The Towering Sky

by Katharine McGee

  She couldn’t help remembering how unsurprised Cord had seemed when she told him that Hiral had skipped town. Come to think of it, hadn’t Cord had been the one to come find her that evening in the edit bay? She’d never stopped to question why he was looking for her with such impeccable timing, but now she understood.

  He had already known that she and Hiral were over.

  When the violinist finally finished, and the room erupted in polite applause, Rylin felt as if she’d been torn from a dream.

  Cord was walking toward her, a pair of drinks in hand. He saw Rylin and broke out into a wide, eager smile—until he registered her expression, and his handsome features creased in concern.

  Rylin couldn’t take it anymore; she stumbled blindly toward the exit, knocking past a waiter with a tray of champagne, letting the flexiglass flutes clatter to the floor. She didn’t even care that the wine had sprayed up onto her skirt.

  “Wait, Rylin!”

  She whirled around. “Did you help Hiral leave town?” Her throat felt scratchy and dry.

  Cord flinched beneath her gaze but didn’t back down. “I did,” he told her. “But please, Rylin, you don’t understand.”

  Rylin felt numb with shock. The room seemed to spin around her, everything blurring together like a melting Surrealist painting.

  “What part don’t I understand? The part where you helped Hiral get out of the way, or the part where you hit on me two days later?”

  Cord flinched at that. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait longer, okay? I just missed you so much; I couldn’t help coming to see you. That’s why I said I wouldn’t be the one to kiss you that day,” he tried to add.

  “Right. You showed such restraint.”

  “Rylin, you and Hiral were over!”

  They had moved toward the front of the party, in the echoing entrance to city hall. Rylin saw an interminable line of hovertaxis already curling around the block outside.

  “Hiral wasn’t good for you, and you know it,” Cord told her, and it was the absolute wrong thing to say.

  “How dare you?” Rylin hissed. Anger and hurt crackled beneath her skin. “You have no right to do that, to keep making decisions on my behalf, okay?”

  A couple brushed past them, studiously looking the other direction. Cord blinked, bewildered. “What decisions have I made on your behalf?”

  “Breaking up me and my boyfriend, for starters! Making me come to this party, to hang out with your friends, in a dress you picked out.” Rylin had thought this gown was a lovely romantic gesture, but suddenly she saw it in an uglier light. Had Cord bought it because he didn’t want her to embarrass him by showing up in something cheap?

  Cord seemed hurt. “I didn’t realize I was forcing you to spend time with me. I thought you wanted to be here.”

  “I do want to be here, but, Cord, you never want to be downTower with me!”

  “I just thought it was easier meeting up at my apartment. I have more space,” he protested, and Rylin rolled her eyes.

  “Right, because god forbid you have to come down to the squalor of the thirty-second floor,” she snapped. “You never even told your friends that I’m not rich, did you? That’s why they thought that I was one of them. Is it because you’re ashamed to be dating me—the girl who used to be your maid?”

  “I didn’t bring any of that up because it isn’t important,” Cord said forcefully. “I care about you, Rylin. Where you come from isn’t part of it.”

  “Except it is.” Rylin felt angry with him, but most of all, angry with herself for being one of those people who make the same mistake over and over again. “I’m not some charity case, Cord. I’m a person—with feelings.”

  “Where is this coming from? I never said you were a charity case!”

  “You didn’t have to say it,” Rylin told him, very quietly. Cord’s face grew red in frustration.

  “If you would stop being so damned prideful—”

  “You’re the one who kept this a secret from me!” Rylin’s eyes burned. “I guess you have no idea how to build trust, because no one ever taught you.”

  “‘No one ever taught you’?” Cord said bitingly, repeating her words. “That was cruel, Rylin. I would have thought that you, of all people, wouldn’t jump straight to dead parents.”

  She recoiled, suddenly ashamed of herself. “I just meant that you always throw money at problems and expect them to disappear,” Rylin said helplessly. “Even when that problem is an inconvenient boyfriend. I thought—” She ran a hand over her face. “I thought it would be different this time.”

  “I thought so too,” Cord said wearily.

  Rylin bit her lip until she tasted blood. She wanted to crawl out of her skin, to strip this expensive dress off her back and rip it to shreds. She felt disgusted with Cord and with herself.

  She had been so angry with Hiral, for deciding that he would leave town without consulting her, for making it feel like he had made her choices for her. And yet Cord had been right here, doing the same thing the whole time.

  “We should never have gotten back together,” she said heavily. “We were right to break up the first time. We’re too different, you and I.”

  She turned and walked away, her head held high, and only after she was on the lift back home did Rylin reach up to brush away the tears.

  AVERY

  THE INSIDE OF the elevator car was completely dark.

  “What’s going on?” Avery blinked rapidly, then gave a series of voice commands to her contacts. They refused to cooperate.

  “That won’t work,” Atlas said, hearing her struggle. “The elevator shaft is lined with magnets, which interferes with their frequency.”

  Avery pounded on the door. She knew it wouldn’t accomplish anything, but it made a satisfyingly loud noise beneath her closed fist.

