“Casey.” Alex takes a small step forward, and our eyes lock. His face is twisted in regret. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“I promise. I didn’t mean it,” he says again, lower.
Is he reading the heart on my sleeve right now? Am I letting him? It’s such a vulnerable feeling that all I can think to do in this moment is find the chink in his own armor and stab him right back.
“Do you really think HR didn’t know who your dad was when they offered you your job, Alex? Be serious. At the very least, they were biased in your favor.”
I can tell from the fracture in his eyes that he knows I’m right. A twisted satisfaction seeps through me, taking this small thing from him.
“What do you want from me?” He raises his arms, but his voice is soft. “HR said I was their strongest candidate by a mile.”
And that, I realize with a punch to the gut, is the crux of why his presence hurts me so much.
Not because I lost out on the job to the board chairman’s son, but because even if he weren’t the board chairman’s son, Alex would have edged me out anyway.
He clearly has no idea I applied. As much as I want to dislike him, I can admit he wouldn’t have said that to me just now if he’d known.
Alex doesn’t deserve to be the source of my insecurity, but still, he landed squarely into it, every edge of him filling the gaps of what I’m not.
Maybe I should say sorry, too. For saying he’s never had to try at anything in life, which was unfair. Because Alex is right. I don’t know anything about him. Not really. But I can’t talk, or look him in the eye again, without risking him discovering that there’s something deeper going on here. Like he said, heart’s on my sleeve.
We’re quiet for a few moments, letting the wave of voices inside and the noise of car horns below fill up the space between us.
“Casey,” he says eventually. “Just … I just wish—”
But he’s interrupted when someone in a navy-blue suit smelling suspiciously of spray tan comes up and claps Alex on the shoulder. “My God. I thought that was you!”
His eyes jerk away from mine, the cord snapping, ricocheting. “Yeah, I’m … Hey, Bishop, how’ve you been?” His voice resets. Now it’s the voice Alex uses on others, the one that makes everybody fall in love with him.
My eyes search for Sasha. She’s been watching us from the bar inside, too far away to hear much, but when we lock eyes, she jerks her head at the elevator.
I leave the party, and Alex stays, and I never learn what he just wishes for.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Where does he think he gets off!”
Sasha hurls her body through my apartment door, stomping inside like the petulant celebrity’s daughter she occasionally still emulates. She kicks off her heels while I set the to-go bag of Chinese food on my tiny, scuffed-up kitchen table.
“The entitlement of men never ceases to amaze me,” she adds.
“Tiger, stripes,” I offer with a shrug.
She exhales, rubbing her hands over the smooth ebony skin of her face. “I’m really sorry about tonight, Case. I know you hate events like that, and normally, I would have brought Miguel—”
“Wait.” My head cocks. “I thought you said he had the flu.”
“I fibbed!” She winces. “I thought it would be cool for you to network with Dougie outside of work, but I’d never really talked to the man before, and, well … I didn’t realize he’d be such a handsy, father-knows-best asshat.”
I wave a hand at her. “I appreciate the thought. I think.”
My roommate, Miriam, appears in the doorway of her bedroom—which is honestly just a partitioned section of our tiny, one-bedroom apartment—still dressed in hospital scrubs. It looks like she’s been sleeping; her bleached-blond bobbed hair is a bird’s nest, and mascara is rubbed under her eyes.
“Food?” she croaks.
I beckon her with my palm. “Got you, lover.”
She smiles sleepily and pads into the kitchen, feet clad in panda slippers. “Whose man is entitled?”
“A mutual acquaintance named Dougie Dawson,” I supply while I open the plastic lid of the pork siu mai dumplings.
Miriam sits down beside me. “Sounds like a cartoon character.”
“He thinks he’s the fucking mayor.” Sasha helps herself to a half-drunk bottle of red wine on the bar cart I’m pretty sure is three weeks old. She pours three glasses and hands them out to us. “No offense to your paycheck, Case, but that guy sucks. After you walked away, I tried broaching the subject of female-focused ads on the jumbotrons at sports events, and he all but laughed me out of the room.”
“He’ll probably die soon,” I mutter darkly.
Miriam laughs. “You spend too much time with Brijesh.”
“You’re the one screwing him.”
Miriam flips me the bird.
Sasha divests herself of her Chanel purse and sits down while I start in on the Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce I ordered. Miriam takes careful bites of everything: sticky rice with Chinese sausage, scallion pancakes, pan-fried noodles. Her nursing hours are weird, and I can never keep up with when she’ll be here or at work, but her daily eating schedule pretty much relies on whether I’ve left takeout for her in the fridge. I just Venmo charge her at the end of the month. It’s a well-oiled system.
After a few seconds of quiet, Sasha groans. “Okay, I was waiting for you to bring it up, but you’re clearly not going to. Can we please talk about that hottie, Alex?”
Miriam tilts her head at me. “Alex…” She drifts off, grasping for context clues.
I was really hoping Sasha had let that part of the evening slip from her mind.
“Alex Harrison,” I grumble.
“Alex Harrison?” Miriam repeats. “The jackass who stole your job? You never told me he was a hottie!”
Affecting the tone of a degenerate grouch, I admit, “He is objectively attractive. His hair is nice. And his eyes are … nice, and his voice is sort of scratchy. And he’s tall enough to loom.”
My friends are quiet for a couple of long seconds, staring at me. I shift in my seat, belatedly realizing how much I just admitted.
To them. To myself.
“Oh, Casey.” Miriam shakes her head. “You always did swoon for a man who loomed.”
“I did not.”
She sips her wine and makes an ahh sound. “You’re in trouble, doll face.”
“They looked very romantic together, out there on the balcony,” Sasha adds.
Unbidden, the scene from earlier strikes sharp and hard behind my eyes. No wonder you said you’re nobody’s dream girl.
“I’d put money on the fact that romantic is not the way we looked.”
I’m prepared to go to the mat on this one with four weeks’ worth of grievances to share, but they just laugh together, proud of themselves for riling me up. Miriam and Sasha—who are friends only because I introduced them during Geology 101 our first year of college—love to conspire against me. It’d be annoying if it were not a reminder they cared.
“Did you guys get Jack and Jill’s save the date?” Sasha asks. “Mine came yesterday.”