“Fuck no.”
There are baton-twirling, leotard-wearing people who leave a trail of red glitter on the pavement: “They’ve got to be cold,” Dad mutters. There is a giant Olaf balloon smiling down at us that’s more frightening than it is endearing: “That the joker who likes warm hugs?” I laugh and snap a picture of Olaf to send to Alex, who promptly tells me he sometimes watches Frozen just to feel something.
“Is that Zack Travis?” Jerry asks, catching the low tenor of a country singer as the next float comes into earshot.
Dad bursts out laughing. “I think it is.”
“Oh my God.” I touch my mittens to my mouth. “Is he singing…”
The lyrics float toward us, clearer now. Rollin’, tumblin’, stumblin’ down that wretched road, the road to heartbreak, I’m not sure I’ll ever wake up again, but I don’t mind—
“She can break my heart anytime!” I scream. “Oh my God, he would be singing your least favorite song—”
“Ridiculous lyrics,” Dad mutters. “Repetitive chords. Someone should have a word with Zack’s songwriter.”
I take a video of him smiling awkwardly as Zack’s float passes by, post it to my Instagram story with the caption IYKYK. Thirty minutes later, I’ve got a handful of replies from friends, a handful more from confused strangers who follow me only because of YouTube, and a DM from Alex: WTF, even I know that song and I’ve never even been to the South!
In a state of utter confusion, I call him immediately.
“Casey?”
“You’ve never been to the South?!” I screech.
“Um.” There’s shuffling on the other end of the line. Someone’s dog barking. “No?”
“What the fuck, Alex?”
“Who’s Alex?” Jerry asks. I duck away, pressing a mitten to my opposite ear so I can hear Alex better.
“Miami?” I ask. “New Orleans? Austin?”
“No, no, and no,” Alex says. “To quote Casey Maitland, it just never happened for me.”
“Charleston. Atlanta.”
“Wait, I’ve been to the Atlanta airport!”
I smack a hand to my forehead. “All right. This is a thing I need time to process. Goodbye, Alex.”
He laughs, and I want to capture the sound, steal it from my speaker and put it in my pocket for later. “Goodbye, Casey. Happy Thanksgiving.”
* * *
We go shopping at Hudson Yards on Black Friday, which is a logistic disaster, but Dad gets a new leather satchel from an obscure kiosk in the mall, and Jerry thinks the Vessel is the coolest, so I count it as a win. Saturday, we museum-hop—MoMA, the Met, the Museum of Natural History—flying through them at rapid speed, the only apparent way to keep three successive museums interesting. It’s my first time visiting any of them, and although I was skeptical at first, I’ve come around to the idea that maybe there’s something to be said for a tourist’s approach to the island.
On Sunday we visit Times Square, then hole up in the M&M’s store while we wait out the frozen sleet pouring down on the city. When Dad lines up to buy our selection of treats, Jerry asks to take my picture in front of the rainbow M&M wall. Not our picture, my picture. I balefully agree, standing in front of it during a break in children, hands stiffly by my sides, feeling like a world-class idiot.
When Jerry lowers his cell phone, he says, “You look happier.”
“Of course I do,” I retort. “Five minutes ago, I was slipping on ice and trying to dodge someone who wanted to sell me a walking tour, and now I’m literally smiling for your camera.”
Jerry shakes his head. “Happier than you were in college. I couldn’t tell then, which I’m loath to admit, but I can tell now because the difference is kind of astounding.”
My eyebrows draw together. “Am I really that easy to read?”
Jerry smiles softly. “Yes, darling.”
Still a thing I need to work on. Must get that into my bullet journal. Learn to be more mysterious. Don’t shout your emotions through facial expressions!
“Is it because of the city, or the job, or the boy named Alex?” Jerry asks.
All of the above, my mind supplies. But really, those are just inputs, variables for an equation that adds up to the sum total of whatever’s in my eyes Jerry noticed when I smile. I’m the one who made the decision to include them—the job, the city, the boy named Alex.
I push my damp hair out of my face and smile again. “Honestly, Jer … I think it’s because of me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I manage to spend all of Thanksgiving break carefree, but the following three weeks are indomitably overtaken by presentation prep. Don blocks off a four-hour chunk every afternoon on my calendar so we can fine-tune the financial components of the presentation. Most days, we go until seven at night or later, and sometimes Fari helps, too. She understands some of the urgency, but only because I told her what Molly said, about the success of this project correlating to what role I’d be a good fit for in London.
That’s not even to say how much Alex’s career is riding on it. For all the work I’m doing, he has me beat a hundred times over. He stays at the office late into the night, collaborating with Gus and the rest of their team to hammer out the bulk of the presentation: advertising hopefuls, lead contributor profiles, social media statistics, brand identity, graphic design, marketing pushes, growth strategies. The list goes on.
The convivial, outgoing, could-talk-to-a-wall Alex shuts off completely. Whenever I visit him on thirty-seven (under the guise of a financial question, but really so I can check on his mental health), he’s all business, wrapped up in a fog of caffeine, Adderall, and a wrinkled shirt he likely slept in.
The night before the presentation, we’re together in his war room cleaning everything up when a ding from his phone catches both of our attention. Out of the corner of my eye I spot the name Robert Harrison visible, signaling a new email.
“He’s…” I blink. “Emailing you?”
Alex glances at his phone and nods. “Yeah. He’s helping with … this.” He gestures around the war room vaguely: notes on his whiteboard, the posters pinned to each wall. “He loved your slides, by the way. You did a great job designing that.”
“You—you showed him the presentation?” I ask.
He stiffens at my expression. “Yeah.”
“On your work email?” I all but cry. I’m more worried than I am angry. I know this girl who leaked her company’s private sales data, and now she can’t get a job in the whole industry because IT outed her.
“No, my personal email. Alex-loves-soccer-at-gmail-dot-com,” he says with a smirk.
But that’s even worse, because it means he knew he was doing something wrong. Alarm bells are going off in my head, which means they’re going off on my face, too.
“What’s the big deal?” Alex asks. “Robert offered to help, and I figured, why not?”