Chapter 8 Marcus

Cassie departed and I was left staring dumfounded at the front door to the office, where she had just slipped out into the early afternoon with the most self-satisfied look on her face.

What. The. Fuck .

Maybe this was a test. Maybe she wanted to see if I would take advantage of her absence to go into her beloved data room. That had to be it. There was just no way she could already be done—no way in hell .

Six-second reset .

I took out my binder and spent a few minutes writing, mostly about being in Cassie's presence. According to Dr. Jensen, I needed to consider who I was mad at: Cassie ten years ago, or Cassie today. After a few minutes of writing, I came to a conclusion: I was a dickhead and I couldn't be angry at Cassie for quickly cleaning up a mess I made precisely for her to clean up.

I shot a text over to Dr. Jensen: Revelation: I think I resent her for being as good at this job as she said she was. I think I wanted to see her fail…

He responded: Glad you're being objective. Looking forward to talking about this soon.

With a flourish, I flipped the lid on my binder and leaned back in my seat, drumming my hands on my stomach. I regretted not asking Cassie for a coffee; I could have gone for one right then.

I was lost in my thoughts for a moment when my inbox pinged on my laptop, reminding me I had more on my plate than thinking about Cassie Pierson. I opened up my email. At the top of my inbox, I saw a new message with the subject line: Going live tomorrow on Forbes.com . As soon as I saw that subject line, my pulse started to quicken.

Over the years, Alice—one of the editors at Forbes , the business magazine—had become a close friend of mine. Neither of us really planned for that, but we spent so much time emailing back and forth about Alex and the consistently disastrous interviews he gave, that it was sort of inevitable. Her message read:

Marcus,

I thought I would give you a heads up about what we're going to run tomorrow. It's already prepped to go live, so I don't think there's anything we can change here….really just sending this along as a courtesy. Hope you're doing well and let me know if you want to grab a drink sometime soon.

-Alice

Damn it. I could already tell something was off; Alice only sent these brief messages when there was a bad moon on the rise. I hovered over the document attached to the email, the little pointer just sitting there on top of the Microsoft Word icon.

Six-second reset.

I steeled myself, clicked the attachment, and waited for it to save to my desktop. It took another beat for me to collect my resolve and to open it.

Over the years, people had told me I made mountains out of molehills. And sure, I would concede that maybe I could be overdramatic when it came to something as simple as opening a copy of an interview my best friend did with one of the preeminent business magazines in the world. But my best friend was Alex Larson—and I'd learned over the years that Alex Larson often warranted an overreaction.

The article was titled: "The Data Debate," with the subtitle: Lex Larson has a message for all of us: You don't own your data anymore.

At once, my stomach started to feel like someone had pinched a small section of my insides and was slowly twisting it into a knot. This feeling magnified by the second, growing tighter as I continued to read the article. Paragraph after paragraph added insult to injury, and by the time I reached the last line of the article, my anxiety had hit a peak. One thing was certain: I was going to have to clean up an absolute shitstorm.

My feet did the work for me for the next minute because my brain was cloudy. I made it across the office at an even, measured clip—one that wouldn't raise alarm bells with any of the employees working at the open desks. When I got to Alex's office, I didn't knock. Fuck that. I didn't care what he was doing; this was now the single most important thing on our plates.

His blue eyes swerved up to meet me when I walked into his office unannounced and shut the door behind me. He was reclining in his chair with his feet balanced on his desk, phone in hand.

"You good?" he asked, even though he knew I wasn't. I could tell by the way his gaze drifted down to my tightened fist and then back up to my face.

"What do you think?"

He ticked both eyebrows upwards before he took his feet off his desk. "Let me guess," he said. "More trouble with Cassie Pierson?"

"Cassie?" I clarified. "No. I mean—yes. But I'm not here about her. I'm here about Forbes, Alex."

"Yeah?" he asked. He clasped his hands together and leaned forward on the surface of his desk, his weight pressing on his forearms. He then had the audacity to grin. "Did Alice send you—"

"Motherfucker," I interjected. "You didn't use a single one of the acceptable talking points I wrote for you. Are you out of your mind?"

He glanced to the left and then back to me, as if there were some invisible crowd in the room that he thought would side with him. His expression dripped with confusion. "You do know it was an interview with me , don't you? I have a right to say what I want to say, not just what you tinker together with the PR team."

I held up a hand, motioning for him to be quiet. I had to fold my lips over and close my eyes for a beat while I collected myself, before saying, "The only reason we still need to keep a PR team on retainer is because of you. You can't put this kind of stuff into print."

