Love Interest(44)

“What are you guys watching?”

Fari hits her space key. All four of us look up to see Tracy staring at us. Our faces display guilt so obvious, we might as well be watching porn.

“C’mere, Trace!” Benny shouts. “Casey’s on TV!”

Don looks at Benny like he just ordered our CFO to strip, which, understandable. Not many of us are bold enough to speak to this financial goddess with that kind of familiarity, but Tracy just raises her eyebrows and comes over, intrigued.

Andre has done an impeccable job editing this. There we are walking, and the sun refracts across the screen in an attractive ray of light. There are clips of the street, people’s shoes, cars, buildings. The inside of the market, some ASMR-level auditory work as the pizza box scrapes our table and bottles twist open. Between it all, we talk. The editing makes the dialogue feel off-the-cuff and snappy, much more comedic than it did coming out of our mouths. It’s clipped together fast, like a sports highlight reel. Alex asking me about my favorite Excel formula, and me spewing all over him, draws a real laugh out of Tracy.

The final cut is the outro: me waving to Alex as he heads home to change. Then I say to the camera, “XLOOKUP, you heard it here first,” and the screen blacks out.

Benny slaps me on the back in a rare bout of positive reinforcement.

Tracy says, “Thanks for reminding me why we do all this, guys.” She smiles softly and turns to Fari. “Phenomenal job on that business proposal, by the way. Let’s workshop it together, just the two of us, next week.”

“I—yes,” Fari says, doe-eyed. “Thank you.”

I debate following Tracy when she walks away so I can expel the intel burning holes in my chest, but even though Alex told me himself that it’s not a secret, passing the information along still isn’t something I’m particularly eager to do.

I’m not going to seek Tracy out. She’ll come to me again if and when she needs to know.

“There’s really no one like her,” Fari says, halfway to me, halfway to herself. “The CFO wants to mentor me one-on-one. You know I interviewed for twenty companies? Twenty. I got offers from more than half.”

“Which did you have more of? Stoles or job offers?” I joke.

Fari rolls her eyes. “It’s just, none of the rest of the offers had a Tracy Garcia. A mentor. A role model. An advocate who wants to pull us up the ladder.”

I nod, looking at the corner Tracy vanished around. “Yeah,” I say. “I know what you mean.” I turn back to Fari. “And I’m really glad you picked LC.”

“Me too.”



* * *



By the time I leave work, I’m starting to panic that Alex hasn’t texted me about the video.

I know I could reach out to him first. I do realize it. But every time I think about what I would send him, I feel like a fifteen-year-old girl (halfway through her Accutane regimen) with a crush on someone in the grade above her, who is also way out of her league.

I’m hopping off the subway in Brooklyn Heights when it finally happens, and something that had bunched up viciously in my chest unravels.

So you’re an xlookup girl, huh?

Pushing my hair out of my eyes, I smile against the setting sun. The neighborhood is dozing right now, hovering in the doldrums between the end of a workweek for some and the start of one for others. I meander along the cracked sidewalk, now a much-loved trek toward home, and type out a reply.

Casey: don’t say it

Alex: don’t say what?

Casey: that finding that out makes perfect sense for me

Alex: I see what you did there

Casey: finally watched us, did you?

Alex: I was letting the anticipation build

I freeze on the sidewalk and quirk my head. Why does it sound like we’re talking about a sex tape?

Alex: jk, i’ve been in the car all day. Cape Cod for the weekend with Freddy’s mom

Casey: Does Freddy know about you two???

Alex: cute.

Casey: Cape Cod sounds fancy

He sends me a picture of a setting sun bleeding into the horizon over a beautiful beach, his legs and bare feet propped on a wicker table beside a can of pilsner. The wooden planks of a porch staircase spill straight into the sand.

Alex: the fanciest

Knowing he’s there and not here isn’t the reason I get Thai takeout and Sour Patch Kids before heading back to my apartment to watch Notting Hill. It also isn’t the reason I make up an excuse about feeling sick when Miriam invites me to her nurse friend’s art thing at DUMBO House. She doesn’t buy it (because she’s met me), and texts me, I’m calling you out, liar.

I am who I am, I reply. Love me or leave me, babe

She texts back four pictures: an Epi Pen, an acoustic guitar, a horticulture textbook, and the Mean Girls GIF of Karen coughing and saying, I can’t go out, I’m sick, followed up with a single message: are starter packs still cool?





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


“You know,” Miriam says, “we could always just take a vacation to London.”

I turn and glare, but she’s too busy sniffing autumn squash varietals to notice. We’re meandering through a farmer’s market, the canvas bags on our shoulders already heavy with produce we know without a doubt can be eaten raw, since cooking is out of the question. The market smells like flowers, raw pumpkin, and coffee. Miriam’s in a bright fuchsia athletic dress, her short blond hair up in a clip, and I’m wearing ripped jeans and a LITTLE BIG TOWN T-shirt from a concert my dad took me to when I was nine.