Alex Harrison: It’s nearly seven pm on a Friday. Don’t you have a life?
Casey Maitland: I could say the same???
Alex Harrison: I had to work late tonight. Some girl projectiled all over my clothes yesterday and shot my productivity to hell
Casey Maitland: Yikes, what’d you do to trigger such a bad reaction?
Alex Harrison: I got you to laugh, didn’t I? counting that as a win.
The grin on my face right now is frankly just embarrassing.
Alex Harrison: Andre mentioned you were looking for me earlier. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you until now, I’ve been slammed. Anything you need?
I chew on my lip, debating what to say. Truth is, I was only checking to make sure he’d shown up to work today at all. Part of me worried he was hiding out somewhere with his tail between his legs, debating whether to turn in his notice.
I do actually need something from Alex now, but I can’t type out Tracy’s request in our chat box. Getting him to open up to me is going to require more stealth than that.
Another wave of guilt presses in on me. The idea of using Alex for information crawls up my skin like a pest.
I have to remind myself that my intentions are pure. I just want what’s best for LC.
Casey Maitland: I didn’t need anything. I was just looking
I watch Alex’s type bubbles appear, vanish. Appear again.
Alex Harrison: What’s your ETA for leaving?
Casey Maitland: Can you really say ETA for leaving when that technically means estimated time of arrival for leaving?
Alex Harrison: fine, what’s your ETL?
Casey Maitland: I was about to head out
Alex Harrison: Meet in the lobby?
Casey Maitland: see u down there.
* * *
He’s leaning against the far wall, his legs crossed and his hands in his pockets, waiting for me like he’s got nowhere to be and all the time in the world to get there. His eyes track me as I make my way toward him. Looking like a goddamn Calvin Klein model in his slacks and loafers and crisply pressed button-down—an outfit that seems boring on everyone else but somehow groundbreaking on Alex Harrison.
Three feet away, I stop. There’s a flash of something dark and curious in his eyes, and with a jolt, what he said to me yesterday comes rushing back: You’ll look just as pretty tomorrow as you did the day we met.
Alex swallows. “Saanvi said the footage was good enough to air.”
“Was she by chance being held at gunpoint when she said it?”
Alex laughs and falls silent for a few seconds, scratching at his chin, eyes glazed. I almost say something else just to fill the silence, but then he releases a long, weary sigh and nods to himself, as if succumbing to some internal debate.
“I’m a bastard. You know, like, the illegitimate kind.”
Well.
I was simply not expecting that. “Right. I mean … Uh, what?”
Alex’s lips kick up into the beginnings of a smile, but it never fully forms. “My dad was married to someone else when he got my mom pregnant with me. Still is married to that same someone else, for that matter.”
“Oh.” I pretend （probably very badly） that I didn’t read Robert and Linda’s marriage announcement in a scanned New Haven Register that I found online last night. There was a picture, too. Robert was around the same age that Alex is now when he got married.
“My mother,” Alex goes on, “was a waitress and a freelance writer. She grew up in Queens, as a first-generation Korean American of two immigrant parents. I know next to nothing about how she and my dad met, or what their relationship was like.”
My eyelashes flutter, batting up a storm while I process.
Mostly, I’m processing that Alex said his mother was. Just like I say that my mother was.
“For a while, we lived in Seoul. Just her and me. She died when I was eleven, and that’s when my dad moved me back here, to a boarding school in Connecticut,” Alex goes on, his voice clinical, like he’s reciting a speech he’s been practicing. “We’ve never been close, but that’s his fault, not mine. He gives me lots of money that I never once asked for, and absolutely nothing else. Not time. Not answers.” He blinks. “Just money.”
I have so many questions. First of all, how much money are we talking here? Asking for a friend. What does Alex remember about Seoul, from the first time he lived there with his mother? What’s it like to have memories of her that aren’t hazy, six-year-old snatches? Are those memories part of the reason he went back to Seoul when he graduated from Harvard? What was boarding school like?
But the first question that bubbles up on my tongue is “Does your dad have other children?”
Alex shakes his head. “His wife wasn’t able to get pregnant, and as far as I know they never looked into adoption. I’m his only child.”
I feel like a window that’s been frosted over for weeks is finally melting, the flaky ice dripping away to leave behind a clear pane. Alex Harrison is on the other side of it, with a chipped heart and a handful of memories that I might be able to match.
“You were owed an explanation,” he says.
“I was?”
He nods, then lifts himself off the wall. Capturing my attention with razor-sharp focus he adds, “But only you, Casey. Please.”
So, basically: don’t tell anyone.
He didn’t broach the subject of Dougie Dawson, only told me about his father in direct relation to him, so I have a perfectly clear conscience when I say, “I’ll keep it to myself.”
And I will.
He waits to see my reaction, brow furrowed with nerves, but at the same time his shoulders relax like a weight’s been lifted from them.
It dawns on me, right then: the only time we’ve ever touched was when he shook my hand in the cooking studio the day we met.
I mean, it makes perfect sense for two coworkers not to touch a lot, but I want to … hug him?
Yeah, that must be it. A nice, comforting, professional hug. But obviously, there’s no such thing. So, instead—
“Want to get drunk?”
CHAPTER TEN
We wind up at Sleight of Hand, a trendy bar near Washington Square Park.
“You ever been here?” Alex asks as he holds open the door for me.
Suavely, I walk through and say, “Yeah, once or twice,” even though I haven’t. I’ve heard of it, though; this place is popular enough to always have a line down the block after dark. I was surprised Alex suggested it but intrigued enough by his taste in drinking establishments not to ask questions.
Inside, the walls are adorned with playing cards—diamonds, spades, hearts, and clubs, clustered together to form the bar’s name against shiny black paint. Crushed-velvet booths in deep burgundy line the walls and freestanding gold benches are scattered around white tabletops. It’s seven o’clock on a Friday; the sun has nearly set, and the place is packed.
Alex follows me inside and heads straight for the bar. He waves two fingers at the guy behind it as we slide into the only two unoccupied bar stools. At first, I assume Alex is waving to get the bartender’s attention, but when he notices us, his lips pull up on one side. “You really can’t get enough of me, can you?”
The bartender has blond slicked-back hair, like Leonardo DiCaprio in almost every movie （I’m not convinced it isn’t intentional）， and a big face covered by a neatly trimmed beard. Wordlessly, he whips out a thick-bottomed crystal glass and starts pouring bitters and simple syrup into it.