“It’s not…” Robert trails off, then says, “Thank you.” He heads for the front door, pulls it open. “Don’t forget what I said about BTH. You’re in a strong position of leverage right now. If I gave you anything besides good looks, it’s the Harrison hustle.”
“Says the early retiree.”
His father raps his fingers on the door. “Don’t be so sure about that.”
As soon as it closes behind him, I pop open the pantry door and peek around the edge of it. Alex slides across the floor in black socks, flicking the front lock closed. I barrel-roll out of the pantry, and by the time I look up, he’s above me, offering a hand.
“Your dad seems…”
Alex hauls me to my feet. “Demanding? Authoritative?”
I frown. “I was going to say it seems like he doesn’t know how to act around you.”
“That’s because we’re only one degree removed from strangers.” He looks down, at the folded white envelope in his hand, the faint outline of a single key within. Eyes glazed, he shakes his head and murmurs, “He’s never invited me to his home. Not the one in New Haven or the one on the Upper East Side. And he’s certainly never called me son before.”
I’m proud of you, son.
A small, barely there flame of hope glimmers behind Alex’s eyes. It twists my stomach up in knots. Because I know the feeling, in a way.
I have my own issues with my parents. Frankly, I don’t think there’s ever been a child that, at some point or another, hasn’t felt less than enough. It shows up differently for all of us, but for me, not feeling enough looks like a teenage kid staring at her parents’ bodies of work—plaques and portraits and signed guitars and old refurbished cameras—and knowing their legacy is marked on the world. It’s there. Tangible. Art they created, together, and apart.
The absolutely mortifying thing is that their biggest expression of humanity was supposed to be me—and this is how I turned out.
Crying in art class because I don’t get it.
Stage fright so bad I pee a little.
And then, this strange sense of calm, of certainty, when I discovered an old book of sudoku puzzles at the recording studio. When I could calculate the exact grocery bill before the machine. When my brain started to estimate the net worth of all my parents’ art—every royalty, every gallery sale—and I wondered if I’d ever see the world the way they saw it. As an expression. Not an equation.
But despite it—despite all of it—I’ve never, ever questioned that they love me.
Yet here Alex is, brilliant, one of a kind, misty-eyed because his dad doesn’t want him to quit his job anymore, said he was proud, called him son, and did it all to soften the blow of leaving Alex behind to battle Robert’s own worst enemy.
“I should go,” I whisper, my voice thick with emotion. Suddenly everything’s hitting me wrong, and my suspension of disbelief that any of this is normal has ended.
Alex’s attention snaps back to me. The hand he used to pull me up, still interlaced with mine, tugs. He looks down at my body covered in his clothes, and his face changes into something more concentrated. “You don’t have to.”
“No, I really should.” I look down at myself. “I’m covered in bar tar, and sweat, and fragrance-scented laundry detergent remnants.”
“Shower. If you want,” Alex says. “There’s hot water for another hour.”
I shake my head. “Thanks, but I should head out. I told Mir we’d hang today.”
I pull my hand from his and cross to the bed, where my clothes, shoes, and purse got stuffed beneath the comforter before Alex opened the door for his dad. I change in the bathroom, leave the clothes he let me borrow folded neatly on the foot of his bed. Alex hovers, waiting, watching me.
“Well. Thanks for…” I gesture around lamely. “This.”
“You’re welcome anytime.”
“I’m welcome to hide in your murder closet anytime?”
“Next time, I’ll even let you taste test one of my beers while you’re in there.”
“But I thought we were friends now.”
Alex’s lips kick up, and I smile weakly in return. Three days ago, we were bickering in a conference room about the social media budget, and I couldn’t wait to get out of his presence. Now I want more than fourteen hours. I want all of Alex’s hours. How exactly did we get here?
I walk past him toward the door, freaking out a little bit. “See you Monday.”
“Casey.”
The word stops me in my tracks, reaching past my eardrums, soaking into my body until his voice is in my veins.
I freeze, looking back. His lips are parted, breath light, clothing wrinkled head to toe. Static electricity seems to run through his midnight hair. His hands are in the pockets of his pajama pants, but I can just see the shadow of the tattoo on his inner wrist.
The thing about Alex is, most of the time, you know you’re getting only a small part of his attention because he’s thinking about a million other things plus one more. Normally, I can almost see the cogs of his brain working on the next thing. Like he can’t stay still. Can’t look back. But lately, when he looks at me, it feels like he might be letting everything else fall away.
Hoarsely, he murmurs, “See you Monday.”
On my way home, I wonder what might’ve happened in that bed if no one had come knocking.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Monday is bookended by the company-wide email at nine in the morning announcing the retirement of board chairman Robert Harrison, and a tragic afternoon hot chocolate spill on my keyboard that totally fucks with my lender proposal. Also, I forgot to bring Benny a fancy coffee like he asked for on Friday afternoon. Flawless Fari brings him a triple venti nonfat dry cappuccino all the way from DUMBO, which means I have to spend thirty minutes on the phone today talking the ex-COO missus out of hiring a skywriter to fly past our windows.
There are women who don’t deserve their vilification as overly dramatic, scorned ex-wives, and then there is Angelica Downey.
After I finish cleaning my keyboard with makeup wipes and seltzer, Fari asks me, “Did you ever meet Robert Harrison? Back when he was our CEO?”
“No,” I say. “Why?”
Also, why are all my succulents dying? I poke my index finger into the soil of one of my planters. Perfectly balanced, not too dry, not damp, either. My cubicle is by the window, so there’s plenty of sunlight.…
“Casey, did you hear me?”
I poke my head up. “Huh?”
“I asked what you thought about Dougie taking over as chairman and CEO.”
I blink. “Um. What?”
Fari rolls her eyes. “It was in the email.”
I had admittedly skimmed the email.
Okay, fine, I didn’t read it at all because I thought I’d already known everything there was to know. I filed it unread into a subfolder labeled Executives on Soap Boxes. （I like to think the people in IT monitoring my work usage get a kick out of my subfolder nicknames, too.）
Actually, I spent the 9:00 A.M. hour reading articles from the latest issue of Take Me There: the travel magazine headquartered in London. There was a six-page spread on London—more specifically, how to be a tourist in London without acting like one—and it lit a fire inside me to get back to work on Bite the Hand’s income projections. The faster we launch the subsidiary, the quicker I’ll get tapped for a transfer. The quicker I get tapped for a transfer, the faster I’ll figure out what my own legacy is supposed to be.