Version 1.19.0

  Sam

  Sunday, December 25th

  The drive to my mother's house felt endless.

  Scott held my hand the whole way. He was steady, calm, everything I wasn't. I kept running through worst-case scenarios, kept telling him he could still turn around, kept waiting for him to realize what he was walking into.

  But he didn't turn around. He just said, "I'm signing up for you. The rest is just context.” I didn't deserve him. I knew that. But I was too selfish to let him go.

  The family dinner was everything I'd feared and worse.

  My mother evaluated Scott like livestock. Aunt Catrina asked about his "genetic history." Brittany found ways to mention her pregnancy and her ring and her vacation property before the appetizers were finished.

  And the shots at me never stopped. Little comments about my job, my age, my choices. The same passive-aggressive cruelty dressed up as concern that I'd been absorbing my whole life.

  Scott deflected what he could. Changed subjects. Drew attention away from me. He was good at navigating difficult conversations, better than anyone I'd ever met. But even he couldn't protect me from everything.

  When Brittany asked if I'd "given up on finding something better" than my new job, something in me snapped. I stood up.

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  "I got a new job this week. A good job. Something I'm actually excited about. And not once, in this entire dinner, did anyone ask me about it. Not once did anyone congratulate me. Because my accomplishments don't matter unless they fit your version of success."

  The room went silent. My mother's face was frozen.

  "Merry Christmas," I said. “Fuck you, you’re a bunch of douche canoes. We’re leaving."

  Scott helped me with my coat. We walked out together. In the car, I was crying and laughing at the same time, unable to believe what I'd just done.

  "You were incredible," he said.

  "I ruined Christmas."

  "You stood up for yourself."

  I looked at him, this man who'd shown up for me again and again, and made a decision.

  "There's something I need to tell you. Let’s go to my place."

  * * *

  Back at my apartment, I showed him everything.

  The plants with their impossible colors. The code that I could see and touch and change. I demonstrated on a leaf, watched his face as blue bled to green right in front of him.

  I told him about the firing. The static. The first time I saw the underlying architecture of reality. The money I'd created. Greg Harrison. Kate.

  I gave him my journal. Months of documentation. Every secret I'd been carrying. When I finished, I waited for his reaction. Fear, maybe. Disbelief. The same look Kate had given me when she found out what I'd done.

  Instead, he did something I’d never imagined. He told me he was FBI.

  The words hit me like a physical blow. FBI. Investigation. Assignment. Everything he said after that blurred together. He’d been at Halloween because he was watching me. The coffee spill that wasn't an accident. Bumping into me again after an interview. The months of surveillance. The reason he'd appeared in my life at exactly the moment I'd been most vulnerable.

  "Everything between us was a lie," I heard myself say.

  "That's not true. The feelings..."

  "Don't. Don't say that. Not now."

  I told him to get out. He said he’d wait until I was ready to talk. I wasn't ready. I might never be ready.

  After the door closed, I sat in my apartment surrounded by my impossible plants and my expensive furniture and the wreckage of everything I'd thought was real. Another person I'd trusted gone from my life. At least this time, I hadn't done anything wrong.