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When the bartender returns to clear their plates, Simone feels like she’s being rescued from something she can’t put her finger on. He lays the check between them. There’s an awkward snatching as Simone lunges for it, so aggressively she breaks a long red nail, which lands on the counter, bright as blood against her white napkin. It looks like a battle wound. This lunch has felt like a battle—against memories, against time, and, if she’s honest, against the tiniest sliver of regret. It’s always a mistake to meet old lovers. Way too unsettling. Or maybe she’s just had too much gin.
“Girl, get outta here with that. Hand that bill over.” Kwame reaches for it, and in the process his hand does land squarely atop hers, warm and heavy. And so familiar it hurts.
“No way. It’s a thank-you for having me on the panel. Feels good to put on a dress, take the train, come back to our old stomping grounds.” She passes the bartender her platinum card.
“Yeah, these streets bring back memories, all right. I considered suggesting we meet up at the Side Show. It’s still around. But I figured…” He trails off, a rare moment he’s lost for words.
“This was great. My salmon was delicious.”
“Then I guess we’ll get to it. It’s about a ten-minute walk over to Chester Hall.”
Simone signs the check and they head out into the crisp air. They find themselves pausing under the bistro’s yellow-and-white-striped awning, deciding which route is fastest, when Kwame abruptly turns toward her. “Hey, can I hug you?”
It would be rude to say no, so Simone lets herself be taken in his arms, stiffly at first, and then her body easily—too easily—gives way to press against him. She’s at a loss for how to extricate herself from his arms or the emotional churn roiling in her. She also has no idea how to get her mind right and her head back in the game to talk to forty undergrads about following their Pulitzer dreams. Wrenching away from this embrace and marching down the street is a start. Kwame follows a few steps behind, and she can feel him watching her by the way the heat rises in her belly. Just as quickly, she’s overtaken by a shuddering chill. She knows this feeling—it’s her body’s way of sending her a message… or a warning.
CHAPTER FIVE ALEX
Alex’s best friend Connor has always had a knack for showing up when he needs him most, even when it’s a terrible time for it. Just before nine p.m. last night, Connor was banging on Alex’s front door, unannounced, with over-the-top gifts (a Hermès scarf for Simone, a drone for Langston, and a Tiffany decanter with BOSSMAN etched into it for Alex). He then proclaimed he was whisking Alex away for two nights to celebrate his recent promotion.
Alex, who was bleary-eyed from poring over the company’s dismal spreadsheets at the kitchen table, had absolutely zero interest in celebrating, but he didn’t waste his breath trying to beg off, even while Simone, standing stupefied in her bathrobe, shot him daggers. Connor was great at a lot of things, but hearing the word “no” wasn’t one of them.
And this is how Alex finds himself on the deck of a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan, freezing his balls off and trying not to fly over the edge into the white-capped waves as the fishing pole he grips is yanked toward the deep blue waters. It’s a sacrilege to call this vessel a “boat,” though. The SS Lazarus, Connor’s father’s pride and joy, is a sleek Hatteras sportfishing yacht that sleeps eight more than comfortably. Connor has treated it like an Uber this weekend, requesting the full-time captain ferry him to Milwaukee from its usual slip in an exclusive private marina in Chicago.
Seeing Alex struggle and strain with the rod, he comes rushing over. “Whoa! Must be a big one. Here, let me help you.”
Connor joins Alex in wrestling a massive Chinook salmon onto the deck. It flops desperately, its belly smacking loudly against the slick wood before Connor grabs a knife from on top of the nearby cooler and slits the fish open from gill to gill.
“Thanks, Con.” Alex swallows down sour bile. The sight of the blood spilling from the carcass is not helping his nausea.
“It was a team effort!” Connor says, slapping him hard on the back, a blow that’s cushioned by the thick parka that’s barely any match for the unseasonably cold and cruel arctic blast bearing down from Canada.
“No, I mean thanks for this, man.” Alex raises his hand to motion around at the steel-gray horizon and the roiling water stretching in every direction. “This is really hitting the spot. You have no idea.”
This escape was worth dealing with whatever fallout with Simone will be waiting for him at home. He half wishes she would have just railed on him as he threw sweaters and boxers in a duffel, or insisted, in no uncertain terms, that he couldn’t go. Instead, she gave him a forced smile and told him to “have fun” in such a way that it almost ensured he wouldn’t. She also turned down the spa day Connor had planned for her to soften his kidnapping of her husband, claiming there was no way she could get a babysitter on such short notice. Alex will have to devote some hours to figuring out how he’s going to make it up to her. Not just disappearing this weekend, but for being such an asshole these last few weeks. Something tells him a cooler of fresh fish is not going to cut it.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Connor says to Alex with another hearty pat on the back. “I got you. You know that.”
Alex did know that. Since they’d met as teenagers at Tate, Connor has been as good at friendship as he is at everything else—lacrosse, finding the perfect hotel in any city, and identifying “unicorn” companies that are about to explode, which had earned him a spot on last year’s Forbes 40 Under 40 VCs To Watch list. Alex is hard-pressed to name anything Connor doesn’t excel at or doesn’t just come to naturally. The only thing he can come up with is humility, but somehow even Connor’s cockiness is appealing to people.
“I mean, I did literally save your life that one time… you remember that?”
How could Alex forget? Well, actually, he doesn’t remember the night at all, thanks to all the booze he downed at the twenty-first birthday party Connor threw for him on this very boat. What he does remember is waking up in the hospital. Apparently, between his drunken stupor and his six-foot-three frame, he managed to hit his head so hard on the low ledge at the bottom of the stairs to the galley below that he’d been knocked unconscious. While the other guys insisted he’d sleep it off, Connor demanded that they end the party and get to an ER. Would Alex have died of a brain bleed that night or choked on his own vomit if Connor hadn’t made that call? He’ll never know. You could never know how many chances you’ll be given. Alex was not a fan of gaming the odds—he preferred a sure thing. Who didn’t?
“Yeah, I still owe you, dude. I appreciate it. You know what I would appreciate even more? Getting the fuck out of this cold.”
“Pussy,” Connor says, but he’s smiling and already leading the way into the cozy cabin with creamy leather sofas and inch-thick plush carpeting that probably has no business on a boat. Somehow there are already two glasses of whisky waiting on the coffee table. This is Connor’s brand of family wealth—the 1 percent kind where shit materializes before you ask for it, when you merely just think of a need or a desire and it’s provided by an invisible staff. It was something that, even at a school full of rich kids, made everyone else seem poor. Private jets will do that.
Connor raises a glass. “A toast to you, my man!”
Alex contemplates the weighty tumbler he’s gripping with two hands in his lap, silent.
“And to us. To finally getting to hang. We don’t do it enough.”
The way Connor looks at him tells Alex that he’s about to make him spill his guts about his life. For all his bravado, the man loves a heart-to-heart. After going to a ten-day silent retreat a few years back, “vulnerable” became his favorite word. But he also knows Connor will bide his time before pushing. There’s a warm-up dance to these things involving talking basketball, politics, and reminiscing about at least twenty stories from the past before they get into anything real. This will give Alex a chance to down at least three more drinks.
The subject pretty quickly turns to Connor’s love life, as it always does. Alex gets an earful about Connor’s current love triangle involving, improbably enough but right on brand for Connor, a Belgian flight attendant and “someone high up in the Democratic Party.”
Alex shouldn’t be surprised that his friend has a way with the ladies. Connor has a mojo he’s spent years cultivating and a bottomless bank account. But he’s not exactly… attractive. His eyes are set too close together around a nose that protrudes so much it’s hard to notice anything else, and his hairline is retreating faster than the Florida coastline.
