Free The Prize by Jill Bialosky

offended.
    â€œBut what would I gain from it?”
    â€œBrilliance.”
    â€œYou mean happiness?”
    â€œNo.” She looked at her folded hands, took off her glasses, and placed them on the table. Her eyes looked naked and vulnerable without them. “Only those who live in the dark are happy.” They listened to the faint sound of music coming from the ceiling speakers; it was an opera he couldn’t quite place.
    â€œI don’t know. Do you think one person can make us happy? Roy and I both work all the time. I wish sometimes we’d cultivated more friends.”
    â€œYou know what C.S. Lewis said about friendship. He said it was unnecessary, like philosophy and art. That it had no survival value but rather it ‘is one of those things which add value to survival.’ My father had that quote pinned up in his study.” He stopped to take a sip of his drink. “He was sick when I was in high school. His medication made him lethargic. He couldn’t read or write anymore. For him it was like a prison sentence. Sometimes he asked me to come into his study and read to him. It was hard to look at him. His fingers were stained with nicotine. He stopped shaving. It was awful.”
    â€œPoor man. What did you read him?”
    â€œKeats. Before he got sick he was working on a new book about the Romantics and ideas of immortality and selfhood. He was obsessed with Keats. I’ve been thinking about it. I think he related to his idealism. It was as if he was still longing for something.” He stopped and stared into Julia’s eyes. “It did break my heart,” he said.
    â€œI’m so sorry.” Julia leaned over and touched his arm.
    â€œYour turn,” Edward said.
    â€œMy parents divorced when I was three. I never knew my father as a child. He moved to Los Angeles and got married again. And had two other children. They were more his than I was.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œDon’t be. He’s a son of a bitch.”
    â€œWhen you got that phone call at Strauss’s gallery, our first day here. Something happened. Do you want to talk about it?”
    Her face darkened. “Not now.”
    â€œYou’re a mystery, you know that, right?”
    She smiled into her wineglass.
    â€œI’m glad you were on this trip,” he said.
    T HEY SIPPED FROM their drinks, occasionally looking at the people at the tables around them and then back at each other. It was a luxury to be quiet with another person.
    â€œSince we’re telling our stories, there’s something else,” he said. “But first I need another drink.” He called the waiter over and asked for another round.
    â€œWhat is it?” she said, when the waiter had returned with their drinks.
    He took a long swallow. “I was married before I met Holly. I was twenty-two.” He’d never told anyone about his former wife, but telling a woman with no connection to his private life made him feel safe, as if by revealing it he were somehow letting himself off the hook, or exonerating himself. It was strange to think of his past, as if it belonged to another man.
    â€œDid you leave your first wife for Holly?”
    â€œIt wasn’t like that.” He swirled his drink, knocking the ice against the glass. “Tess was my girlfriend in college. We moved to New York after we graduated. She wanted to get married and I guess I didn’t want to disappoint her. It was right after my father died. I wasn’t in a great place.”
    â€œDo you always do things that you don’t want to do just so you don’t disappoint others?”
    â€œI don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “No. That’s not it. I loved her. She was my first love.” A lump formed in his throat. “She was killed in an accident. It was almost twenty years ago.”
    â€œThat’s so tragic.”
    â€œI don’t know why I wanted to tell