“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“I know you’ll keep it to yourself.” Tracy leans forward, lowers her voice. “Also, I’m kind of hoping someone in the weeds of our numbers might spot a solution I can’t.”
Challenge accepted. I’ll do anything possible to keep this acquisition from happening. I don’t want the heart and soul of our company to be torn apart. I want Bite the Hand to launch. I want my friends to keep their jobs. And I want to go to London on my own terms, no one else’s.
But if I go to London without Little Cooper, there won’t be a single familiar thing.
* * *
I’m sitting outside Saanvi’s office when Alex sprints around the corner, bottled tea in one hand, his notebook in the other, dressed in an Orvis half-zip and gray slacks. He’s panting just a little, lips parted, and when our eyes catch, all the nerves in my body concentrate in suspect places.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi,” I say back, and my heart thump-thump-thumps. Definitely not because I wanted to see him. More likely, it’s because I was dreading it. My conversation with Tracy has been following me like Eeyore’s dreary rain cloud since yesterday, and the sight of his trusting face might as well be a stab in the heart.
I want to warn him that his odds of a successful launch for Bite the Hand have gotten even slimmer. I want to apologize for using him for information when I’m not even sure what purpose it served Tracy at all.
I want to kiss him. Like, really badly, I want that.
Alex deposits his things on the table and sits down beside me in the other waiting chair. He peers through Saanvi’s glass walls where she’s speaking with Andre, Eric, and another salt-and-pepper-haired man I’ve never met.
“How was your weekend?” he asks.
“Lamer than yours. I’d give anything to experience the Cape Cod Target.”
“Be that as it may, we did eat enough seafood to kill you.”
“Charming.”
“Freddy’s mom lives in Cape Cod full-time,” Alex explains. “Before I moved to Seoul after college, I used to spend all my Thanksgivings with them.”
“Not with your aunt and cousins?”
Alex shakes his head. “Sometimes I felt like my aunt wanted some family stuff to be just her, her husband, and her kids. So, I asked Freddy one year if I could go with him. And it became a tradition.”
His father was probably only ever a couple of hours away, deep-frying a turkey with Linda in a country club they bought just for the occasion. I feel for her, too—spending Thanksgiving with the breathing reminder of your husband’s infidelity would probably suck—but Alex was just a kid.
He turns his body in the chair to face me. “You know,” he says, voice deep. “When I asked you to pick a plant for my balcony, I assumed it was going to be a later, through-the-front-door situation.”
I smirk, rapping my fingers on the computer in my lap. “The fire escape was more convenient. I didn’t want to drag the cosmos around until I saw you next.”
“Yes, dragging around a galaxy. A bit unwieldy.”
Saanvi’s door pushes open, and Alex and I rip our eyes off each other. We stand up, and Saanvi gestures for us to come in. Andre and Eric say a quick hello before leaving, but the other man stays seated as Saanvi closes the door and tells us to sit.
“This is Andrew. He’s with Legal.”
Andrew, who looks like he was born for the predestined purpose of Being With Legal, nods and hands us each a stack of papers clipped together.
“So,” Saanvi says, sitting down across from us, “as far as debuts go, your video did pretty well. We typically mark a new face on the BTH channel as a success if they get eight thousand views in the first twenty-four hours, and you guys did ten. Last I checked, it was up to fifty, and that was over the weekend when people are busy, so we should see that number double in a week’s time.”
I let out a tiny squeak. “One hundred thousand views?”
“Yes. So, obviously I’d love to do this again,” Saanvi goes on. “A 2.0 version of the segment, so to speak. It would be more like a vlog, a day in the life here at the office. Actually, it was a suggestion in the comments section—which was colorful, and um, overall, very warmhearted regarding you both. And then after that, I thought we could try out the best coffee in the building idea, for a third video. Do those concepts work?”
I look over at Alex to find him nodding, his eyes tracking the document in his hands. “What’s this?” he asks. “I thought we got the standard rate for employee appearances.”
“There is no standard rate; there’s a base rate. It’s part of my process that if I ask you to return, we can negotiate it.”
Wow, money! I forgot about that part.
“This is a unique situation,” Saanvi informs us. “Most contracts are negotiated separately, but then again, most YouTube segments Little Cooper runs only have one anchor. In the interest of equity, I thought it was best for you two to be in the same room for this conversation.”
I am totally here for Saanvi’s pay equity agenda, particularly because negotiating isn’t my strong suit. When I was offered my job with LC, they gave me the salary I’d written down as my minimum on my application （which was a ballpark shot in the dark based on NYC’s cost of living, my student loan payment plan, and some entry-level salary research）。 I knew LC giving me that number was strategic on their part, but I was just so happy I’d gotten the offer at all to ask for a penny more.
And when it comes to this stuff, Saanvi could propose anything she wanted, and I wouldn’t know the difference. But Alex does. He throws out a number that makes my jaw want to unhinge and follows it up with a single word: “Each.”
I realize something stark in that moment. Even though Alex and I both have a degree in business, I went to a state school and he went to Harvard, and the differences between the whole learned cultures behind our educations show up in the space between what words are exchanged in that room. I just sit there and try not to look like a complete idiot.
Where does that kind of confidence come from? Is there a class at Harvard for it?
There is some negotiating, paper signing, and schedule wrangling, and then we are dismissed. Outside Saanvi’s office, we slow our walk to let Andrew From Legal get ahead of us.
“You were quiet in there,” Alex says. “I hope I wasn’t being too … presumptuous.”
I shake my head, hitching my bag higher onto my shoulder. “I’m not good at that kind of stuff. I’m glad you knew what you were talking about.”
“I know a guy with similar experience.”
“It tracks that you know a guy.”
Alex laughs. “Saanvi’s great, but not everyone’s like her. I had to learn to protect myself early on.”
I nod. “I get that.”
Outside the floor-length glass windows, the sun’s last dregs are dripping into the horizon, casting the office in a golden-hour glow. Alex and I reach the end of the hallway, and I turn, heading for the elevators.
“Casey.” He swallows thickly. “Tomorrow is Wednesday.”
“Yes, very good. You can stop showing off now.”