  “Hey, hey. Calm down,” Atlas said, reaching for her arm; and she realized how utterly absurd it was that she was standing here in her hand-stitched gown, pounding on the elevator like a Neanderthal.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, somewhere on the precipice between laughter and tears. If only she could see Atlas. The darkness felt pervasive in a heavy, palpable way, like it used to feel in Oxford. Real darkness, without the omnipresent urban glow.

  “Maybe they’re doing repair work somewhere nearby and damaged a power line,” Atlas offered by way of explanation. “Or maybe the party is draining so much of city hall’s electricity that it’s overwhelming the grid.”

  “Someone will be here to let us out soon, though. Right?”

  “I think so,” he said unconvincingly.

  Their breath came ragged and shallow. There seemed to be a strange hum of energy circling through the elevator car, crackling in the air: as if the entire world was waiting, breathless with expectation, for something to happen.

  “I’m sorry.” Atlas’s voice sounded at once very close and very far away.

  “This isn’t your fault.”

  “Not for the power outage, for everything else. For coming back to town, upsetting you, interfering with your life—” He broke off impatiently. “I’m heading back to Dubai next week.”

  “You are?”

  “Don’t you want me to?”

  Avery didn’t answer. She was desperate for Atlas to leave, and yet she dreaded it. It was as if there were two warring halves of her, two versions of herself, and each of them wanted such drastically different things. She felt like she would break beneath the strain.

  “I heard that you and Max are moving in together,” Atlas went on.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” The apartment in Oxford felt suddenly as fanciful, as detached from reality, as something she had dreamed. Would she really live there?

  “Maybe?” he repeated, puzzled.

  “I’m not even sure I want to go to Oxford anymore,” Avery admitted.

  Atlas was quiet for a moment, digesting that. “It’s funny,” he said at last. “I was so surprised when you first announced that you were applying
there. I had always pictured you doing something more adventurous. Like Semester at Sea. Or that school in Peru, the one perched on the edge of a mountain.”

  Avery should have known that Atlas would recognize her restlessness, her confused desire to get out of New York and figure out who she was. Atlas, the boy who gave her a magic carpet.

  While Max handed her the key-chips to an apartment that came complete with a whole entire life.

  Avery lowered herself to the floor, no longer caring about her expensive gown, and looped her arms around her legs to rest her forehead against her knees. “I wish you hadn’t come home,” she heard herself say. “I was doing just fine until you showed up and threw everything out of whack. You wouldn’t understand, Atlas, you’re so obviously happy in Dubai. But it was hard for me, for a long time after we said good-bye.”

  She heard him slide down to sit next to her. “I’m not actually that happy in Dubai.”

  Avery blinked. “You always seem happy when I see you.”

  “Of course. Because definitionally, you only ever see me when I’m with you. And you make me happy, Aves. Just being around you makes me happy.”

  The silence stretched between them like a rubber band at breaking point.

  “Atlas,” Avery whispered, then broke off. A million things swirled incoherently in her mind. But Atlas was talking again, his words tumbling rapidly over one another.

  “Look, I didn’t expect to say any of this tonight, but I can’t help myself. Not anymore.”

  She felt him shift next to her in the darkness, a disembodied voice. Maybe it was easier for them to talk like this, she thought, without seeing each other’s faces.

  She wondered if he was going to kiss her again. She wondered what she would do, if he did.

  “When I broke up with you in Dubai, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought there was no way we could ever be together. But the problem is, there’s no way I can be without you either. I ran away from you like a coward, and everywhere I went, you caught up to me. Everywhere I fled, I kept seeing you,” he finished. “Every time, Avery, you happen to me all over again.”

  Avery knew she could make Atlas stop saying these things. One word from her and he would stop, and they would pretend it all away, just as they’d pretended away their kiss.

  She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Because she didn’t really want him to stop.

  Next to her Atlas was acutely still. “When Dad asked me to come back for the election, I told myself I wouldn’t do this. I made a plan and I meant it, I really did, and it would all have been fine except we’re here in the dark and now I have this chance to tell you, and I realize that I have to take it. It kills me every time I see you with Max.”

  His hand brushed hers, his pinkie finger curling imperceptibly around hers. Avery made no move to pull away. Where their skin touched, miniature fireworks erupted.

  “I thought if I could just see you, make sure you were okay, I might get some kind of closure. I swore to myself I wouldn’t kiss you again, and then I did.” Atlas shook his head. “Obviously I can’t keep my promises, even to myself. Not when it comes to you.”

  Tears slid down Avery’s cheeks to splatter on the expensive golden fabric of her gown.

  “Tell me right now that I shouldn’t fight for you.” There was a low, urgent note in his voice, as if he were staking his entire life on what she said next. “Tell me that you’ve chosen Max, and I’ll back down, I swear it. You’ll never hear any of this from me again. But I won’t stop unless you tell me to. I had to say something—because I knew this was my very last chance, before I lost you forever.”

  Avery opened her mouth again to tell Atlas to stop, to tell him that she was choosing Max, that she loved Max. But she couldn’t.

  Max was wonderful, and he would make some girl very happy someday. That girl just wasn’t her.

  Avery knew, deep down, that there was really no choice. There never had been, for her. There was only one path forward, and he was right here in the elevator with her.

