Chapter 26 Marcus

As Friday crept closer, caveman instincts I never thought I possessed started to emerge. I ended up going down a Google rabbit hole when I couldn't sleep at night, trying to find out anything and everything I could about Trevor. By the time I realized it was four in the morning and I had researched this prick for so long that my phone was on ‘low power mode,' I had learned his middle and last names, the names of his parents and the approximate price of their house when they bought it twelve years ago, the name of his high school, and the name of every member of the shitty band he was in when he seduced Cass.

That Friday, I was forced out of the fishbowl for most of the morning to do some calls with our lawyer from Alex's empty office. Then I had to lead a staff meeting over lunch, so it wasn't until well into the afternoon that I even had a chance to greet Cass.

She was wearing earbuds and listening to music when I walked in, so I quietly took my seat on the other side of the table. She glanced up and raised her chin in my direction, smirking as she did it. I returned the gesture, smiling back. The exchange was playful, the kind of comfortable exchange I didn't share with many people. Maybe just Alex, actually.

We worked in silence for a while. I had a backlog of emails that could take hours, having been away from my computer for most of the day. One of those emails was from Alex, who hadn't made an appearance in the office—which was typical for him.

Better for me, frankly .

It was a half-hearted apology email for the other day, which I responded to with an equally half-hearted acceptance of his apology. That would be enough of a band-aid to hold us over for the next few weeks, at least.

When I looked up, I saw Cass smiling at her phone. I assumed she was texting Trevor again, which sent a pang of jealousy right through me. But I meant what I said—I wanted her to think of me, and only me. I picked up my own phone and texted her:

Me: What are you smiling about?

Me: It's me, isn't it.

Me: Smiling because you know you're going to be thinking of me all night.

Cass glanced up at me and she let out a sigh. After a few seconds and some rapid typing on her side, she texted back:

Cass: I'll be smiling because I don't have to look at your irrational file naming conventions for a whole evening.

Me: That's the cruelest thing you've ever said to me.

Cass: Crueler than me saying you're an idiot for dropping out of Princeton and your company was built on hypocrisy?

"What did you mean when you said that?" I asked aloud.

Cass met my eyes and she took a deep breath. We had never spoken about this before—not beyond apologizing and putting it behind us. "The hypocrisy?" she asked.

Nod.

"What did two kids from Princeton know about student debt?" she said. "It just felt like you were capitalizing off misery you didn't even understand. That you still don't understand."

Her comment probably would have offended a lot of people in my shoes, but I loved these kinds of debates. Every time interviewers lobbed questions like this at me, I leapt at the opportunity to respond. Alex, on the other hand, avoided them at all costs.

"Is it really capitalizing off something if it addresses the problem?" I asked. "Do I need credibility to address the fact that millions of Americans are suffering under the weight of crippling student debt?"

"The problem isn't the debt," Cass countered, returning my serve. "Paying back debt won't solve the problem. That's like saying you're sorry when you don't really mean it. The problem is so much deeper than the money."

I quietly considered her words—and wondered if she had ever really listened to them before.

"I think you're right," I conceded. "It's not just debt. The problem is a system that asks people to take out tens of thousands of dollars if they even want a shot at getting a job that will make them enough money to enhance their quality of life." I shook my head. "It's an unwinnable game. And I don't want to live in a country that deters people from trying to better themselves. Social mobility is a good thing. Even if you're heartless, you have to admit it's a boon for the economy. It just doesn't make sense to keep huge sections of the population in the red."

"So you actually care about the state of the world," she noted, tilting her head. "Shocking. Rare, these days. You know, my father would have a hell of a good time debating you."

"You think?"

She nodded. "If I weren't estranged, I would love to introduce you two just so I could witness it."

"Do you ever miss them?"

"Sometimes."

I paused. I wasn't actually expecting her to give me a response. In all honesty, I was ready for her to scoff and say no—like she usually did. But there was an earnestness in her expression, one I rarely saw.

"Would you forgive them?" I asked, carefully toeing the boundary.

"I don't see how I could," she replied. "It's a huge mess. There's hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt on the line, not to mention all these unresolved issues between us. It would take an international conflict resolution mediator to even get us started."

