to her that I never saw. She fooled me, and even then I was hard to fool.”

“But—”

He held up a hand to stop her. “Just please be careful. I like you. You seem like a genuinely good person, one of the few I’ve met. But I’m afraid this guy might be taking advantage of your goodness. I’m not asking you to think like a bitter cynic like me. I’m pretty sure that would be impossible for you. Just take your time. Think it through. And make damned sure you know what you’re getting into.”

Meg opened her mouth to defend Spencer once again, but whatever she saw in his face stopped her. Instead, she just looked back at him solemnly and nodded.

“Okay.”

“That’s the best I can do, I guess. I’ve done my good deed for the decade.”

“Don’t make a habit of that,” she said, giving him a shaky smile. “You might hurt yourself.”

“No chance of that.”

There was more he wanted to say to her, further precautions she should take, but the intercom overhead announced that they were about to land at JFK. Time was up.

“Well,” he said. “This has been—”

“Fun.” Meg finished his sentence. “It’s been fun.”

Fun? Garrett tried the word on for size. Had it been fun? He hadn’t had any in what felt like a lifetime, but he was pretty sure this was it. “Yeah, it was.”

He stared at her face, which was becoming prettier and prettier the longer he knew her, and found himself wishing that things were different. That she wasn’t already committed to her dubious future, that he was younger, without a lifetime of miserable experiences tarnishing him. Maybe there had been some younger, more optimistic version of himself that would have had a chance with Meg. But that guy, if he’d ever existed, was long gone. There was only himself, cynical and too old, and there was only her, young and fresh and walking away from him in the opposite direction. At this point in his life, he was quite adept with accepting reality, not wasting mental energy on things that couldn’t happen. But he wished he didn’t have to move on from Meg today.

They didn’t say much as the plane landed—right back where they’d started—and they gathered their things and exited. They ended up walking together through the airport to baggage claim, suddenly awkward and quiet after hours of nonstop conversation. He supposed there wasn’t much more to say. It was just a random encounter. Rather exceptional, but over now.