“Hey, Mack! Like my outfit?” Chelsea grinned. She was tiny, and the sweatshirt and high-tops looked ridiculous on her.
“I always said that product is the most creative team at the company,” he said. Isabel was silent, and, although he wasn’t looking at her at the moment, he could feel her glaring at him. “Would you mind…I just need to chat with Isabel for a second.”
“Of course. No problem! Isabel, I’ll catch up with you later.”
Isabel nodded and smiled. “Yup. See ya, Chels.” As soon as Chelsea walked away, her smile disappeared. “Please tell me you’re not about to attempt to have a serious conversation with me at a going-away party.” She drained her drink and set it on the cocktail table next to them.
“Depends on your definition of serious,” Mack said. Isabel’s face was impassive. “No, I mean, I just…” Ugh. He was still thinking about the tweet. Might as well ask her about it. “Did you see this tweet that went up a few minutes ago?”
“‘This tweet,’” Isabel repeated. “Can you be a little more specific?”
He took out his phone, opened Twitter, and found the tweet. Isabel read it, her face still a blank. “No, I hadn’t seen it. What about it?”
“Just seems like an interesting coincidence.”
She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea what you’re trying to insinuate, but whatever it is, I didn’t do it. But just so you know…there’s a reporter who’s been asking around about us.”
“Wait. What?”
Isabel shrugged. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It’s not like you’ve been looking out for me.”
He realized as she was talking that the sick thing was that if she suddenly smiled and said, Hey, just kidding, I broke up with Andrew and I want us to go back to the way we were, he would take her back. Not that there was anything to really go back to. He tried to tell himself that he just missed the sex, the texting, the charge he got from seeing her in the office and knowing that they shared a secret. But maybe he actually missed…her. She got him. She knew how hard he had worked to make this company what it was, had seen him start it from almost nothing. She had been there for the late nights and the app updates that crashed and the funding presentations that had bombed. And he got her too—he knew how much she longed to be taken seriously. She was so pretty that people assumed that she wasn’t smart, although she actually was, and that she didn’t need to work hard. Even her family seemed to feel that way; he heard her on the phone with her mom once, explaining that she couldn’t come home to Connecticut that weekend to go sailing with the family because she had to work, and her mother just had not understood this concept at all. He admired that she’d stood up to her mom like that and that she took work as seriously as she did. At least, he had admired that in her.
“You know,” he said softly, “we could go back to the way things were.” As soon as he said it, he knew it was a mistake. It was the truth—they could go back to the way things were—but it was a possibility that, he saw now, existed only in his own mind.
She scrunched up her face and turned to him, head cocked to one side. “The way things were,” she said. “The way things were. I don’t know what that even means. You and I…we weren’t even really a thing! It went on as long as it did only because we work together. That’s it. We weren’t in love. The sex wasn’t even that good. I don’t know if we even really like each other. And I think the only reason you’re so focused on getting me back is because I’ve moved on. Got that? I’ve. Moved. On.” She squinted at him. “You don’t get it, do you? Because you’ve never not been able to have something you really wanted.”
“I think you’re actually talking about yourself,” he said quietly.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Mack. You know, I was trying to keep our whole thing quiet out of respect for you and respect for Andrew because he used to consider you a friend.” Yeah, right, Mack thought. “But you’re just acting like…ugh. You guys are all the same. You won’t take no for an answer! Let me put it in terms you can understand better…we were not in beta, okay? We just were. Our thing was what it was. It was never going to progress to anything else. Andrew and I, we just, like, launched right away. We brought the product to market and users loved it. We—”
“Okay! I get it.” He hated, with every inch of his being, that Isabel was right. Those were terms he could understand. “God, sometimes I wish we’d just never even met,” he said. Before Isabel could say anything, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around, and there was Jason.
“Hey. You ready to make that toast? I think it’s time.” Jason barely looked at Isabel as he said this.
“Oh—yeah, sure.” They headed to the center of the room, where someone had helpfully put a chair for Mack to stand on. He hoisted himself up and handed Jason his drink. “Ahem, ahem! Could I quickly have everyone’s attention?” It took a moment or two for the room to quiet down, but soon everyone’s eyes were on him. “And could I get Casper Kim to step up to the, er, podium. Or whatever this is. The chair. Step up to the chair, Casper!” Everyone cheered and hollered as Casper made his way through the crowd.