Love Interest

And holy shit, but I really do mean it.

His face is turned down toward mine, and his head blocks the sun, his features cast in shadow. But even like this, I can see him plain as day. The demons his father brought forth get banished in the sunlight, and he starts to appear again from beneath them. The longer I look, the more Alex comes back, until that familiar face of casual competence is just as maddening as it’s always been—but at least it’s fixed right back where it belongs.

He bites the inside of his cheek. “I can’t believe you just said those words.”

I want you here.

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

Alex grins softly, pushing a hand through his hair to flatten it down, which is mostly unsuccessful. “It’s too late for that.”

Saanvi walks Alex and me through the intro she’s after, warning us when the mics go live. “Keep it simple,” she says. “Name, job title, where you’re from. Someone can also mention what you’re doing today. Alex, you want it?”

He shrugs. “Sure.”

“So, Casey, you’ll go first. Don’t worry if you don’t nail the intro on your first try. It takes a while for anyone to find their sea legs on camera.” Saanvi wrinkles her nose with distaste, as if recalling a previous disaster of a video shoot. As long as I don’t cause her to make that face again, I’ll mark this venture as a success.

The team goes through some final checks and last-minute video setup. Then, I’m saying—in a slightly elevated voice, to a tiny black dot on a little machine—“Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of ‘One Day at Work.’ I’m Casey, a financial analyst here at Little Cooper Publications, and I’m from Tennessee.”

Beside me, Alex waves and flashes a brilliant smile that’ll probably melt hearts. “And I’m Alex, a project manager. I’m from right here, New York City. And today we’re taking you out for a work lunch.”

We get it on the first take, and Saanvi’s head almost explodes. She spins around in a circle, flapping her arms, potentially trying to take off. The rest of the video team looks substantially impressed, too, and I am slightly less embarrassed than I was a few minutes ago.

“Let’s walk,” Saanvi directs. “The team will follow behind you two so we don’t piss off the pedestrians. I don’t like this angle much, but we have to work with nature on this one.”

There isn’t a scrap of actual nature in sight—nothing but industrial buildings, hot dog carts, and cigarette butts on the ground—but I choose not to point this out to Saanvi.

I start to walk. “Should I just assume everything I say from now on is fair game for the final cut?”

“Yes.” Saanvi’s expression is dead serious. “That question included. Adorable.”

The October sun is warm on my back. Behind me, Saanvi whispers lens-glare-related prayers to the clouds. Since it’s only ten past eleven, the lunch crowd hasn’t come out in droves yet, and the sidewalks are just this side of bearable.

“What should we talk about?” Alex asks, aiming his question at the team behind us.

“Whatever you want. This angle is shitty, so we won’t use much of this footage.”

The only thing I want to talk to Alex about right now is the one thing we can’t: his dad.

The dad he left three voicemails for that apparently went unplayed. Maybe even deleted.

Somewhere in Seoul, months ago, Alex tried to explain to his father that he was moving to Manhattan, that he got a job at LC. Robert Harrison doesn’t strike me as the type to have gotten where he is in life by not following up on loose ends. Which means he was ignoring his own kid on purpose.

His bastard kid, according to Dougie Dawson.

I try to recall a single time my dad sent me to voicemail and can’t. Once, I called him drunk at three A.M., screaming into the speakerphone, “Listen, your song! Playing at Radegast, Dad, the guy on the saxophone, listen, he’s riffing on your song!” And he answered, and laughed, and told me to drink water before I went to bed.

He used to take me backstage with him in the days he played in concert bands, strumming guitar and singing backup vocals for the lead. Every few minutes his eyes would drift toward me, and he’d wink, reminding me he was there if I needed him. He taught me how to ride a bike in Percy Warner Park. Never let go of the handlebars until long after I was certain I wouldn’t fall. When I was twelve, I did my first mathletes competition, and Dad showed up to watch with three extra calculators in case mine broke.

He was always, always there.

I’ve heard stories about a parent dying, and the child and the surviving parent never repairing what they used to have. Becoming estranged, the space between them swelling with the grief they don’t know how to share. But that’s not what happened to me and Dad. He made sure of it—with a family therapist and the crying sessions that neither of us shied away from, the Wednesday nights at Mom’s favorite restaurants, the songs he wrote about her, about me. He turned something broken into something beautiful, and until I met Miriam when I was eleven, Dad was my best friend.

And Alex’s father won’t even listen to his voicemails.

How does his mom fit into all of this? I’d always assumed Robert’s wife must be Alex’s Korean mother. But—

“Hey.” He bends toward me, his lips level with my ear, and I catch a whiff of that same cologne. There’s something else, a nicer, cleaner scent beneath it he’s nearly masking. “Across the street, right there.” He points with one hand to a Greek street cart with numbered photos of menu items printed on one side. The gesture makes his shirtsleeve pull up, and I catch the barest glimpse of an inked tattoo on his forearm. “Best gyro in FiDi.”

“You’ve tasted them all?”

“Impossible. That one’s the best because the owner’s name is Alexander.”

When I look over, Alex is smirking, but his eyes are tight, the color of his brown pupils somehow muted, despite the daylight. I have the weirdest notion he’s trying to distract me because he knows I’m thinking about what happened in the lobby, and he doesn’t want me worrying about it.

“Your vanity is humbling,” I deadpan.

“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask. Do you mind if I copy your email signature? I like your font and company logo.”

I stare, wondering if he’s serious. “Uh. It’s not copyrighted.”

“Cool,” he says, winking, and I trip a little, on nothing. “We’ll match.”

Eataly, an Italian market with dry goods and food stalls, is on the third floor of 4 World Trade. It’s a popular lunch spot, so I guess if we’re going to be filming a “One Day at Work” segment not at the office (which is odd, now that I’m thinking about it), this is as good a location as any. The building appears as we round the corner of Church and Liberty, and five minutes later we’re inside.

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