Stephenie Meyer - The Chemist

She was herself again by the time they got to the dog-boarding facility north of Atlanta. It was after nine thirty; they were running a little behind, thanks to some construction delays on I-65.

Daniel stayed with the car as she carried Lola into the front office. It was a casual place, homey, with lots of fenced acres lining the road in. The dogs that ran alongside the car as they passed looked happy and healthy. Of course, Lola wouldn’t be running anywhere for a while.

The man behind the desk was all sympathy as Alex came in. He obviously had linked her to the reservation before she introduced herself as Ms. Wells. She followed patiently as he showed her the spacious kennel Lola would occupy and explained the visiting vet’s schedule. She thanked him and paid him for a month in advance, then gave Lola one last hug. As Kevin had promised, the man never commented on Lola’s injury in a specific way, and he didn’t mention Alex’s face. Twenty minutes later, she and Daniel were back on the road. Alex was glad it was her turn to drive. She needed something to concentrate on so she wouldn’t think about leaving Lola behind.

She thought Daniel would crash, but he was still bright-eyed and in a talkative mood. Or maybe he could see how she was trying to fight off the sadness and wanted to help. Knowing him, that was probably it.

“You know almost everything about me from that stupid file,” he complained. “But there’s so much I don’t know about you.”

“I’ve actually told you most of it. When my life wasn’t bizarre, it was pretty boring.”

“Tell me something embarrassing about you in high school.”

“Everything about me was embarrassing in high school. I was a huge nerd.”

“Sounds sexy.”

“Oh, really? My mother cut my hair at home and I had the most outrageous bangs the nineties had ever seen.”

“Please tell me there’s a picture.”

“You wish. When my mother died, I burned all the incriminating stuff.”

“Who was your first boyfriend?”

Alex laughed. “Roger Markowitz. He took me to senior prom. I had the most totally awesome puffy sleeves on my dress. Electric blue, naturally. Roger tried to slip me the tongue in the limo on the way to the ballroom, but he was so nervous that he threw up on me. I spent the whole dance in the ladies’ room trying to clean up. I broke up with him that night. One might describe it as an epic romance.”

“What a tearjerker!”

“I know. Romeo and Juliet had nothing on us.”

Daniel laughed. “Who was your first serious relationship?”

“Serious? Wow. Hmm, I don’t know if anyone would qualify besides Bradley. First year of med school at Columbia.”

“You went to Columbia med?” he asked.

“I was a very brainy nerd.”

“I’m impressed. Back to Bradley.”

“Do you want to hear something really and truly embarrassing?”

“Very much.”

“The reason I was first attracted to him…” She paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t admit this.”

“It’s too late to turn back. You have to tell me now.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, fine. He looked like Egon. You know, from Ghostbusters ? Just exactly like that, bouffant hair, round glasses, everything.”

Daniel worked to keep a straight face. “Irresistible.”

“You have no idea. So hot.”

“How long were you together?”

“Through that first summer. Then I won a scholarship in my second year. We both applied, and he thought he was a shoo-in. He didn’t take it well when I, as he put it, took it from him . He went in and demanded to see our scores. Something I noticed multiple times throughout my wild and crazy romantic period: lots of guys don’t like girls to be smarter than they are.”

“That must have really limited your dating pool.”

“Right down to zero.”

“Well, rest assured, I’ve never had a problem with a woman who is smarter than me. I wouldn’t want to limit my pool by that much. I think that kind of childishness usually goes away when men grow up.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it. I never dated anyone outside of school. I didn’t get to explore the adult stage of the human male. Well, till now.”

“Never?” he asked, shocked.

“I was recruited while I was still in school. I told you what it was like after that.”

“But… you must have met people outside of work. You got vacation time, didn’t you?”

She smiled. “Not very often. And it was hard for me to talk to people outside of the lab. Everything was classified. I was classified. I couldn’t be myself in any way or talk about any part of my real life with a person on the outside. It was too hard being some imaginary character. I preferred isolation. It embarrassed me to try to play a role. Ironic, isn’t it? Now I have a new name every other week.”

He put his hand on her knee. “I’m sorry. It sounds horrible.”

“Yeah. It frequently was. That’s why I’m so backward when it comes to interpersonal relations. But on the plus side, I got to do some really cutting-edge work with monoclonal antibodies – I’m talking about sci-fi stuff here, the kind of thing people don’t believe exists. And I had essentially no limits on my practical research. I got everything I wanted in the lab. My budget was amazing. I’m responsible for a larger chunk of the national debt than you know.”

He laughed.

“So was your ex-wife smarter than you are?” she asked.

He hesitated for a moment. “It doesn’t bother you to talk about her?”

“Why would it? You didn’t get jealous over the eternal flame I will always carry for Roger Markowitz.”

“Good point. Well, Lainey was very bright in her own way. Not book-smart, but clever, shrewd. When we met, she was so… vivid. She wasn’t like other women I’d dated, easygoing girls who were content with easygoing me. Lainey always wanted more – from every aspect of life. She was a little… contrary. In the beginning, I thought she just had very firm opinions and wasn’t afraid to disagree. I loved that about her. But then, over time… well, she wasn’t really opinionated, she just loved the drama. She would argue if you told her the sun rises in the east. It was always exciting, at least.”

“Ah, so you’re an adrenaline junkie. This all starts to make sense now.”

“What makes sense?”

“Your attraction to me.”

He stared at her, blinking owlishly the way he did when he was surprised.

“Admit it,” she teased. “You’re just in this for the thrill of the near-death experiences.”

“Hmm, I hadn’t considered that.”

“Maybe we should forget this gig in DC after all. If I eliminate my hunters and life gets all safe and boring, you’ll be out the door, won’t you?” She sighed theatrically.

She couldn’t tell if he was serious or playing along when he answered, “I was never fond of this plan to begin with. Maybe it is smarter to run.”

“On the other hand, if I do a bad job in DC, it’s going to get a lot more dangerous. You’ll love that.”

He gave her a bleak stare.

“Was that over the line?” she asked.

“A little too close to home.”

“Sorry.”

He sighed. “Your theory is incorrect, though, I’m afraid. See, I got over my love of drama early on. It was still exciting, but so is drowning in quicksand, I’d imagine. Exciting is not the same thing as enjoyable.”

“But you didn’t leave.”

Daniel stared at his hand – curled tensely around her thigh now – as he answered. “No. I thought… well, this makes me sound like a first-class sucker. I thought I could fix her. She had a lot of issues from her past, and I let those issues be the excuse when she did things to hurt me. I never blamed her; I always blamed her history. Cliff – that’s the man she left me for; what a fantastic name to be left for, don’t you think? – Cliff wasn’t her first fling. I found out about the others later.” He glanced up at her suddenly. “Was that all in the file?”