“This cat is getting fur all over me,” he grumbles.
“Sorry, he’s aggressively affectionate. It means he likes you.” I grab Gio off the couch and put him on the bed.
“I’d prefer he liked me from across the room,” Alex mutters. He takes one more swipe at his sleeve and pulls out his phone, sighing at the time.
I remind myself that Alex is only grumpy because he’s annoyed that I’m late. “Okay. I just need to get dressed, and then I’ll be ready.”
I grab the first dress I find on a hanger in my closet—the pink slip dress—and Alex looks up and says, “Can you wear one of the designer ones I bought you?”
I tense up at this. I know Alex bought me those clothes specifically for these work events, but something about him dictating my outfits doesn’t sit right with me. I’m tempted to pretend I didn’t hear, and passive aggressively wear the pink one, but at the last moment, something stops me. That’s how the old Sadie would have reacted. Instead, I slowly count backward from ten. Alex is a good guy who wants me by his side for important events. Why am I being so resistant?
I put on a black Dolce & Gabbana dress and, even though I’ve been on my feet all day, I brave the Louboutins again. “What do you think?”
The smile that lights up Alex’s face has me wondering why I ever thought of arguing with him. Still, when I stop in the bathroom before we head out and I see my favorite pair of dangly thrift-store earrings hanging by the mirror, I throw them on at the last second.
We take a cab to the party, which is on the rooftop deck of a swanky financial district office building that belongs to Alex’s new client. When we arrive, the sun is just beginning to set. To our left, beyond the glass-and-chrome skyscrapers, the sky is lit up with streaks of amber and indigo. To our right, the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge glitter in the distance.
Something about that view is so familiar that I stumble to a stop in my four-inch heels, and Alex reaches out to grab my arm before I fall over. I’ve been on this rooftop before. I’ve been to this party before.
I wasn’t wearing haute couture then, because Alex never bought me these expensive clothes during my Very Bad Year. And I didn’t arrive with him at the start of the party. Instead, I’d come at the end, just as the guests were trickling out. At the time, I hadn’t realized that spouses and partners were even invited to attend. I was there to meet Alex for a late dinner after the party had already wound down. Looking back from the perspective of my second chance year, it’s clear that by this point in my Very Bad Year, Alex wasn’t as serious about our relationship.
Of course he wasn’t, I realize as I watch servers hand off glasses of champagne to men in bespoke suits and women wearing diamonds that cost more than the GDP of some small countries. I wasn’t biting my tongue and trying to fit in back then. I was speaking my mind when guys like Zach made outdated, sexist jokes about women. And slowly, Alex had started to pull away.
Now, as Zach crosses my line of vision, headed to the bar, another memory begins to form. A crude joke from Zach. A sharp response from me. A fight with Alex out on the sidewalk.
This is the night Alex and I broke up.
The memory leaves me shaken. I’m about to take a moment to collect myself in the ladies’ room when Alex slips an arm around my shoulders and presses a kiss to my cheek. “I’m so glad you’re here. You look beautiful.”
I smile up at him. It doesn’t matter what happened last time around. Alex and I are fine now.
We grab our drinks and make the rounds. The upside of being kind of a big mouth is that I’m not shy, and I’m comfortable talking to all kinds of people. It also helps that I work for Xavier. He’s been on Top Chef and the Food Network, and he has a best-selling cookbook, so people want the inside story of what it’s like to work for him. Mostly, I do a lot of lying about how great it is.
After Alex has done a sufficient amount of schmoozing, we make our way to a circle of outdoor couches arranged under a string of twinkling lights. A group of people from his office are sitting around with cocktails in their hands, and Alex and I take the last two seats. Alex immediately gets sucked into a conversation about finance-related things that are completely over my head, so I introduce myself to the man sitting on the other side of me.
He gives me a firm handshake and tells me his name is Brett.
“I don’t think we’ve met before, have we?” I ask. By this point, I know most of Alex’s coworkers.
“No, I’d definitely remember meeting you.” He flashes his perfectly straight, white teeth, and I almost expect them to glint with a cartoony sparkle. Is he hitting on me? Because I’m pretty sure he saw me sit down with my boyfriend.
Brett tells me he’s a recent hire at Alex’s company, and then launches into a ten-minute monologue about all the firms that were competing for him. Finally, he seems to remember that conversations are supposed to go two ways, because he asks me, “So, what do you do, Sadie?”
“I work at Xavier’s. It’s a restaurant in Williamsburg.”
He nods. “Yeah, I’ve heard of Xavier’s. Never been, though.” He gives me a shrug. “To be honest, I don’t make it out of Manhattan much, unless I’m headed to the Hamptons.”
Right. “Sorry to hear that, Brett.”
“But you never know,” he continues. “With the right motivation, I might be convinced to come out and try it.” He gives me a meaningful look, and I stare back at him.
If Brett is expecting me to convince him to come out to Xavier’s, he’s going to be waiting a very long time.
Brett finally breaks the silence. “I’m not surprised you’re in the restaurant business.”
“Really?” I’m at the edge of my seat to see where he’s going with this.
“Yeah.” He flashes me another glinty grin. “You seem like you’d do really well in the kind of job where you work for tips.”
Wow.
“Well!” I keep my voice sugary sweet. “It’s nice to meet you, Brett.” I shift in my seat so I can angle my arm into Alex’s side and press my knee against his. He keeps talking to the guy to his right, so I give him a good jab with my elbow. Finally, Alex seems to realize that I want his attention. He turns and puts an arm around me. “I think my girlfriend is trying to tell me something,” Alex says to the guy he’s been talking to, and they both laugh. “Do you need another drink, honey?”
“Yes. I definitely need another drink.”
We head to the bar and order cocktails. “Well, I met the new guy, Brett,” I tell Alex, rolling my eyes. “He seems like a real charmer.”
Alex shrugs. “He’s not so bad when you get to know him.”
I have a flash of Kasumi rebuking me for putting up with Alex’s finance-bro friends. I can almost hear her muttering, On what planet would Brett ever be not so bad? And damn it. I miss her.
I look out across the rooftop, scanning the party guests. “Is that new woman here?” I ask Alex. “The one you hired a couple of months back?” Most of the women I meet at these events are girlfriends or wives. It’s nice to remember that in addition to Brett, they recently hired a qualified woman, too.