I gather all the fake surprise I can muster and say, “Oh my gosh, hi!”
Lance rolls his eyes. He whispers something to his maybe new girlfriend, and they turn, heading wordlessly for the door.
What a milksop.
Jack tries to follow them out, but Jill grips his elbow in a stay-or-find-a-new-bride choke hold. Recovered from her shock, she smiles brightly at me, leaning in for a hug. “I can’t believe we ran into you! I almost texted you, but then I thought—” She gives an awkward little shake of her head. “Well, anyway, this is even better. How are you?” I open my mouth to say something totally cringeworthy like, Oh you know, just living the New York dream! But Jill spares me by squealing, “Look at my ring!”
Dutifully, I take her hand and say, “It’s beautiful.” After some internal berating, I look Jack dead in the eye and say just as much to him as to her, “I’m thrilled for you two.”
Jack, for his part, looks nauseous.
“Did you get our save the date?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“You’re definitely coming, right?”
Funny enough, Jill, I was planning to be literally anywhere else that weekend!
“I…” I trail off, sensing a rebuttal on her tongue. I can’t say no, and she knows it. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
“Yay!” Jill squeals. “I’ll add a plus-one to the invitation for your boyfriend.” She turns to Alex, going in for a hug. “What’s your name?”
Well, crap. Jill assuming Alex is my boyfriend was the whole point of kissing, but still, she really just called him that.
Alex blanches as Jill throws her arms around him, but it’s subtle enough that someone who doesn’t know him might miss it. Cordial as ever, he puts one awkward hand on her back and pats twice. “Alex Harrison. Nice to meet you.”
When Jill steps back, Alex turns to Jack and sticks out a hand. Jack eyes it like it’s going to bite him, but he shakes.
“Alex isn’t my boyfriend,” I correct, wincing, while I simultaneously consider that if I can’t even let this impromptu deception fly for longer than forty-five seconds, how am I supposed to be purposely deceptive toward Alex? “We’re just, um…”
We’re just coworkers you might see together on YouTube soon?
How did I not take that into consideration before I asked him to kiss me?! Now Jack and Jill are going to think I’m casually screwing my coworker. That is literally so cliché.
Maybe they’re not YouTube people. I’m praying they’re not YouTube people.
I catch Freddy’s eye, conveying a What now, Director? look of helplessness. He was so quick to jump in with a suggestion before, but now he just raises a single brow at me. He’s leaning on the bar top, clearly enraptured by these proceedings as they continue to unfold.
“No matter,” Jill says. “The plus-one is still yours if you want it.”
“Thank you,” I say, then try to curtsy before realizing I’m sitting down, and also this isn’t Downton Abbey.
Jill sighs, twisting back and forth. Her fluffy pink skirt twirls around her knees as she glances around. “Well, this was great, but I think we better go. No room at the inn!” She belts out a slightly deranged laugh.
“Oh, do you want my—” Alex starts to stand up.
“No, no!” Jill says, backing away. “You stay, we’ll go.”
Jack has yet to utter a word, but he couldn’t look more in love with his fiancée than he does when she says they’re going. Alex tries to sit back down, but he stumbles slightly, his butt missing the bar stool, and he nearly busts it seconds before he catches himself on the countertop. I do my best to ignore him, focusing on waving goodbye to my college ex-buddies. “Have a great time at the game on Sunday, and good luck with wedding planning!”
“Thanks! Good luck with … Um.” Jill gestures vaguely at Alex, who is engaged in an intense, nonverbal conversation with Freddy. “Everything.”
I shift forward again when they turn toward the door. My eyes flutter closed.
“Going,” Freddy says. “Go-iiiiing.” I count off one second. Two. Three. “Gone.”
My breath finally spills out, for the first time since they walked in, just as two shot glasses hit the counter with a clink.
“That was more stressful than a third-round interview,” Alex huffs.
I laugh. It starts off awkward, almost like a coping mechanism, but a few seconds later I’m really laughing, clutching my stomach, heaving breaths of air that aren’t nearly enough. I snort, covering my mouth with my hands. Then Alex is laughing, too, the sound deep and amused, and when I meet his eyes, there’s no regret in them. He shakes his head at me, and I think, Yeah, we’re friends now. Kissing for cover makes us friends now.
“I never even got their names.” Laugh lines crinkle the corners of his eyes.
“Jack and Jill.”
There’s a beat of silence. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Freddy pours Patrón into our shot glasses, then dresses them up with salt and a lime wedge. “This one’s on me.” He sets them in front of us. “Because that was immaculate entertainment. I love my job.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The drunker and more loose lipped we become, the shinier and foggier the room gets, the deeper Alex’s voice goes—it all equates directly to the matrix of work talk versus personal talk.
Every few seconds, I’m learning things that are tilting the axis of my world.
At the office, Alex is full of charisma and charm, always at the center of the kind of attention that never feels undeserved. But now, it’s clear he can sustain that behavior only in spurts. I’ve never spent such a long stretch of time around him before, and it’s obvious the way his mind ebbs and flows, his attention switching as often as his mood. One minute, he’ll be laughing at the girl down the bar screaming at Freddy, “A blow job shot, can you make me a blow job shot?” Then, two minutes later, he’s nodding with quiet, steady attention as I explain the situation with my parents, because he abruptly changed course and asked.
“Do you consider Jerry a parent?” Alex asks me.
I nod. “Jerry would have settled for just being my dad’s husband in my eyes. He let me make all the calls about our relationship. But he’s too nurturing a person to be anything but a parent to me. And I think he always wanted to help raise a kid.”
It feels greedy. Two living dads who love me, when Alex’s father has kept him at arm’s length all his life. But he only nods softly at my words, brushing a hand through his hair, and orders another old-fashioned.
“So, what about holidays? Summer breaks?” I ask. “Did your dad…”
“No,” he says, voice flat. “Linda, my dad’s wife, loathes any time that she’s forced to acknowledge my existence, so my mom’s sister took care of me. She still lives in their parents’ place in Queens. My aunt was never my legal guardian, but I mostly went between her place and boarding school. She and my dad had some kind of arrangement they never asked my opinion about.” Alex blinks, coming out of a trance. When he catches my expression, he smiles easily. “My cousins are the coolest. When we were younger, they were like my brother and sister. Still are. One lives in LA, and the other lives in Seoul.”