I’m not making that mistake again. Clawing your way out of the wrong relationship is always harder than waiting for the right one.
Alex pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales. “It’s been a long week, that’s all. We’re just … commemorating it with booze.”
“Uh-huh.” Freddy strains the freshly squeezed juice into a shaker, narrowing his eyes at Alex. “You run into your dad or something?”
Alex glares.
Freddy just smiles innocently. “You should have led with that, Al. I could have made yours a double.”
“It’s fine,” Alex says, waving a hand. “Nothing to write home about.” But then he takes a big slurp of his drink.
“Right, because you getting a job at his own company under his own nose is soooo not a thing.”
“I didn’t do it under his nose,” Alex retorts.
“Uh-huh.” Freddy passes my drink across the bar.
I take a careful sip, savoring the flavors on my tongue. Freddy throws a towel over his shoulder as my face lights up. “Hey, that’s great!”
He winks at me. “If you’re being forced to hang out with Alexander, it needed to be.”
Alex rolls his eyes and turns to me. “Freddy and I went to boarding school together for eight years. We’ve known each other since puberty.”
“Did you go to Harvard, too?”
Freddy pulls a face. “Hell no. I took my high school diploma and brought it straight to the New York City bar scene, where it belonged. Been here seven years now, but Alex and I stayed in touch. We both had those fractured families to keep us close.”
Alex traces the rim of his glass with his middle finger and shakes his head in exasperation, but he’s smiling down at the bar top. Freddy wanders down to the other end to check on the rest of his patrons, and I sip my grapefruit-brown-sugar-basil-bourbon drink, which is quickly becoming the best alcoholic beverage I’ve ever had.
I tilt my head at Alex. “So, before boarding school?”
He grimaces, palming the back of his neck. “International school, in a city outside of Seoul. I lived there with my mom from the ages of three to eleven.”
Every time he answers one of my questions, I come up with five more. It’s becoming a problem. But I don’t know if I can ask them because I’m not sure if the answers fall under Alex’s definition of my “owed explanation.” Freddy offering up details is one thing. Me seeking them out on my own is entirely different.
Maybe now would be a good time to start my line of inquiry about Dougie. I almost do it, but it just feels …
Wrong.
“What about you?” Alex asks. I blink, meeting his eyes. He’s watching me with exacting, focused attention.
“What about me?” I repeat.
“You said you’re from Tennessee?”
“Oh. Yeah, I’m from Nashville.”
“Are you a fan of country music?”
I tilt my head from side to side in consideration. “Middle of the road, I’d say. My dad’s a songwriter. He’s done some Billboard hits for a few big-name country artists, but lately he’s been into writing folk and bluegrass.”
“And your mom?”
“Died when I was six.”
His shoulders point toward me, and I catch a whiff of his cologne. His lips part in careful hesitation before he says, softly, “Mine too, when I was eleven.”
“Cancer?” I guess, my heart pinching for him.
“Yeah. Ovarian.”
“Lung.”
Alex smiles, just a little. “There it is.”
“What?”
“Our thing in common.”
I snort. “How maudlin.”
Alex shrugs. “So it goes.”
“Got any allergies?” I ask. “That’s a much less depressing thing to have in common.”
“None.”
“Must be nice,” I growl.
Alex smirks. “Tell me them.”
“You got three hours?”
“Then make me a copy of your spreadsheet,” Alex says. “I know you have one. It’s probably color coordinated, each allergen listed by category and subcategory, cross-referenced against level of severity.”
My mouth opens and closes like a guppy fish. “You’re … not wrong.”
He laughs deeply, tilting his head back. There are two buttons undone at the top of his shirt. (I’m pretty sure only one of them was unbuttoned when we left work, but anyway.) Beneath it, I catch a glimpse of his chest. “Come on. I need to know, or I might accidentally kill you, which would be a travesty, because then who would approve my expense reports?”
“I’m allergic to your expense reports.”
“Impossible. I annotate everything, follow protocol to the letter. All for you, Casey.”
The way Alex says my name, in that clear New England accent, is different than I grew up being used to. Most people from home lazily roll the vowels in my name, but Alex says them like he’s doing it on purpose.
“Yeah, well,” I grumble. “You once handed me a file folder that kind of smelled like peanut butter.”
His smile falters. “Seriously, have I ever triggered anything?”
I debate joking that his very presence gives me hives, but I spare him the played-out sarcasm and admit, “I’m allergic to most fragrances, but we’d have to be practically necking for your cologne to have any effect on me.”
Necking? Good Lord.
“Oh.” Alex winces. “I don’t have to wear it. I don’t even like the smell, to be honest. I dated a girl once who got it for me and kept it around for when I wanted to feel put together.”
“It’s really not that big of—oh, fuck.”
I swivel on my bar stool, facing forward and putting a hand over the side of my face to block it from the front door.
Based on social media, I already knew Jack and Jill were in New York this weekend for the Jets game on Sunday, but seriously? Out of all the bars in all the neighborhoods, they had to walk into this one?
Panic blooms in my chest, pumping college memories and boyfriend insecurity and alcohol-induced blood thinning through my veins at hyperspeed. Freddy catches my eye, back from the other end of the bar, and then he peeks behind me like he’s some kind of mind reader.
To be fair, I’m not acting very subtle.
“You hiding from that couple that just walked in?”
“Yes,” I groan quietly.
“Who is it?” Alex asks. He starts to turn, but I grab the loose cotton of his sleeve and yank him still. He lets out a tiny grunt. “Ow. Rug burn.”
“That your ex?” Freddy guesses.
“My ex’s best friend and his fiancée.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Okay, it could be worse.
It could be Lance.
“Who’s the other couple with them?” Freddy asks.
My stomach drops out of my asshole.
“The…” I gulp. “The couple … Describe them.”
“The girl is wearing seven pounds of St. Tropez fake tan, and the guy she’s with is a short king.”
“Oh my fuck, it’s him.”
Of course it’s him. In college, the four of us—Jack, Jill, me, and Lance—spent uncountable weekends together, and looking back, it’s probably a red flag Lance and I didn’t hang out one-on-one very often. But he’s got the worst FOMO of anyone I’ve ever met, and frankly, he and Jack are more codependent than Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan.
Freddy tsks. “That’s rough, kiddo. I hate to break this to you, but your hair is, like, incredibly distinctive.”