  “Atlas,” she said again, and now she was laughing through her tears. “Why is your timing always so terrible?”

  Somehow she’d turned in the darkness and reached for his face, cradling it between both palms as if it was something infinitely precious, her fingers threaded in his hair.

  Avery was done fighting this. She had tried so hard not to love Atlas, but her love had always been there, through all the long days they were apart, just waiting for this moment.

  Tentatively, she kissed him. His mouth instinctively found hers. Their bodies, like their breath, folded quietly together in the darkness.

  “I love you,” she said wonderingly between kisses. “I love you, I love you,” and Atlas was saying it back; and Avery knew this was wrong, that it was cruel to Max, but she couldn’t find it in her to stop. They kissed as if there was no time left in the world for them, and maybe there wasn’t.

  “I missed you,” she told him.

  “I missed you every day, every minute, since we said good-bye,” Atlas answered. “Didn’t you feel me, loving you from across the ocean?”

  Avery shifted, tipping her head to lean on his shoulder. She wondered how much time had passed since the power went out. It had probably only been half an hour and yet it had been a lifetime. Avery felt as if the entire world had reoriented in that half hour.

  “Atlas. What are we going to do?” she asked, still holding tightly to his hand. “Nothing has changed since last year. All the reasons that we broke up are still there.” Broke up wasn’t the right term for it, she thought. It was more like they broke apart, as if tearing Atlas from her life had involved peeling off a raw exposed layer of flesh.

  And now they were back. Despite all the mess, despite their parents and Max and the whole damn world, here they were all over again. It felt almost inevitable, as if there was no way they could have ended anywhere else except in this elevator car, right now, together.

  “We’ll figure it out somehow,” Atlas assured her. “I promise.”

  For some reason his statement made Avery prickle with foreboding. “Don’t make promises you can’t guarantee you’ll keep.”

  Atlas turned toward her, and even in the darkness Avery could feel the quiet intensity radiating from him. “You’re right. All I can promise is to try.”

  They turned to kiss again; the silence groaned loud and thick all around them, and the minutes left to them, however many there were, ticked away too quickly. Each kiss felt imbued with significance. Each kiss was a promise that they would fight for each other, even though all the odds, the entire world, were arrayed against them.

  Avery was still kneeling there, kissing Atlas—one hand wrapped around the back of his head, the other around his waist—when the doors to the elevator were forcibly pried open.

  She felt the light flooding in, flashing on the backs of her closed eyelids, and she jumped apart from Atlas as if scalded. She tried uselessly to scramble to her feet.

  Max was standing there, stricken. He had clearly seen the whole thing.

  And far, far worse, Avery heard the unmistakable hum of a stray zetta. She watched, helpless to run after it, as the tiny remote-powered hovercam sped off. Its lens gleamed and then vanished into the distance.

  LEDA

  LEDA WAS GLAD she’d come to the inauguration ball, if only for Avery’s sake.

  She hadn’t realized how rattled Avery was by Atlas’s return. Living under the same roof as her ex, being forced to see him every day—Leda should have realized that was a uniquely cruel form of torture. But then, Avery was so expert at disguising her true feelings from everyone, even from herself. Seeing her best friend tonight, the way she stood so proud and glittering in that ethereal gold gown, Leda’s heart had ached for her. She recognized that bright remoteness for what it was—loneliness, and longing.

  Leda leaned on a table near the dance floor, watching the party unfold around her. She felt more like herself than she had in
ages. She knew she looked gorgeous in her gown, a close-fitting armor of structured black silk. Star-shaped diamonds blazed in each ear, setting off the dark curve of her neck. But it was much more than that. Leda was glowing from what had happened with Watt last night. She could still feel his touch on her, like an inktat that had marked her in new and indelible ways.

  She wished he were here tonight. She’d tried not to be alarmed by his flicker earlier. Something urgent came up. Everything is fine, but I can’t make it. I’m so sorry. I’ll explain later, Watt had told her. She tried to take his word for it, but it was hard not to worry when she had no idea what he was up to.

  A group of her classmates flocked to the dance floor; Leda saw Ming Jiaozu and Maxton Feld, and was that Risha with Scott Bandier again? How predictable. They caught her eye and tried to wave her over, but Leda shook her head. They were all happy to associate with her now, but none of them had been there when she crumpled to pieces last year. None of them were her real friends.

  “Leda! We’ve been looking for you.” Her parents approached, both of them grinning as if they’d gotten away with something illicit. It was an expression Leda hadn’t seen from them in a long time.

  “We’re heading out to the Hamptons,” her mom announced. She looked stunning in a pale apricot gown that set off her rich black skin.

  “Right now?” It wasn’t like her parents to do something so spontaneous. Which, Leda guessed, was probably why they needed it.

  “Just for the night. It’s not too late,” Leda’s dad said, his eyes sliding toward the edge of his vision as he checked the time. It was barely 10 p.m.

  “I’ve been so wrapped up in work lately; your father and I could use a night away.” Ilara reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. “Will you be okay on your own?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Leda insisted, just as one of her mom’s friends approached to ask Ilara a question, momentarily stealing her attention.