Josh doesn’t bother asking who that is.
Behind a pair of heavy doors, the open space of the warehouse is flooded with a rainbow of colored light. A mumblecore film plays in a blurry projection against a cement block wall. Briar takes both of their coats up a set of metal stairs leading to a mezzanine. Maybe there’s a hidden corner up there where he can escape to check in with Sophie; lately it seems they’re rarely in the same place at the same time. She’d sent him a listicle titled “9 Creative Ideas for Long-Distance Power Exchange.” Two days ago, he’d gotten to number eight: sending gifts with explicit instructions. According to the package tracking, Sophie should have received it at 4:13 p.m. today.
When Briar returns, a young woman hands them glow sticks branded with the BetterHelp logo.
“They got sponsors for this?” Josh says, noticing a bar in the left corner stocked solely with a tower of Truly hard seltzer cans.
“Oh! Cass is here!” Briar exclaims, greeting a woman wearing a Sleater-Kinney tank top under an artfully mismatched blazer. Mid-forties, if he had to guess. And imposingly tall. Briar pulls Josh into the circle. “You remember my advisor, right? Her class was a total life-changer.”
Ah, yes. She of Briar’s many fawning anecdotes.
Josh can understand why Briar changed her major from English to media studies after taking Cass Nichols’s “Neoteric Queer Cinema” course last year. This woman is an expert at making herself the focus of everyone’s attention.
Cass holds a champagne flute in one hand and a Moleskine notebook in the other, suggesting that she’s perpetually on the verge of some brilliant insight that couldn’t possibly be captured on a phone. She has the familiar look of someone who’s been a recurring character on a well-regarded cable drama Josh should eventually get around to watching.
“？‘Advisor’ sounds like hegemonic management consulting bullshit. It’s really an academic partnership,” Cass says to him, still clutching the notebook like a prop. “That bond is very important to me.” She makes huge gestures, nearly hitting Josh’s ear with her chunky statement ring. “I learn just as much from them as they learn from me.”
Maybe that’s why she socializes with her former students on major holidays.
She’s surrounded by three or four of these other “academic partners.” Grad students, probably, hanging on her every word. Josh is used to holding his own with people who think they’re the smartest person in the room; usually, he takes pleasure in the challenge of it. For most of his life, there’s been no one he couldn’t talk over. His professors, world-renowned chefs…last month, he’d gleefully debated Stanley Tucci on the finer points of the Negroni.
He’s about to serve up a counterpoint—something about how well strict hierarchy works in a restaurant kitchen—when he feels a hand press into his shoulder, gently nudging him to the left.
It’s so unexpected that it jolts his body. The owner of the hand moves past him before he can turn around and see her face. She bisects the circle, cutting straight through the conversation about the various disappointments of the Toronto International Film Festival, and heads for Cass like a heat-seeking missile.
No greeting. No “I was looking everywhere for you.” She just places herself directly in front of Cass, demanding her full attention. It wouldn’t be hard: She’s wearing black trousers and a bra, as if she’d had on a full tuxedo and simply removed most of the top half. Wobbling slightly on heels, she’s still four inches shorter than Cass.
Josh still can’t see her face from this angle, just the vague outline of her profile. It’s mostly hidden by her hair, a platinum blond bob.
Taking Cass’s jaw in the palm of her hand, she pulls her head forward greedily into a kiss. The woman is loose-limbed, keeping her hand on Cass’s face and somehow kissing her with her entire body. Not a shred of regard for anyone else.
An indignant twinge of envy prickles in his chest—a “this is shameless and inappropriate and why can’t I have it, too?” sentiment. When was the last time Sophie kissed him like that? Or vice versa?
At some point （the kiss either lasts a full minute or Josh’s brain converts it into slow motion）， the woman leans back and pulls away, her back arching. The colored light illuminates the side of her face.
His skin goes cold. There are nine million people in this city. Logic dictates that it must be someone else. But New York doesn’t operate on statistical likelihoods. The city has its own agenda, and this—this—is exactly how Josh’s life works. Every slight, every error in judgment, every regret—they all come back to haunt him eventually.