“But you didn’t drop out. I remember you graduating. It’s not like you to leave a project incomplete,” he said. The corner of his mouth tilted up. “I assumed you always had your nose in your book because you enjoyed studying.”
Claire stared at the floor and shook her head. She’d had a long line of tutors and had always been enrolled in classes during the summer. It had been agony. She’d wanted to do anything but study and attend school.
“It wasn’t until a math teacher in high school suspected I might have a visual processing disability that I was tested.” She still had trouble saying the word. Disability. It was almost as difficult to say as the word disorder. Both labels reminded her that she wasn’t as good as her sisters. She had felt defective compared to them.
“And after you got tested you got the answers you wanted?”
Wanted? Hardly. The tests proved that Claire’s school performance wasn’t the result of being lazy, but there had been no magic pill to take away the struggle. The answers had thrown her into a tailspin, and the relationship she had with her parents had suffered.
“I guess it depends on how you see it.” She crossed her arms and looked away. “I got answers. It turns out my brain works differently. But that only disappointed my parents. I had failed their expectations. Especially when they read the IQ test.”
She heard her heartbeat thumping in her ears. She felt as if she was about to jump out of an airplane without a parachute. She knew she should step back but she wanted to be free from this secret. She needed Jason to see the real her and want her for who she truly was.
“Claire?”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. Claire turned her back on him and stared out the window. The cold rain beat against the glass and she heard the constant pinging against window. She couldn’t see anything outside other than the gray sky.
“I can work around my learning disabilities,” she promised. “I can keep up with others as long as I give myself plenty of time. I can work harder and longer but it’s never going to change my below-average IQ score.”
The silence throbbed in the room. It felt as though it went on forever. Jason awkwardly cleared his throat. “When you say below average...”
She winced and hunched her shoulders when she heard his cautious tone. What was she doing? She shouldn’t be sharing this information with Jason. It was too soon. It was too much for a five-day fling. There were boundaries and she had overstepped them.
Jason was right; she was not the kind of woman who could have a casual sexual relationship. She was telling him things most of her family didn’t know. Her face grew hot. She had felt close to Jason and she wanted to hold on to the connection. She didn’t want to push him away the way she had the other men in her life.
This had been a mistake. Opening up to Jason was wrong. This wasn’t going to make him understand her. They weren’t going to get closer after this. The news was only going to create distance.
She slowly turned around. “I’m not intellectually disabled, but I will never be as smart as I want to be. As I needed to be,” she said quietly. “I can work as hard as I want to, but it won’t make a difference.”
Claire saw the IQ number in front of her eyes but she didn’t dare speak it out loud. It wouldn’t mean anything to Jason but it meant everything to her. It had changed the way she thought of herself. It had changed how her parents treated her.
And from the look in Jason’s eyes, she didn’t need to give him anything more. She felt the vicious twist of disappointment in her chest. She had already revealed too much. Her confession had changed the way he saw her. He would never respect her again.
8
“WHO TOLD YOU that crap?” Jason asked.
“Experts. Many, many experts.” She wasn’t surprised by his anger. It seemed to be the common reaction.
“They’re wrong.” He slapped his hand against his desk. “You are smart and creative. You solve problems on a daily basis and you’re an independent, successful businesswoman. They are wrong,” he emphasized.
She would have been happy to prove the results wrong, and for a while she had acted as if the diagnosis hadn’t existed. But no amount of work made her grades improve and she’d had to accept the truth. Her goals and the future she had imagined were unreachable. Pursuing an Ivy League college was no longer a possibility. Her learning disabilities meant she’d never be a researcher or a scientist like her parents. They still refused to discuss that there was something different about her.