My mouth opens and closes like a guppy fish. “You’re … not wrong.”
He laughs deeply, tilting his head back. There are two buttons undone at the top of his shirt. （I’m pretty sure only one of them was unbuttoned when we left work, but anyway.） Beneath it, I catch a glimpse of his chest. “Come on. I need to know, or I might accidentally kill you, which would be a travesty, because then who would approve my expense reports?”
“I’m allergic to your expense reports.”
“Impossible. I annotate everything, follow protocol to the letter. All for you, Casey.”
The way Alex says my name, in that clear New England accent, is different than I grew up being used to. Most people from home lazily roll the vowels in my name, but Alex says them like he’s doing it on purpose.
“Yeah, well,” I grumble. “You once handed me a file folder that kind of smelled like peanut butter.”
His smile falters. “Seriously, have I ever triggered anything?”
I debate joking that his very presence gives me hives, but I spare him the played-out sarcasm and admit, “I’m allergic to most fragrances, but we’d have to be practically necking for your cologne to have any effect on me.”
Necking? Good Lord.
“Oh.” Alex winces. “I don’t have to wear it. I don’t even like the smell, to be honest. I dated a girl once who got it for me and kept it around for when I wanted to feel put together.”
“It’s really not that big of—oh, fuck.”
I swivel on my bar stool, facing forward and putting a hand over the side of my face to block it from the front door.
Based on social media, I already knew Jack and Jill were in New York this weekend for the Jets game on Sunday, but seriously? Out of all the bars in all the neighborhoods, they had to walk into this one?
Panic blooms in my chest, pumping college memories and boyfriend insecurity and alcohol-induced blood thinning through my veins at hyperspeed. Freddy catches my eye, back from the other end of the bar, and then he peeks behind me like he’s some kind of mind reader.
To be fair, I’m not acting very subtle.
“You hiding from that couple that just walked in?”
“Yes,” I groan quietly.
“Who is it?” Alex asks. He starts to turn, but I grab the loose cotton of his sleeve and yank him still. He lets out a tiny grunt. “Ow. Rug burn.”
“That your ex?” Freddy guesses.
“My ex’s best friend and his fiancée.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay, it could be worse.
It could be Lance.
“Who’s the other couple with them?” Freddy asks.
My stomach drops out of my asshole.
“The…” I gulp. “The couple … Describe them.”
“The girl is wearing seven pounds of St. Tropez fake tan, and the guy she’s with is a short king.”
“Oh my fuck, it’s him.”
Of course it’s him. In college, the four of us—Jack, Jill, me, and Lance—spent uncountable weekends together, and looking back, it’s probably a red flag Lance and I didn’t hang out one-on-one very often. But he’s got the worst FOMO of anyone I’ve ever met, and frankly, he and Jack are more codependent than Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan.
Freddy tsks. “That’s rough, kiddo. I hate to break this to you, but your hair is, like, incredibly distinctive.”
And it’s down today. Thick, wavy, and golden brown with dyed strawberry highlights, perpetually trying to run away.
“I bet Alex would kiss you.”
“What?” Alex and I say together.
Freddy holds up his palms. “I don’t know, just trying to help! If it were my ex, I’d want to look desirable, that’s all.”
Freddy … has a point?
I mean, they’re going to see me, it’s a freaking guarantee. Chaos theory, et cetera. As soon as Jill spots me with her expertly shadowed Charlotte Tilbury hawk eyes, she’s not going to consider walking out of this bar until we chat, reunite, clear the air. Jill is polite like that. She 100 percent was the star pupil during seventh-grade cotillion, and of course, she just had to go inviting me to her wedding. Like, Please, watch your ex-boyfriend stand beside my groom at the altar while you sit in the pew alone!
I can practically hear Jack and Lance recounting this whole experience later. It’ll go down in one of two ways:
So, she hangs out with coworkers on the weekend.
Or. OR—
So, she’s dating someone.
“They’re looking for tables,” Freddy says. He is the picture of entertained ease, twirling a strainer around his index finger. “Not finding much. We’re very popular, which I’m sure they know. I bet at least one of them follows our TikTok account where we make the signature cocktails. You seen our videos, Casey?”
“No.”
“My hands! In every video! I’m hand famous. Oh, the first girl is pouting now. Her boyfriend wants to leave. She’s gesturing at the bar—oop, they’re coming in hot.”
I wonder what would happen if I leapt over the counter to hide, or maybe crawled between the knees of the guy beside me.
Ugh. Actually, scratch that last one.
I hear Alex gulp. “Casey?”
“Alex, can you…” I trail off, unsure what to say next. All I know is I can’t stand for Lance to stroll into my city with a shiny, orange-skinned girl on his arm and get to be right, more than two years later, about me never finding someone better than him.
I haven’t been looking for someone like him. Lately, I haven’t even been looking.
Alex doesn’t answer. Instead, he grabs the front stilts underneath my bar stool and pulls it flush against his. I almost fall off backward, but his reflexes are lightning fast. He presses a hand to the small of my back, catching me, then traces it up my spine to my neck.
Second time. Second time we’ve ever touched.
Gentle pressure as he nudges my head toward his. I lean in, observing his damp, parted lips, his eyes trained on my mouth, lowered eyelashes, a thumb brushing my earlobe.
When his lips reach mine, I remember the sound of his voice when he called me pretty.
He kisses me soft, hardly qualifying as a kiss at all, and it’s almost teasing, the way he holds his lips just barely against mine but doesn’t push forward and doesn’t pull back. His mouth tastes like expensive bourbon and smooth velvet.
I … I think I want …
I don’t know.
Everything. Anything.
The kiss is over one fraction of a second after it began. Alex pulls away, exhaling a breath of cool, liquored fog over my skin. His thumb gives me another caress on the hollow of my neck before he drops the hand tamely into his lap and uses his other to clutch his drink.
“Casey?”
Hmm?
My head snaps up, and reality hits.
Jack and Jill are standing right in front of me and Alex, staring open-mouthed. Behind them, the other girl I’ve never seen, and beside her, Lance, who is making the exact same embarrassed face as the day the Vols lost to Georgia State. Both girls are in heels that’ll be covered in bar tar by the time they traipse back to their midtown hotel later tonight （I was that naive once）。 Lance is wearing the shirt I bought him for his twenty-first birthday.