“The Parthenon,” I repeat.
“Yeah. Remind me why there’s a Parthenon replica in Nashville?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Can we go?” he asks. “I have so many questions.” And since I’m with love with him, of course the answer is yes.
We pack up our suitcases now so we can grab them and head to the airport right after our excursion. Jerry and Dad spent New Year’s Eve at Jerry’s sister’s lake house, and I’ve already bidden them farewell, no clue when I’ll see them next, or where I’ll be coming from when I do.
On the drive to midtown in Dad’s car, Alex and I are mostly quiet. I don’t know what he’s thinking so hard about, but for the first time in a while, I know my own mind.
Alex is my person. You don’t keep secrets from your person, especially not ones they’re wrapped up in.
I have to tell him about the acquisition, today.
Other than one field trip in middle school, I’ve never paid much attention to the Parthenon, but now that I’m really considering it, I have to admit it’s pretty cool, all sprawling and stately. When Alex and I get out of the car, we look at it, then awkwardly glance at each other, and then look back at the Parthenon. Simultaneously, we burst out laughing.
“Well.” I gesture. “There it is!”
“Can you go inside?”
I check my phone. “Closed today.”
Alex nods, his hand shooting out to grab me. “This Parthenon,” he murmurs in my ear, still laughing, “is somehow both exceeding and falling wildly short of my expectations.”
“Art does mirror life,” I quip.
The buzz of my phone dissipates the electricity snapping between us.
“That your folks?” Alex asks.
But that ringtone isn’t for a phone call; it’s a corporate call through our company chat app from the recruiter assigned to my job application. Together, Alex and I look down at her name blinking across my phone screen.
“It’s New Year’s Day,” I say, shell-shocked.
“Answer it,” he whispers, letting me go.
With shaking fingers, I accept the call and press my phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Casey? Sorry for calling so late. Or—wait, I guess it’s not that late for you?” Her voice is clear and distinctly British.
“It’s four thirty.” I gulp. “In the afternoon.”
“Oh! Great. I just had to let you know as soon as I got word! LC is officially offering you the travel cost manager position.”
Alex overhears. He grins wide, pulling me against his chest.
“Oh.” I readjust my phone, slippery in my palm. My heartbeat is beat, beat, beating against my eardrums. “That’s great to hear.”
“Yes! I’m sure you’re busy, but I thought telling you now would be a nice holiday surprise before we all get slammed with work tomorrow. We’re offering a twenty percent increase on your current salary. The start date would be the Monday of the first week of fiscal February, so I think that’s, like, the last couple of days of calendar January. I know it’s soon, but we’re very eager to have you.”
“Okay.” I am numb.
One month.
One month one month one month—
“I’m going to send over an email with the offer letter, the benefits, the moving support package, work visa information, et cetera. Take a look at the documentation and we’ll talk tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say again.
“Great. Happy New Year, Casey.”
“Happy New Year.”
The second I hang up, Alex has me off the ground. He scoops me up behind my knees and spins me around in a circle. “I fucking knew it! I’m so proud of you, jagi.”
My body isn’t sure how to process this. Inside, all my tiny molecules are fusing together and fissuring apart. Again. Again. Again.
He puts me back on my feet, still holding me upright. The sturdiest, most solid thing I’ve ever felt. “How do you feel?” he asks gently.
Terrified. Thrilled. “I’m … confused,” I tell him, honest as I can get.
Alex’s eyes glaze with sadness, and he rests his forehead against mine. “There goes all my plotting.”
“What plotting?”
Alex swallows thickly and murmurs, “How to keep you.”
This is dating.
“Alex.” I grasp at his hair. “What the actual fuck are we doing?”
He shakes his head, forehead rocking against mine, his fingers bunching into my coat like the grip will hold me there forever. “I don’t know. Casey, I would … I would follow you there. I think I would follow you anywhere.”
The sentence calcifies into my own bones, his words becoming a physical part of me that I couldn’t get rid of unless it broke. “You would?”
“If you wanted me to, I would.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, sighs, and starts talking. Really talking.
“I’ve thought about this a lot. I started thinking about it the minute you left my place, the time you told me about moving to London with stars in your eyes after I’d spent the best minutes of my life inside your body. I’ve asked myself if I would ever move back to London if I’d never met you. I’ve asked myself if, had you’d been interested in someplace else, would I still have tried to follow you then?”
He tilts my chin up, his irises turning flinty. “Every day, Casey, every time I’d look at you, I would play out all those what-if scenarios in my head. They always ended the same, with me thinking, Yes. If you were existing near me, the answer was yes. And if you weren’t near me—funny enough, Case, the answer was still yes. That’s the best part. It doesn’t feel like a tether, it feels like a choice, because the stars in your eyes are fucking why I fell in love with you.”
He wipes a tear from the corner of my eye, thumb lingering on my cheek, and his voice softens even more as he continues. “So, to me, it pretty much came down to only that. Once I figured that part out, the rest wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t difficult. If you want me—if by some miracle this is a mutual feeling—then I go where you go. I am where you are. But I don’t want you to feel pressured, so if you don’t want me to be in London with you, I won’t, and I will completely understand. I mean, we made a deal when we started this whole thing, and I broke the rules—”
I put a finger to his lips. “Stop. Just stop right there. Alex, I do want you there. I want to keep you, too.”
Oddly, his expression falls even further. “Are you sure? It wouldn’t be for a while, what with the BTH board holdup. Maybe even six months, until they really let us launch.”
The cloud bursts.
The secret bursts.
It pours out of me, sentence after splintered sentence: Tracy approaching me, asking me to uncover the truth behind Robert and Dougie’s feud （during which I swear to Alex I never breathed a word to her about his relationship with his dad, which is the truth）。 The news of the acquisition, my being sworn to secrecy, learning the BTH presentation was just a red or green light to sell.
When I say that part, Alex’s eyes gutter, and his face goes cold. He stands there mutely through my apology, stiff and frozen. I want to touch him, but I’m scared he’ll flinch away. I’ve never seen him look like this. Not in the entire time I’ve known him have I seen him this … defeated.