"Relax."

"No, I'm not going to relax," I objected as I took a step forward towards the desk between us. "There's now evidence of you saying you think people are—and I quote, ‘up their own butts about data they don't even understand.'"

When I recited that line from the article, Alex smirked. And as if that smirk weren't enough, this clown then had the nerve to snort and cover his hand with laughter.

Imbecile .

"Why are you laughing?"

"Because it's hysterical. Come on. You have to admit that's a great line."

I gritted my teeth because I didn't even know where to start. Part of me wanted to tell Alex that he had clearly been rich and handsome for too long, because nothing about that quote was remotely close to funny. Another part of me wanted to resign where I stood. Another part of me wanted to reach over, pick up the can of pamplemousse La Croix on his desk, and pour it over his idiotic Patagonia vest. And yet another part of me knew I couldn't do any of those things.

"I'm going to have to call our lawyer about this," I said once I came up with the words. "I don't think I can kill the article, so we're going to have to get ahead of it."

"It's not a big deal," Alex insisted as he stood. He strolled around the side of the desk and planted in front of me. "Lighten up."

"Don't," I warned.

He put a hand on each of my shoulders, squeezing them. He raised his chin so our eyes were level. "Dude, it's fine. Maybe people will like it. You know, I stand by what I said in the article: User data is helpful for marketing purposes. It's not like people are using it for evil or something."

I furrowed my brow, careful not to break eye contact. "Please tell me you're messing with me. Please don't tell me I've professionally bound myself to someone who thinks personal privacy is overrated."

Six-second reset.

Twelve seconds.

"Don't worry about it," he stated, his expression flat. "We're good."

When I took a step back, it broke the grip he had on my shoulders. I continued to watch him, reticent to trust his words. I'd known Alex for too long to fall for any of his strategies. His deflections, his charm—there was more here. I just didn't know what.

"Clear your calendar," I instructed. "I'll get our lawyer on the line."

"Bullshit," Alex declared. He walked around his desk to pick up his phone again. "And I don't have time for this."

"What are you even doing in here?"

But I'd already lost his attention. He was scrolling on his phone, one hand sitting on the top of his head where it rested on his neatly styled, sandy hair. "Just planning shit for my birthday party. Did you like the DJ I used last year? Because he raised his rates, like, two hundred percent, which feels kind of exploitative, right?"

"I don't care, Alex."

Heavily, he exhaled through his nostrils and looked at me once again. "You can't let this go?"

"Nope." I shook my head. "If you're busy—fine. I'll deal with it." Like I always did . "Can I use your office to make calls?"

"Sure." He patted the top of his chair. "Go wild. I think I'm going to head out anyway. It's Friday, after all."

"Congrats."

Alex paused, a frown settling on his face. "Okay, I get that you think I made a mistake, but are you seriously angry at me over this?"

"Of course I am," I responded as I took a seat in his chair. "It's a Friday—you just said it yourself. And while you're off booking douchebag DJs and probably screwing some trust fund brat who wants to make a clean transition from her daddy's house to yours, I'm going to have to sit here and clean up your mess."

"Don't act like you don't love it," he sneered. "Come on. Look at you, sitting there with your laptop clutched to your chest, just delighted that you have the lawyer's phone number memorized. You think I can't tell how much you love swooping in? Please."

"Fuck you."

"No, fuck you , Marcus," Alex snapped as he shoved his phone into his vest pocket. He walked forward and bowed low, fixing a glare at eye level. "I made you into a goddamn millionaire. Do you get that? So don't come into my office and act like you're doing me any favors."

I didn't say a word; all I had for him was vitriol—and that wasn't the way this relationship worked. I didn't get to say what was really on my mind. I didn't get to lash out or rattle off one caustic comment after another. No, that wasn't my job, even if every instinct I had was begging me to tell him how I really felt.

"What were you even going to do tonight?" he continued. "Sit at home with all your pets and send sad little emails to Alice, hoping she'll pay attention to you? I fucked her, by the way. So if you really want to kill the story, why don't you remind her of that ."

Under the desk, my hand was shaking. I could feel the blood boiling in my ears and the tension welling in my throat.

Fuck.

Fuck .

I hated him sometimes. I hated the way he knew exactly what to say to get me to this point. He saw through me, every time. It was why I'd been following him around since the day we showed up at Princeton ten years ago—strangers and roommates turned into lifelong business partners.

He picked up his backpack from the floor by his desk and raised his chin in my direction. The gesture was subtle but spoke volumes: He got the last word.

"See you," he commented as he turned towards the door.