"But you have to start somewhere," I offered. "Right?"

"I don't know what the payout would be," she responded honestly. "That was six years ago, and I've built a life without them. It was hard. I probably wouldn't pick it again if I had the chance. But I did it—and now I have a new life."

"Forget about payout. For just a second, think about yourself and how you feel. It sounds like there's something perpetually sitting on your shoulders. This fear of your mother calling you, this urge to pay back your father—those aren't just reactions to them. Those are actual feelings that bite at you day after day. Wouldn't it be worth it to resolve those feelings?"

Cass didn't respond. She simply stared at me, one eyebrow raised.

"I've never told you why I started therapy when I was eight," I continued, giving her something of myself in return. "But I started it because I was adopted out of foster care by a lesbian couple and they thought it would be good for me to talk to someone about the instability I experienced for the first eight years of my life—and they weren't wrong."

Her face tightened the way people's faces always did when I told them about my own little Lifetime movie of a history. "Oh," she murmured. "I'm sorry—"

"For what?" I questioned, shaking my head to reassure her. "Look, I'm fine. You don't have to apologize because I've confronted all of this so it doesn't weigh on me. My birth parents gave me up, I went into foster care, and I'm lucky to have two moms who love me so much it's borderline co-dependent. I can't be angry about any of that. But a big step for me to get to this point was to just forgive my birth parents."

"Have you met them?" she inquired. "Are they still around?"

"I've talked to them a couple times," I admitted. "And they're good people, honestly. They were young and poor and never wanted a kid. They don't even know each other anymore. But I talked to them and it turned out that a lot of the resentment I had over them not wanting me was misplaced. They didn't give me up because they hated me—they did it because they kind of…loved me, in a way." I raised a shoulder, shrugging because I didn't know what else to do. "Your parents didn't do everything right and I don't know shit about them, but god, it sounds like they really loved you, Cass."

She raised an eyebrow. After a beat, she forced a smile and said, "Please tell me you're doing this to make me completely not-horny and not because you're wise and more mature than I am."

"I just care and I just want to give you a point of view. Again, I don't know anything, but I do know that you don't need to ruin your day whenever you think about your parents."

"Thanks, Marcus."

Her face was soft, borderline vulnerable. It was the same look she got on her face when we were lying in bed, catching our breath after we came.

"Are you sure you want to meet up with Trevor tonight? We could get dinner. Keep talking about this."

She shook her head and she was still shaking it when she looked down at her phone. "I should go, actually. I think we're meeting up in Brooklyn."

"Don't go," I said suddenly—blurting it out without really thinking. Fuck. That was probably a mistake. I definitely shouldn't have done that to her.

Cass was frozen in place. "What?" she asked after a beat. "Did you just—"

Quickly, I shook my head. "That was nothing. I shouldn't have said that."

"You really don't want me to go?"

I let my shoulders sag as I leaned forward and rested my arms on the table. "I just want you to do whatever is going to make you happy, Cass. If sleeping with your ex—or any other guy for that matter—is what you want, then you should do it. I'll never, ever tell someone how to live their life. It's been happening to me for years, and I know that it's not sustainable."

She inhaled and exhaled in quick succession, eyes fixed on me.

"I don't know what that relationship was like when it was good," I continued. "To be honest, I don't know anything about relationships. But I do know that if he doesn't treat you well, and if he's no different than the guy who didn't even have the decency to break up with you three years ago, he's not worth it. I don't even care if you pick me. Just don't pick him."

The silence that followed my unplanned monologue was deafening. I regretted speaking. She probably thought I was possessive and pathetic. She probably couldn't wait to get the hell away from me. But instead of bolting like a bat out of hell, Cass walked over and stood next to my chair. "Have a good night," she said. "I'll call you tomorrow afternoon. We'll make plans, okay?"

I nodded.

She leaned down and planted a kiss on my cheek. "Night."

"Night, Cass."

She left. I found myself alone in the office, sitting in the fishbowl, illuminated in the dark. I took out my phone and looked at it, wondering if I should call Alex.

At that point, I was happier being alone.