A grainy, sepia image of Mom floods my mind, the edges of her likeness blurred away after sixteen years. The problem with photographers is that they’re hardly ever in the picture, and whenever I hold her photos in my hands, I see what she saw.
I see everything but her.
Now, though, she’s clearer, and so are the words she spoke to me when I was six: It all comes down to what you leave behind.
It took me years to figure out what she meant. What she wanted so desperately to communicate to me on her deathbed. When I got older, I learned she was sick for a lot longer than either she or Dad ever let on. Years, in fact. Once I knew that, things started to click.
Mom saw death coming. She had time to think about it. Time to process what good could come from it. And for Mom, in the end, it was all about legacy.
It all comes down to what you leave behind.
I wrestle with that piece of wisdom a lot. Every day, probably. Because Mom has a real legacy, and so does Dad. They’ve both made works of art that are going to outlive them. But not me. There’s nothing I’ve ever done that might outlive me.
Maybe, though, this choice is the beginning of something that will.
“I guess I’m okay with trying.” My voice comes out softer than I mean it to. “Though honestly, I’m not convinced two business professionals bickering in a conference room will translate well on camera.”
“Of course it won’t, but I have a better idea.” Saanvi snaps her fingers, looking at nothing. Her focus comes back to us. “I’ll book a small video team. We’ll record a working lunch between you two to test this concept out. I’ll make some calls, see if we can’t reserve a back corner somewhere. Can you guys block off eleven to one o’clock on your calendars tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” I squeak. It’s like Saanvi knows that if she can’t make this happen in twenty-four hours, I’ll have time to come up with an excuse to get out of it.
Alex leans over. Low in his throat, he says, “I’ll send you a meeting invite.”
“I’ll send you a meeting invite,” I whisper back.
He clicks his tongue. “But you might forget to add me again.”
“Trust me, I won’t.”
Five minutes later, we exit the conference room, and I expel a heavy breath when I realize I accomplished the opposite of what my boss asked me to do. Instead of putting the brakes on the budget, I got roped into participating in our costliest platform.
I tap my foot, tug at my pink cashmere T-shirt dress as Alex and I wait for the elevator back to ninety-eight. He works here on thirty-seven, but he spends a lot of time traversing my floor, too. Right now, he’s leaning a shoulder against the wall, one hand loosely clutching a brown, leather padfolio （Alex never brings his laptop to meetings）。 He’s watching me with a perplexed expression, his eyebrows drawn together in thought.
“Look,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I understand you’d rather jump out a ninety-eighth-floor window than be caught on video with me, but I’m committed to doing everything I can to get Bite the Hand up and running independently. Can we just … put aside our differences for one day to make this work?”
“It’s not that. It’s not you,” I say, belatedly realizing I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
His forehead wrinkles. “Then what is it?”
Now it’s Dad swarming my thoughts. Because it’s all still tied up in my head like this, memories that are one big slippery slope. Me, eleven years old. The fifth-grade talent show flyer Dad fished out of the recycling bin. I’d been sitting on the kitchen floor, organizing my savings into different coin piles to see if I had enough money for a pair of Sperrys, when he held up that flyer and said, “I’ve been waiting for this since you were born.”
We practiced for weeks. Him on the electric guitar, me on the bedazzled acoustic he’d gotten Taylor Swift to sign for me two years earlier. He’d been so excited for me to perform his latest breakout song （albeit recorded by someone much more famous）， blasting that fall on every country music station in Nashville. Dad and Jerry, who was only his boyfriend at the time, had shown up to the school auditorium with a video camera and a bouquet of flowers. But I couldn’t even muster up the courage to make it onstage.
They hadn’t cared, of course. We left the talent show early and went to Bolton’s for hot chicken, then home so I could perform the song for an audience of two. Jerry clipped the flowers and rained the petals down on me. It was a good day, in its way. But thinking about it still breaks my heart a little. Dad leaves his legacy behind with every song he writes, and I couldn’t honor it the way we both wanted me to.
“I won’t be good at it,” I admit to Alex softly, biting my lip. “Even worse, I’ll probably choke.”
His expression goes soft and open, and maybe even a little bit tortured, like my words have bothered him in a way I didn’t intend and certainly don’t understand. He opens his mouth and pushes himself off the wall, but right then, the elevator doors open.
We step inside and move to opposite corners, the silence clawing at me. Two older gentlemen stand in front of us, mutely staring at the silver doors. I don’t dare look at Alex after what I just admitted to him. But halfway up the beanstalk, the men exit together, and when the doors close, he slides down the rail toward me.
I glance up, expecting that same soft openness, but he’s already back to his neutral state. “I’ve been thinking a lot,” he begins, his voice like a scratched-up record in a vintage store. “About you.” I gulp, and his eyes drop to my throat. “About the things you said to me during that happy hour. The things I said to you.”
“And?”
He sighs. “And we hurt each other’s feelings.”
“We—” I shake my head. “You didn’t … hurt my feelings.”
“Okay. Fine. I didn’t hurt your feelings when I implied nobody would want to be with you. Just like you didn’t hurt mine when you boiled my whole job down to my bloodline.” He looms over me, casting me in shadow.
“What’s your point?” I bite out.
His eyes drop to the narrow strip of space between our bodies just before he steps away. “I guess I don’t really have one. But I’ve been thinking about it. Wondering if it’s even possible to prove you wrong about who I am, or if it isn’t, because you’re right.”
The elevator peels open on the ninety-eighth floor, and Benny nods a greeting from behind the concierge desk, halfway finished with the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup he’s stress-eating. （I really need to have a conversation with him about allergen-friendly workplace behavior.）
Alex steps toward Benny. But like an afterthought, he throws back to me over his shoulder, “I’m dying to be wrong about you, Casey. You’re not making it easy.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
There’s a note from Miriam stuck to our fridge, scrawled in pink Sharpie on the back of an Ulta receipt:
BE HOME AT 3 A.M. BRIJ MENTIONED Y’ALL ARE GETTING DIN TONIGHT. COULD YOU GUYS CONSIDER ITALIAN?? I WANT GNOCCHI!!!
I text him a picture of her request. When we made plans earlier today, he’d had his heart set on tamales, but he also has his heart set on Miriam, and I know for a fact he will recalibrate to Italian so she’ll have the leftovers she wants after her shift.