As soon as he left, I released the breath I'd trapped in my lungs, holding it for so long they stung with pain. When I looked down at my hands, I saw I had squeezed my fists together so tightly that my fingernails cut into my palms. It took a few minutes for them to stop shaking.

***

I talked through the situation with our lawyer, Margaret, who agreed that calling her was the right thing to do.

Of course it fucking was .

Margaret told me the next best thing to do was to grovel to Alice to get her to kill the story—screw my dignity. To my relief, it didn't really come to that. After a couple of calls to Alice, she agreed to stop the article. I didn't use what Alex told me—the thing about him sleeping with her. I thought about it though. When I heard her voice, I thought about him wordlessly seducing her, like he did with so many women. A wink. A raised chin. A small smile. A cock of his head to the side in the direction of somewhere private. It was so easy for him, and always would be.

Instead, I just candidly told Alice about what I was facing: The tenuous $500 million deal on the table. I didn't try to manipulate her or even try to garner sympathy from her. I just told her the truth: This article could cost me hundreds of millions of dollars if it hit the internet. We ended the call with an agreement that I would be indebted to her for the rest of my life.

Despite this small victory, I left Alex's office with that constricting feeling still laced throughout my chest. Regardless of the fact that I dove on yet another grenade for Libra and emerged relatively unscathed, it came at a cost. An entire lost day of work. A fight with Alex. The lingering fragments of the digs he took at me. What pained me even more was that he was right: I was probably going to go home, sit by myself with Frank and Sammy, and write in my binder.

As I passed by some of the engineers in the middle of the room, they beckoned me over. There were six of them still at the office, clearly not working anymore, but drinking from the beer tap Alex insisted we install in the kitchen.

Hannah, the youngest person on staff, had a box of donuts on her desk. She was fresh out of MIT and had emailed me personally when she was a freshman and said, I know I can't come work for you yet, but I just want you to know that I'll be applying for a job in four years and hope you'll consider me for a role .

"Want one?" she asked, nodding her chin at the box of donuts.

"You have no idea," I said as I took a glazed. When I bit into it, I realized I hadn't eaten since breakfast. That was typical for my workdays; sometimes I got so deep in whatever fire I was extinguishing that I lost track of myself.

"Big plans this weekend?" asked Diego, another one of the engineers who worked on UX design.

I shook my head and leaned against Hannah's desk, perching there as I ate my donut. "Not really. What about you?"

Diego nodded. "My mom is in town. Think I'm going to take her to see the Statue of Liberty."

Hearing that, I grimaced. "Why? Do you hate her?"

My question drew out some laughter from the other staff, but I didn't let it go to my head. They would laugh at pretty much anything I said, not because I was funny but because that was what happened when you became a millionaire before thirty.

"Nah, she's just never been," Diego explained. "Hey, can I bring her by on Monday to look around?"

"Fine by me," I confirmed. I stood. "Listen, you should all go home. It's Friday. Go have fun and be young."

"Look who's talking," Jesse murmured, which incited more laughs.

Smiling, I brushed it off. "I've got some more due diligence stuff I have to do. And you should all appreciate that."

"We definitely do," Hannah said as she began to pack up her backpack. "Seriously, Marcus. We're so excited for this to happen."

I glanced over at the fishbowl, where Cassie was working at her laptop. I released a sigh as I stared at her, dreading the idea of facing her after the day I'd just endured. "Thanks, guys. Wish me luck."

When I walked into the fishbowl, she looked up from her screen and nodded at me. "Hey."

"Hey." I walked over to my chair, practically fell into it, and released an exhale.

Cassie was watching me over the top of her laptop. She raised an eyebrow and said, "You should go home. We can finish whatever is left for today on Monday."

Her recommendation surprised me. I was actually expecting her to tell me we needed to work late tonight to stay on track.

"Yeah?"

"I think we both need it."

I found myself nodding in agreement. Little did she know, she was the first person in weeks to jump over the annoying conversation about whether I was okay—when I obviously wasn't okay. I was reticent to admit I was grateful for that.

"Did you really finish organizing the legal docs?" I asked as I picked up my laptop to put it in my backpack.

She nodded without looking at me.

"Wow," I murmured. "Well, that's good."

"No big deal," she assured me, which had to be a lie.

I paused as I took my keys out of the pocket of my backpack, feeling that familiar tinge of uncertainty. I was missing something. Quickly, I ran through my usual morning choreography before I left my apartment: phone, wallet, keys, laptop, water bottle…binder.

"Where's my binder?" I asked, frowning as I looked around the conference room. Like an idiot, I even stooped and glanced under the table, despite the fact that it was transparent.

