Alex considers. “Wouldn’t that get exhausting, though? Showing up as someone else to work every day?”
I get a flash of Dad the way I drew him in crayon when I was a kid. Me, Dad with his guitar, ghost-Mommy, plus my one-eyed corgi, Pirate. I colored a million of those still lifes during aftercare, at church, on road trips to visit Dad’s family in Arkansas. Now I see the drawings the way Dad must have seen them then: cookie-cutter portrayals of a family man who worked in a total boys’ club environment where everyone assumed he was straight years after he’d self-acknowledged he wasn’t.
Try as I might, memory doesn’t serve me on the exact day Jerry entered my life. He just … bleeds into the past somewhere in the middle of my fourth-grade year. I remember him planting rose bulbs in our weed-ridden, overgrown flower beds. I went outside to loiter, pleased when he gave me his gloves and I stuffed my tiny hands into them, gripping the dirt. We didn’t talk a lot in the beginning, and looking back, I think Jerry was treating me like he treated his rose bulbs. Tentative, careful nurturing was what it took to get them to bloom.
Eventually, I started asking him questions about plants. Then about him. A few years later, about who he was to my dad.
“I can only tell you who your dad is to me,” Jerry answered. “Someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
It was that simple for him. That straightforward. But for my dad, it was a bit more complicated. It was the reality of his workplace in the early two thousands, and for years, he showed up as someone else to work every day.
“No,” I say to Alex, shaking my head softly. “You’re right, actually. That would suck.”
The conversation pauses while he watches me, his eyebrows furrowed, very obviously trying to parse through the thoughts behind my expressive face.
“What floor do you have to visit to get the best cup of coffee in our building?” Saanvi throws out.
“It’s Well, the life coach company on the twelfth floor,” I say quickly. “They’ve got a drip machine that has this gold setting—”
“Nope.” Alex shakes his head. “It’s that app start-up three floors below yours. They have the fancy Breville where you can save your drink of choice under your name. And a fridge dedicated to milk.”
“You’re both wrong,” Sara pipes in. “The editor in chief of Frame has an assistant who used to be a barista. In Italy.”
“Settling this debate,” Saanvi whispers, “would make for a fantastic video concept.”
It goes on like that for another twenty minutes. We talk about print versus online content, our favorite and most loathsome parts of our jobs. When the subject drifts, Saanvi always pulls us back on course. It’s silly nothingness, but it’s fun. And despite the cameras, and constantly being scared of saying the wrong thing because these are my literal coworkers, and even though I’m trying to eat, and chew, and swallow, and talk with a clean mouth while also suppressing some seriously powerful burps from the Topo Chico, I realize this is easy.
Which is, in a word, strange. It usually takes more effort on my part to make myself come across that way.
Eventually, we pack up and head back to the office. I’ve got no clue if the team got what they needed, no clue how I’ll come across on the other side of those cameras. But the universe is out to play, because if that whole experience could have had a grand, ridiculous finale, Alex and I give it one on the escalator down.
CHAPTER NINE
All things considered, the spewing thing is pretty funny.
I come around to it the next day, watching the footage over Andre’s shoulder. More accurately, it’s the first thirty seconds of the video draft he’s already cobbled together.
“So,” Video Alex says on the computer screen. In this shot, we’re descending the escalator after lunch. I’m holding Fari and Don’s take-out bag in one hand, taking a swig of my drink with my other, and Alex is leaning against the side rail one step above me. “What’s your favorite Excel formula?”
That’s when I spewed Topo Chico all over his face and chest.
Look. It felt unavoidable in the moment.
The screen switches to gray static, followed by a familiar trademarked jingle and the BTH logo against a solid black background. Then Andre’s editing has the video cut back to our intros. There we are, standing on the skyscraper’s front steps, looking as fresh-faced and dorky as two kids about to be subjected to their parents’ first-day-of-school photo shoot. Honestly, we seem too young to belong in this part of the city.
“I’m Casey,” Video Casey says. I, being Real Casey, cringe a little, blinking hard against the sound of my voice.
Andre hits the space bar on his keyboard and swivels to face me in his desk chair. “That’s what I’ve got so far. All clear?”
I put my hands on my hips and exhale slow. “Clear,” I confirm.
I told the crew yesterday I needed to see that part in person before I would even consider letting Andre put it on the internet. Alex, for his part, thought it was hilarious, and said he didn’t need to see shit, the clip should go at the beginning.
Andre smiles at me, wide and toothy. “You’re not at all like how I thought someone in finance would be. When Saanvi told me about this plan, I thought she was crazy.”
“I still think she’s crazy,” I mutter, staring at the blurry still frame of me and Alex behind Andre’s head. “But thanks.”
“I guess we’ll know in two weeks, won’t we?”
“Just two?”
“Yeah. Saanvi wants this expedited.”
“Ugh.” I pull a baleful face as I back away. “Have you talked to Alex today?”
“No,” Andre says. “Should I have?”
“Nah.” I swat my hand at the air. “Never mind.”
Still, on my way back toward the elevators, navigating the maze of cubicles on his floor, I keep my eyes peeled for Alex. I’ve never been by his desk before, and I’m not brave enough to purposely seek him out.
He took the afternoon off yesterday. Canceled all his meetings so he could go home and change, claiming he might as well take a half day.
I’d felt guilty. His shirt getting wet was my fault. But even after I offered to procure a new one for him from Frame’s fashion closet, Alex just shrugged and said, “It’s no big deal. I could use the time off, anyway.”
I was confused, until I remembered the fallout with his dad. He buried it so well over the hour and a half we spent filming that I nearly forgot, but that was probably the real reason he didn’t want to go back in the building yesterday. I mean, it was just … soda water.
Here is a fact about me: I tend to be a private person. Probably, it’s a result of growing up around country music stars. My dad isn’t one of them—he’s only a songwriter and backup vocalist, and frankly, he sings a little off-key in his middle age—but my entire life, he’s worked alongside some of the biggest names in the business. I learned the importance of privacy at a young age, and living with Devon Nicholson’s daughter in college only exacerbated that tendency.
So of course, on the flip side of that coin, I’m also not interested in prying into other people’s lives.