“I go back and forth between ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Promiscuous’！” I shout.
“Nice range!” he shouts.
“Thanks! Tonight, though, I wrote down something to sing with Miriam!”
The DJ calls Alex’s song. He shoots me a devastating smile—all sparkly teeth and swoopy hair and eyes that are questionably responsible for global warming—before lifting off his chair and heading onstage in one drunken bound. Grabbing the mic from the MC’s outstretched palm, Alex starts perfectly in sync, his voice low, scraping out of his throat: “I never really knew that she could dance like this.”
My hand claps over my mouth.
Throughout the whole thing, I stay resolutely put on my bar stool despite the crowd swarming, gathering around Alex, belting out the lyrics in a cacophonous echo. He kneels like a prince, one elbow crossing his knee, offering his mic up to a girl’s eager mouth, and she sings, “You make a woman go mad!” And I think to myself that some days, all you can really ask for is the chance to witness a twenty-five-year-old man in his work clothes at midnight, singing an old-school Shakira song in a West Village basement.
Miriam materializes out of nowhere dressed in her after-work quick change of a cotton dress and tennis shoes. The moment Brijesh sees her, his expression makes it clear that she and he are tonight’s endgame. Miriam goes to him after I buy her a lemon drop shot, and Brijesh’s hands tangle in her hair, and hers travel underneath the sleeves of his shirt. The only time he lets her out of his arms from then on is when she’s in the bathroom with Sasha or onstage singing with me （“Through the Dark” by One Direction, because we always promised we’d carry each other over fire and water）。
We dance, and sing, and things get even more hazy, and then there’s this point where Alex and I both just … stop drinking altogether. Even though we didn’t talk about it, even though we don’t have to. It’s almost like an unspoken pact: Okay, this is enough.
Somewhere between “Mr. Brightside” and “Friends in Low Places,” I realize half our crew has Irish exited. When I grab my phone, there’s a text from Miriam: heading home. where does Alex live?
Bruh idk??? I send back.
His thigh is pressed against mine, elbows propped on the bar behind him, hand clutching a plastic cup full of ice water. When Sasha and Miguel take their leave of the stage after a truly horrendous attempt at “Before He Cheats,” they call an Uber home to the Upper West Side.
On the street, Sasha pulls me in for a hug. “On a scale of one to junior-year Global Leadership Scholars semiformal, how drunk are you?”
“Third quarter of a lame football game. Against Bowling Green.”
She sighs, pulling away. “That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear.”
Their Uber comes. Miguel and Sasha get inside. It pulls away from the curb, and then Alex and I are alone.
Like, alone alone.
He tucks his hands into his pockets, watching me. Again, I’m sensing the switch in his mood, having gone from the life of the party to a patient, sideline observer in the span of one song. Alex seems to be good at that. Matching your energy where you’re at.
I need to get out of here as fast as possible. This is, officially, no longer just casual drinks with a coworker. Hanging out tonight was my suggestion. I put us into this awkward situation, and now I need to get us out of it unscathed.
I fish my phone out of my purse to call my own Uber home: seventy-one dollars. An involuntary squeak slips out.
“What’s wrong?” His tone is concerned.
“Just expensive, that’s all.” I shake my head and sigh, hair falling into my face. “I’m not that drunk anymore, but I’m also not calibrated for the subway right now.”
“You could…” Alex cuts himself off. He scratches at his neck. “It’s just that I live really close, so if you wanted to stay, and take the subway in the morning … that would be a thing—a thing that you could do.”
And in a moment of poignant, fleeting sobriety, I understand why Miriam wanted to know where Alex lives. For when she tracks me later tonight, or early tomorrow morning, because she doesn’t really believe I’m going home.
I don’t want to. Not only because Miriam and Brijesh will be at our place doing one of two things—loudly having sex or loudly having a talk about what they “are”—but also because … I don’t want to leave Alex yet. I don’t entirely understand it, but the alcohol thinning my blood tells me I don’t need to understand it quite yet.
Also, I haven’t gotten any closer to getting Tracy her answers about the CEO and chairman. I’m frustrated for having to think about that after such a fun evening with Alex, but the reminder still looms.
“Not very professional,” I say around a smirk. “But I am desperate, so.”
“There’s only one bed,” he blurts.
I blink three times. “Alex. That’s not … Most of us mere mortals have only one bed.”
He smiles at the ground and rubs a hand under his chin. “I don’t have a couch yet. It’s on back order. I just wanted you to know that.”
One bed. No couch.
“I could sleep on the floor—”
“No!” I stick out my chin. “We’re both grown-ups, right? We can handle one night of close proximity. If you’re okay with it, too, that is.”
He scoffs, and laughs deeply, and runs a hand through his hair. “Come on, Simba. It’s this way.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The night air is as crisp as a freshly minted dollar, and my skin is peppered with goose bumps until we walk over a vent below the sidewalk that shoots warmth up my spine. New York is never quiet, but compared to the noise of the karaoke bar, the sounds of cabbies honking their horns and walk signs commanding us to cross are nearly peaceful.
“Are Brijesh and Miriam…？” Alex starts.
“It’s complicated.”
I debate leaving it at that, but before I know it, I tell him about Miriam’s college ex breaking her heart. She got dumped a month before Lance and I ended things. Jared had a habit of doing bars, and Miriam had a habit of being a nursing student, which made the drug abuse particularly difficult for her not to have an opinion on. In the end, it ripped them apart, but I think to this day, Miriam grieves what that relationship could have been.
“So, anyway,” I tell Alex, “Brijesh is hopelessly in love with her, and she’s trying to figure out how to move on from a love that broke her, and they pull each other in and then push each other away again. It’s kind of a mess.”
Alex nods and says nothing. I appreciate that—his ability to just nod and say nothing when the moment truly calls for it. He’s a bit miraculous like that.
“Freddy is cool,” I say.
“No, he isn’t,” Alex says, shaking his head, but his lips are fighting a grin. “Trust me. Sasha’s cooler. What’s her story?”
“She went to UT because she wanted to play basketball for the Lady Vols like her mom,” I explain. “I love her, and so does Miriam, but she isn’t a constant in our lives. Always there one minute and gone the next, like a passing ship in the night.”