"Your what?" Cassie paused with her bag on her arm.

"My binder," I repeated as I turned to face her. "It's black, one-inch. Has some spreadsheets in the front. Unlabeled. I had it right here."

She flipped her hair away from her shoulder as she straightened her spine. "I put it in the data room."

The fucking data room .

I stopped suddenly, replaying her words in my head. After a few seconds, I knew there was no mistaking what she just said. "You did what?"

"I put it in the data room," she repeated.

"It's not data though," I responded with my eyes focused on her face as my shoulders started to feel heavy. "It has nothing to do with this."

"It looked like data," Cassie insisted, frowning. "And I just assumed—"

"You just assumed the only thing I have going on right now is your precious data room? Jesus Christ, Cassie." I dropped my backpack into my chair, which made it spin. "Are you serious right now?"

"I'm sorry—"

"Do you have any idea what you've just done?"

"Obviously not," she shot back, arms folded. "What's the big deal?"

"Goddamn it," I muttered as I breezed past her towards the door to the fishbowl.

She followed me out of the room, hurrying to keep up with me as I made a beeline for my office. "Stop," she objected, raising her voice as we went. "You can't go in there and I can't take it out of there."

"Excuse me?" I asked, turning to look at her with one hand on the doorknob. Over her shoulder, my six lingering engineers were watching the scene with interest.

Cassie shook her head. "That's part of the security of the room. You're not allowed to go in there anymore, and we're not allowed to take anything out of there."

"But you put something in there that shouldn't be in there."

"It doesn't matter," she was quick to respond. "I can't let you go in there."

"That's my office," I reminded her. "You're telling me I can't walk in there, grab my binder, and walk out?" My voice was so panicked I barely recognized it. But I could feel my pulse thudding in my ears, like the most unforgiving bass line in the history of the world.

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

Unyielding, we glared at each other, wearing matching expressions of indignation. I was holding my teeth together so tightly that my gums felt like they could go numb. I released a breath, exhaling slowly through pursed lips.

"Come on," I said, speaking softly. I didn't break my gaze from her eyes—practically pleading for her to cut me a break. "Don't do this to me right now. Not today."

"This is my job. If I let you do this, the entire deal could—"

I shook my head. "The deal is going to be fine. It's just a personal item, Cassie. Just give me a break, for once."

"Marcus, no ."

It was only then I realized this wasn't a battle I could win. There was no way in hell she was going to let me break this stupid policy, which meant my binder—the place where I'd been desperately trying to keep my life together—was going to be out of reach for forty-something more days.

"You're really something," I told her, still speaking softly so the engineers who continued to watch us couldn't hear. "You've never met a rule that you don't love to follow, right?"

"Calm down."

"I'm plenty calm," I responded, my voice low. "But did you know? Did you know what you were doing when you took my binder?"

She exhaled hard enough to empty her lungs. "I have no idea what's in your binder."

"Liar."

"Don't call me that."

"Oh that's right," I countered with a laugh. "You don't lie. You say whatever the hell you want, with no regard for how it's going to make people feel."

"This again?" she questioned. "Come on , Marcus. How are you going to keep holding that over my head? Just suck it up, for crying out loud."

"Suck it up? Nice. Said the girl who could only handle three months of law school."

As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them. I regretted them in part because Cassie's face suddenly fell in a way I'd never seen before. She folded her lips over and inhaled sharply, squinting her big brown eyes like she was on the verge of tears.

But the main reason why I regretted them was because when I said this to Cassie, all my staff still standing in the office released a cacophony of laughter and ohs at my remark. They giggled, covering their mouths with their fists, and generally behaving like we were a bunch of little fuckwits on the playground or in a Princeton eating club, ridiculing someone for no good reason.

She released that inhale slowly, breathing out as she stared at me. After a few seconds, she shook her head, not moving her eyes away from my face. As she watched me, she raised an eyebrow, before glancing me up and down once.

I felt vulnerable under her gaze. Small, as usual, even though I wasn't. With one perfect, delicate hand, she adjusted her bag on her shoulder.

"Have a good weekend." Her tone was smooth and even, as usual. If she was on the verge of tears before, I saw no hint of that now. Her expression was steely, illegible almost. Without another word, she turned and headed towards the door to the street outside.

"Shit," I muttered as I hurried after her, rushing past my colleagues who were still tracking us with those obnoxious, elated expressions on their faces. "Guys, cut that out," I urged as I shoved the office door open.

Outside, I looked both ways before I spotted Cassie walking to the right. She was a few yards ahead, moving briskly with her arms folded.

