Page 101 of Due Diligence

I nodded. “It’s good.”

The bartender came by, offering a welcome reprieve from this conversation. While Trevor started asking him questions, I took out my phone. Briefly, disappointment passed over me. I sort of expected (maybe hoped) to see a message from Marcus asking how my night was going. And in part self-interest, I wondered what he was doing without me.

“Fucking amateurs,” Trevor muttered as he took a sip of the drink the bartender had just handed him. Rum and coke, as usual. “Can you believe how much ice he put in here? I’m not paying for it, that’s for sure.”

I drank from my beer to keep from responding—to keep from reminding him that he already paid for the damn thing.

“Listen, I’m making a killing out in Denver,” he said, inhaling sharply through his teeth after another sip from his rum and coke. Apparently, therewasn’ttoo much ice in it.

“When did you move to Colorado?”

“Three years ago.”

He delivered this nonchalantly, but I could put two and two together—I could put any two numbers together, honestly. And it was clear to me: He moved there straightaway from abandoning me in our apartment the weekend I went to Harvard for the business school acceptance weekend in Cambridge.

“Yeah, I’m kind of in the weed scene there, you know,” he went on. “And also just doing some music stuff and chilling with some guys from high school. It’s so rad, Cass. I’m definitely in such a good place.”

“That’s great,” I said, nodding. “For you.”

“One thing missing though,” he commented. He shifted in his stool to face me, putting me in the line of fire of his full body charm. I knew this body well. I knew this body like I knew my own. The only other body I knew as well was Marcus’s.

Marcus. I wondered if he was home tonight, spending the evening with Frank and Sammy. Frank probably missed me. Sammy definitely did too. When I was at Marcus’s apartment, both of them circled my ankles like little sharks in the water, not predatory—more territorial. Like they wanted to stay in my orbit and keep out anyone who didn’t pass muster.

“Did you hear me?” he asked, lowering his chin so he could gaze up at me.

Of course I did. And I knew where this was going. “What?” I asked, playing along.

“I miss you,” he continued as he put his hand on top of mine. His hand was cold and damp from his drink. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

“What about me?”

Momentarily, Trevor tightened his gaze. “You know. We were good together.”

“Okay.”

As soon as I said that, he furrowed his brow even tighter. Satisfaction immediately swept over me, dousing me like the tallest, cleanest wave of Hawaii blue water. Marcus did that to me once.Okay. It pissed me off at the time, but it was so grating I knew I needed to try it out next time I wanted to really annoy someone.

“Don’t play with me,” he said. “You remember it. You remember everything.”

“I remember you ghosting me, Trevor. But ghosting kind of feels like an inadequate way of putting it, now that I think about it….you ghost people you don’t care about. When you doit to your girlfriend of three years, it’s something else. Especially when she torpedoed her relationship with her parents to be with you.” After I finished speaking, I took a long drink from my beer, downing about half of it. After that, I let out a satisfied breath. I stopped short of giving him a smug grin; I wanted to save that for later.

“Well, fuck your parents,” he said. “Right?”

I paused. I slid my hand out from under his and brought it to join my other hand and hold my beer.

“What?” he questioned, noting my movements. “You hate your parents. Or has that changed?”

“We still don’t talk.”

He raised his shoulders. “That’s a good thing. They were horrible to you, babe.”

“They were. But I think they did what they did out of love. You did what you did because…well to be honest, I don’t know why you left me the way that you did.”

Trevor let out a lengthy exhale before he leaned closer to me, just close enough that I could see his freckles in the low bar lights. “Okay, you want the real explanation?”

“Well, I don’t want you to lie to me,” I answered. Snarky, sure. But I didn’t care.

“Look, I just…we went through all this drama with your mom and dad about you wanting to do what you wanted and not wanting them to keep, like, controlling you and your life. And after all that, you decided you wanted to go to business school? And get a fricking MBA?” He shook his head and leaned back. “I was hoping you would have…you know, done something creative.”

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