CHAPTER THIRTY
Miriam rides to LaGuardia with us. She’s headed to Charleston, where her aunt and uncle live, but we planned our flights so they’d be only thirty minutes apart. In the Uber ride there, Miriam grills Alex about his Instagram aesthetic.
“You need one,” Miriam says.
“It was two YouTube videos,” Alex retorts.
“You literally majored in digital media, Alex. I don’t understand how you don’t understand the importance of this. Take Casey, for example.” She pats my head affectionately. Hair falls into my face, and I blow it back out with a grumpy exhale. “She gave me her Instagram password years ago, and now she has an aesthetic: sweet autumn child who doesn’t own a hairbrush posts pictures from wherever it’s cloudy or raining and filters it with moody Victorian undertones.”
To this, Alex says nothing, momentarily caught out.
“I own a hairbrush.”
“You should use it sometime.” Miriam throws me a wink.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to hand over my Instagram password,” Alex admits.
“Fair. The day will come. I’m not worried.”
At the airport, chaos ensues, with long lines and oversize luggage and a single, twenty-dollar draft beer split among the three of us “for good luck and a travel buzz” before Alex and I drop Miriam off at her gate.
“Meet you at home,” she tells me as she squeezes me close for a hug. She’ll be in Charleston for Christmas, but she’s coming to Nashville after so we can all get together with Sasha and Miguel for New Year’s Eve.
She hugs Alex next, whispering something that makes him blush. He smiles sheepishly and then shoots me a guilty look.
I probably don’t want to know.
Since Alex booked his flight so last-minute, his seat isn’t near mine. I board first, and when he passes me in the aisle of the plane, he tugs softly on my braid and keeps walking.
On the runway—literally, as we’re about to take off—it dawns on me that I forgot to tell my parents he’s coming.
It’s been a crazy twenty-four hours. After Alex and I talked last night, we double-checked that there were still seats available for this flight; he got the last one. Then, when Miriam came home, Alex left so he could pack and get ready for the trip.
“I was right,” Miriam said to me once he was gone.
“About?”
“Feelings.” She grabbed theatrically at the empty air with her fist. “You caught them. Hook, line, and sinker.”
I walked over to the bar cart and started uncorking a bottle of red. Soundless flashes of his body twisting toward me, the light dappling over his hair, his tattooed arm splayed out against a bedsheet all hit me in succession. I couldn’t deny it to Miriam any more than I could deny it to myself. “I … Yeah. But it’s different with Alex. There’s not, like, a future with him. He’s just a person who really makes sense for this stage of life.”
“The stage of life where you are happy,” Miriam deadpanned. “Why are you acting like it has to be temporary? Case, you’re allowed to want him, okay? Hell, you’re allowed to fall in love with him!” I flinched, hearing it out loud—that thing I’ve been questioning, which is definitely not allowed. Miriam spun around in a circle. “Let Alexander Harrison ruin all your plans! Let him sweep you off your fucking feet!” I am certainly, 100 percent already off my feet. “Maybe he’s just saying he wants you to go to London. Maybe he doesn’t really mean it.”
“He’s really not,” I replied staunchly. “He really means it.”
Miriam sighed, grabbing the remote and flipping on the TV. “Look, all I know is that man looks at you like you are the answer to an existential question.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but before I could turn the exact same observation back on her with Brijesh, she squealed, “Ooh, want to watch reruns of Sex and the City?”
Now I shoot off a text to my parents as the plane lifts into the sky: Bringing home a friend for Christmas who doesn’t have other plans—hope that’s okay?
But it’s too late. The text never sends.
* * *
“Jerry!” I squeak-whisper into my phone as soon as we’ve touched down.
“Casey! We’re at baggage claim!”
“Jer, listen.” I look around at the passengers unbuckling, stretching, standing up to crowd the aisle. Lowering my voice even further—because I don’t want Alex to overhear and think he’s an afterthought—I say, “Alex is with me.”
“Alex…，” Jerry repeats. I’m hoping he remembers that name from Thanksgiving and I won’t have to explain. Jerry’s always been easier to talk to about relationship stuff than Dad. Because at the end of the day … my dad is my dad. “Oh. He’s with you now?”
“Yes. I forgot to tell you guys. It was a last-minute thing. But can you tell Dad, and just, like, be welcoming and not weird about it?”
“Okay,” Jerry says. “You got it, sweetheart.”
“And for the love of God, make Marty Maitland promise he will not ask about Alex’s intentions with his daughter.”
“He said that to Lance as a joke, Casey. It’s not our fault your ex-boyfriend was a total boner.”
“Okay, bye, see you soon!”
“Kisses!”
Ending the call, I rest my forehead against the seat back. Crisis. Averted.
Outside the gate, I wait for Alex. When I see him—hair spiking like untrimmed grass, still in his work clothes, backpack hanging off one shoulder—I let him search, his eyes tracking the crowd, waiting in anticipation for the moment he finds me. When he does, his lips part softly, and he waves a little.
“Good flight?” I ask as we head for baggage claim.
“I watched the first twenty minutes of Across the Universe. And then I read a thriller.”
“You read … a whole thriller. On a two-and-a-half-hour flight.”
Alex glances down at me, lips tugged up in amusement at my tone. “I don’t read like most people read. I skim. If I try to read everything, I get distracted and give up. That’s why I work in short-form media.” He nods, like that settles it.
“Okay.” Does that even count??? But I bite my tongue in an effort not to sound judgmental. “What about audiobooks?”
“I listen to those on two times the normal talking speed,” Alex says. “It’s almost gibberish, but you get done in half the time.”
These are the types of things that petrify me about Alex. Does he think of me as something to skim? To be finished with in half the time?
But then he grabs my hand, kisses it, and says hoarsely, “I’m nervous, Simba.” And it’s so damn cute.
“Alex, you’ve never made a bad first impression in your life.”
“If you’ll recall,” Alex says, “I have made one bad first impression in my life.”
“Well, at least I thought you were good-looking.”
“It was all common ground from there,” he says, winking.
At baggage claim, Jerry and Dad really put it on. I’m genuinely impressed with how quick they are on their feet. They’re all “Hey, Alex, we’re so excited to have you come stay!” and “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you!” and Alex is all, “I’m so thankful to be here!” and “It’s great to meet you both! Casey’s told me all about you!”