“No, no!” Jill says, backing away. “You stay, we’ll go.”
Jack has yet to utter a word, but he couldn’t look more in love with his fiancée than he does when she says they’re going. Alex tries to sit back down, but he stumbles slightly, his butt missing the bar stool, and he nearly busts it seconds before he catches himself on the countertop. I do my best to ignore him, focusing on waving goodbye to my college ex-buddies. “Have a great time at the game on Sunday, and good luck with wedding planning!”
“Thanks! Good luck with … Um.” Jill gestures vaguely at Alex, who is engaged in an intense, nonverbal conversation with Freddy. “Everything.”
I shift forward again when they turn toward the door. My eyes flutter closed.
“Going,” Freddy says. “Go-iiiiing.” I count off one second. Two. Three. “Gone.”
My breath finally spills out, for the first time since they walked in, just as two shot glasses hit the counter with a clink.
“That was more stressful than a third-round interview,” Alex huffs.
I laugh. It starts off awkward, almost like a coping mechanism, but a few seconds later I’m really laughing, clutching my stomach, heaving breaths of air that aren’t nearly enough. I snort, covering my mouth with my hands. Then Alex is laughing, too, the sound deep and amused, and when I meet his eyes, there’s no regret in them. He shakes his head at me, and I think, Yeah, we’re friends now. Kissing for cover makes us friends now.
“I never even got their names.” Laugh lines crinkle the corners of his eyes.
“Jack and Jill.”
There’s a beat of silence. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Freddy pours Patrón into our shot glasses, then dresses them up with salt and a lime wedge. “This one’s on me.” He sets them in front of us. “Because that was immaculate entertainment. I love my job.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The drunker and more loose lipped we become, the shinier and foggier the room gets, the deeper Alex’s voice goes—it all equates directly to the matrix of work talk versus personal talk.
Every few seconds, I’m learning things that are tilting the axis of my world.
At the office, Alex is full of charisma and charm, always at the center of the kind of attention that never feels undeserved. But now, it’s clear he can sustain that behavior only in spurts. I’ve never spent such a long stretch of time around him before, and it’s obvious the way his mind ebbs and flows, his attention switching as often as his mood. One minute, he’ll be laughing at the girl down the bar screaming at Freddy, “A blow job shot, can you make me a blow job shot?” Then, two minutes later, he’s nodding with quiet, steady attention as I explain the situation with my parents, because he abruptly changed course and asked.
“Do you consider Jerry a parent?” Alex asks me.
I nod. “Jerry would have settled for just being my dad’s husband in my eyes. He let me make all the calls about our relationship. But he’s too nurturing a person to be anything but a parent to me. And I think he always wanted to help raise a kid.”
It feels greedy. Two living dads who love me, when Alex’s father has kept him at arm’s length all his life. But he only nods softly at my words, brushing a hand through his hair, and orders another old-fashioned.
“So, what about holidays? Summer breaks?” I ask. “Did your dad…”
“No,” he says, voice flat. “Linda, my dad’s wife, loathes any time that she’s forced to acknowledge my existence, so my mom’s sister took care of me. She still lives in their parents’ place in Queens. My aunt was never my legal guardian, but I mostly went between her place and boarding school. She and my dad had some kind of arrangement they never asked my opinion about.” Alex blinks, coming out of a trance. When he catches my expression, he smiles easily. “My cousins are the coolest. When we were younger, they were like my brother and sister. Still are. One lives in LA, and the other lives in Seoul.”
My breath eases, now that I know he has living family who love him.
“Cooler than Freddy?”
He blanches. “Freddy is my lamest acquaintance.”
“And yet.” I smile just a little, tracing the rim of my newly topped-up cocktail. “He’s what you led with.”
The way Alex looks at me then, his eyes sparkling, it’s almost like he’s thinking, Finally, you’re playing with me.
Some unfathomable amount of time later, only measured by the drinks I consume—conspiratorially nicknamed the Jack and Jill and advertised as Sleight of Hand’s drink of the night—there’s a tap on my shoulder. When I turn around, Brijesh is standing there.
He’s the last person I’m expecting to see.
“Brijy!”
I fling myself into his arms, but he doesn’t hug me back. He pulls away and puts his palms on either side of my face. My cheeks get pushed together.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for three hours, Case. You were supposed to meet me at the restaurant at eight o’clock. I literally had to track you down on Find My Friends to make sure you were okay.”
I cringe away from him. “I—I forgot.”
Brijesh blinks. “Casey Maitland doesn’t forget things. You once wrote out thirty-three decimals of pi to win a drinking game.”
“We were just…” On reflex, I point my thumb at Alex, but I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
Brijesh follows my finger, and when he sees Alex, his whole body visibly relaxes. “Oh, hey, man. I didn’t realize that was—” Brijesh shifts. Scratches his head. “Okay, so this is, um—I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” I ask. “This is perfect. Are we still getting dinner? I’m starving.”
“Casey.” Brijesh pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s ten o’clock. I literally found a stray gay walking past and invited him inside the restaurant because I couldn’t bear to cancel the reservation and lose my opportunity to review the chef first.”
“You could have just eaten alone?”
His nose wrinkles. “Fuck no. I am way too narcissistic to eat a nice meal without someone I can explain the dish to.”
Outside, the daylight is completely gone. In a mad scramble, I reach for my purse hooked under the bar and fumble for my phone. Missed calls. Dozens of texts from Sasha and Brijesh. When I turn back around, Brijesh is on the phone, one hand on his hip in a fatherly fashion.
“Yeah, I found her. She’s fine.” There’s a pause, and then Brijesh says, “Alex Harrison, the guy from—yeah.”
“Who is that?”
“Sasha. She’s meeting us later.”
“Hi, Sasha!” I shout at Brijesh’s face, stumbling a little bit.
When he hangs up, Alex stands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get in the middle of—”
“No, it’s not his fault!” I jump in. “Put all the blame on me, Brij.”
He holds up a hand. “You’re both grown-ups. It’s just that we’re all each other has on this island, you know? Better safe than sorry.”
Alex nods, setting his mouth into a firm line. “I get that.”