Page 53 of Due Diligence

“Good.”

“Yep.”

We were both staring at each other, our gazes unyielding. “We’re really good at this, aren’t we?” I commented after a beat, speaking seriously this time. “Banter. We’re like the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of banter or something.”

“We are. It’s kind of a shame, really.”

“What?”

“That we have to go back to hating each other,” she explained. “It seems like a waste.”

“Fuck it. You’re my friend now.” I shifted in my seat so I was facing her. “Assuming you can handle that. You’re not going to keep trying to seduce me, right?”

“Me? Please. You’re the one who forced your way into the data room.” Cassie smiled. “I’m kidding. I can be your friend.”

“Deal,” I said. I held out my hand to shake hers.

She took it. And when we shook hands, the sensation was so unlike the first time. Her hand didn’t feel bony and delicate in mine. On the contrary, it felt warm and recognizable, almost comforting.

“I’m glad that’s settled.”

“Same.”

“And Marcus?”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“You actually really do need to leave the data room now…”

“Fine, fine,” I declared as I got to my feet. “I’m going. But I have one last thing to say.”

“What?”

I lingered by the door, staring at her as she sat comfortably on my couch. “I just hope that one day we both find someone who loves us just half as much as you love this fucking data room.”

“Bite me,” she exclaimed as she threw a couch pillow at me, narrowly missing me as I darted out of the room.

Chapter 15: Cass

The entire ride home on the subway, I stared off into space and replayed my conversation with Marcus in the data room. Disappointment melded with an odd sense of relief as I revisited the scene again and again, the details clear and the words permanent. The disappointment came from our mutual decision to just be friends. The relief came from the fact that this wasn’t just a drunken escapade—like most of my hookups were.

Those two feelings, disappointment and relief, simply didn’t complement each other. The relief fed my disappointment, which gnawed on it like a parasite. The only way I could quash this disappointment was to quash the relief—and that meant I had to get over Marcus.

That should have been easy. After all, I spent approximately ten years in enmity with him. The last two weeks had been nothing short of catastrophic. Just seventy-two hours ago, we were arguing on a New York City street. And sure, every single New Yorker did that at some point in their life, but that stilldidn’t make it pleasant. I should have had no trouble whatsoever getting over this guy—this quiet, Apple Watch wearing, too-rich-for-his-own-good, bad at accounting, condescending guy.

It wasn’t easy though. At all. And as I walked out of the subway and sped back to my shitty apartment, all I could think about was that I missed him. I’d just spent the last ten or eleven hours a mere six inches away from him at all times, andstillI wanted to know exactly what he was doing—and if he was thinking about me while he did it.

Bethany was out when I got home, so I spent a few minutes making myself dinner in an attempt to keep my mind busy. That didn’t work, so I followed up dinner with a coldish shower and put onThe Exorcist, which was easily one of the least sexy films of all time (second only to theTwilightfilmNew Moon—and I would be willing to argue that until my dying breath).

But not evenThe Exorcistcould distract me from Marcus fucking Fitz. He owned my brain, and I had a sneaking suspicion he knew it too. That was when I concluded it was time to completely revisit my strategy. If I couldn’t ignore him, I was going to indulge in him.

I paused the film and I went to my bedroom. I flopped onto my bed, took out my laptop, and I typed Marcus’s name into Google. The first thing that popped up was his Wikipedia article.

Briefly, I hovered over the link and considered just how surreal of a scenario this was—that a guy who made me come in a nightclub bathroom had a legitimate Wikipedia article, complete with “Early Life,” “Career,” and “Personal Life,” sections.

Under the “Personal Life” section, the page read:

Fitz is an outspoken advocate for addressing the negative stigmatization of mental health supports and is a proponent of therapy. According to Fitz, “Going to therapy was the only thing that got me through the first years of being a founder.I talk to my therapist once a week and it’s always the best use of my time.” In 2015, he made a $500,000 donation to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and was the keynote speaker at their annual gala.

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