Alex hums. “Sounds like how people describe me.”
We’re at his place a couple of minutes later. It’s a redbrick town house on a quiet lane right in the heart of the West Village, and at first glance—when he just vaguely points at it—I’m trying to understand how he’s got the whole thing to himself. This multimillion-dollar, three-floor space that probably shares a real estate agent with Blake Lively and must be owned by his father. But when we go inside, Alex leads me up a narrow staircase to the partitioned second floor. The whole unit’s been split up for renters. There is precious little space—less square footage than my and Miriam’s apartment, even—but Alex has a halfway decent kitchen setup with a sink, a hot plate, and …
“A balcony!” I stride toward it and press my hands and nose against the glass door like a kid in an aquarium. Two canvas camping chairs are set up outside.
“You can … Uh.”
I turn back.
Alex is looking at me with carefully concealed amusement. “You can go out there, if you want.”
“Fresh air in your underwear!”
“I guess? But also, do you really want to assume the air out there is fresh?”
I ignore this valid line of inquiry and ask, “Why don’t you have any plants?”
“Who would see them? That balcony faces an alleyway.”
“You’d see them! Also, the critters would.”
He comes up beside me and leans a shoulder on the other glass pane. “I’m not loving your sudden alignment with my Garden Girl enemies.”
“What do you mean by sudden?” I joke.
Alex smirks. “If I get a plant, will you spare me?”
“If you promise to actually get one. This is a waste of a balcony otherwise.”
“You’d have to pick it. I wouldn’t know the first thing about what has a chance of surviving in New York City alleys.”
I stick out my hand, and he shakes it. “Deal.”
My body unleashes an unattractive, involuntary yawn. I pull out my phone to text Miriam before I forget: Staying at Alex’s.
“Holy cow,” I say. “Is it really three in the morning?”
The question seems to startle him. He walks into his bedroom—which doesn’t have its own door and is honestly more of a nook nestled into one wall—and mumbles, “Here, let me…” He digs a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants out of a dresser drawer and tosses them to me. “Will that irritate your skin? I use scented detergent.”
I look down, feel the cotton beneath my finger pads. He gave me a HARVARD T-shirt. It puts me in a kind of unexplainable trance.
Harvard, Boston, snow in his black hair—
“It should be fine,” I mutter quietly, touched he remembered what I’d said earlier about the fragrance allergy. Confused why I’m suddenly mesmerized by this HARVARD T-shirt. “Perfume and cologne are the real culprits,” I explain.
Alex digs out a blanket from his closet and tosses it on the bed. Then he moves the fluffy comforter over to one side.
“There you go,” he says. “The bathroom’s right there if you need it.” He points to a skinny door by a big empty space where a couch might feasibly belong. “Clean towels are in the plastic drawers under the sink, but there’s no hot water, so don’t bother waiting on it.”
“Ever?”
“I can usually get it between six and ten A.M.”
I laugh, tripping over his coffee table. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll keep my clothes on.” Alex bites the inside of his cheek. “I just meant—um. I can wait to shower, and … stuff. Until I get home.”
“Okay.”
I curtsy like an idiot, clearly still not certain if I’m on the set of Downton Abbey. “Thank you for your h-hospitality.”
Ugh. My childhood stutter always comes back when I’m tipsy and nervous.
I flee to the bathroom to change, wash my face, and finger-brush my teeth. Alex goes in after I exit. I snuggle under the cloudy layers of his comforter, sighing in contentment, feet wiggling happily as I breathe in the scent of his spare pillow.
The door opens. “You look cozy.”
I twist to find him in a T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, staring down at me with an unreadable expression. I’ve never seen this much of his arms exposed before. His muscles are gently sculpted, like a man who cares about his fitness but doesn’t care about it the most. Again, the outline of that tattoo is visible, but it’s too dark to decipher.
“I am,” I say. “Thanks for this.”
“Of course.”
His footsteps cross the room to the door, and then the apartment goes black. I hear the turn of a lock, then more footsteps back toward the bed. The mattress groans as Alex’s body sinks onto its other side.
He shuffles around, getting comfortable, and I stay absolutely still.
“Good night, Casey. Thanks for getting drunk with me.”
The heat from his body is radiating off him, lulling me into a calm, dreamy slumber. “Good night, Alex,” I say, and then yawn. “Thanks for kissing me.”
My eyes snap back open. Good Lord, why is my rational decision-making on vacation?
“You—You’re welcome,” Alex rumbles. I tilt my head toward the sound of his voice. His figure is starting to emerge beside me in the dark. “But also, I’m welcome. Wait. What?”
Wait, what?
I turn fully onto my side, tuck my hands beneath my cheeks. Alex mirrors me. His eyes shine, but they look kind of glazed, too. As we lie here in the silence, watching each other, I take stock of all the things we’ve unearthed today.
Alex’s relationship with his father. My relationship with my ex. His aunt. My parents. Miriam. Freddy. Sasha, and Brijesh. We offered up all these pieces of ourselves to each other, like the bindings of a truce.
This is it.
Now or never.
My perfect moment to push the envelope a little further.
If Tracy Garcia could see me now, I think queasily.
Beneath the comforter I shift, jittery with the conscious weight of what I’m about to do. One of my feet comes to rest against Alex’s ankle by accident. He doesn’t move away, and neither do I. He just dips his eyes down, then back up.
“Alex?” I ask.
“Yeah?” His voice is a ghost of what it can be.
“What’s the deal with your father and Dougie Dawson?”
His mouth pulls into a taut line, and I instantly regret bringing it up out of the blue, or at all, if it’s something that puts that sad of a look on his face.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
Don’t tell me. Say you still think it’s hilarious I would even ask.
“No, it’s fine,” Alex whispers. “It’s not some huge secret.”
“It’s not?” The question comes out embarrassingly hopeful, and the relief I feel is instantaneous.
He takes a deep breath. “Dougie has a son my age who went to Choate, too. Ellis. He’s cool. One night after a party, we wound up smoking a joint together. That’s how I know some of Dougie and Robert’s history.”
I say nothing, but it’s pretty telling that Alex doesn’t even know the truth from his own dad; he heard it through the grapevine.