"Cassie!" I called out, even though I almost never shouted. When I raised my voice like that, a few passersby turned to look at me.

If she heard me, she ignored me. She kept walking, heading towards the crosswalk on the corner. I jogged after her, weaving past commuters heading in the opposite direction.

"Cassie," I protested as I followed her. "I shouldn't have said that. Please stop."

Now only a few feet ahead, she glanced over her shoulder and made eye contact with me. Quickly, she faced forward again, visibly ignoring me.

"Don't do this," I said, wishing she would just hear me out. "Let me explain."

When she was close, I reached out and I put my hand on her shoulder. Immediately, she whirled around and her eyes zeroed in on my hand. I pulled it back without instruction.

We were standing in front of a Panera, of all places. Seated at one of the window seats, a pair of teenage girls gaped at us, grinning through the glass. I looked back at them for a beat, acutely aware of the way they were chuckling at us. To them, this probably looked like some kind of lovers' quarrel: me, the desperate goober in a button-down and slacks chasing after the sharply dressed blonde who was way out of his league. They probably thought she should dump me immediately so she could hook up with a Carnegie, like she was clearly destined to.

"Can we go back to the office? I just want to talk."

"Stop following me," Cassie said, either oblivious to our onlookers or unfazed by them. She shifted her folded arms, drawing them closer to her body.

"I'm not following you. I'm just trying to apologize." I stepped to the side, narrowly avoiding a guy in a suit who clearly thought he owned the sidewalk. "Can we please just go somewhere private to talk?"

"Oh, you want privacy? That's so cute. Yeah, let's definitely go back to the office where your little troupe of cheerleaders is waiting to laugh at me."

"I didn't intend for that. I would never do that—not to you, not to anybody."

"Whatever." She shook her head, swishing her long hair away from her face. "I don't need your apology. Just forget it."

"I'm happy to apologize," I insisted. "That's what you do when you hurt someone."

"Are you being passive aggressive?" she demanded, eyes narrowed. " Still ? We're just going in circles."

"I wasn't being passive aggressive. If you would just stop jumping down my throat every time I tried to talk to you—"

"Oh that's rich. You think I'm the one jumping down your throat?"

"Honestly? Yeah. I do. You pretend I'm the one making this hard, but you're just as eager to go toe-to-toe with me—which is insane, Cassie, because you're not the victim here."

"Asshole!" she exclaimed with her eyes wide and her cheeks starting to darken. "You think you can tell me about myself? You don't know a thing about me. You may have this idea about who I was ten years ago, but I'm not that person anymore."

"I just—"

She inhaled sharply before she took a step closer to me. "And not that it matters to me if you know this, but I didn't drop out of law school because it was difficult. I dropped out because my parents cut me off and I didn't want to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt just to get the same degree as my jackass of a father. So stop trying to make me feel ashamed of that. It's pathetic."

I paused, watching as Cassie took a step back, held up a finger, and closed her eyes. It wasn't too dissimilar from what I usually did. My six-second reset.

As she composed herself, I let this revelation wash over me. It felt like a cold shower, stinging my skin. "Your parents cut you off?"

"Six years ago," she said simply, factually. She didn't offer anything else.

I didn't know what else to say to her other than, "I'm sorry." It was the honest truth, but as soon as I said it, I knew it wasn't going to land well with her.

"No you're not," she snapped, eyebrows furrowed. "Why would you be sorry? You started off the day wanting to fight with me, and now you've gotten exactly what you wanted."

I shook my head. "No, don't—I…I'm not just being an asshole for the sake of it."

"Then what did I do to deserve this? Is this about me being horrible to you when we were eighteen years old?" She let out a laugh, mostly in disbelief, because there was absolutely nothing funny about this conversation. "Who were you then, Marcus, and who are you today? Are you the same person?"

"No, but—"

"And neither am I," she insisted as she began to back away from me. "Whether or not you can see that isn't my problem."

This time when she left, I didn't follow her. I remained standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, watching her walk away under the rows of scaffolding that covered the walkway. My eyes stayed on her retreating figure, fixated on her blond hair until I couldn't see her anymore.

Fuck .

When I turned to my side, I saw that duo of teenage girls still watching me. One of them was frowning, eyebrows pulled together tightly. The other was staring at me with her jaw lowered, shock on her face.

"Well, go get her!" she called out, her words muffled through the glass pane between us.

I lifted an eyebrow at the idea. The notion alone was laughable. Instead, I turned and headed back towards the office, my hands in my pockets and my shoulders heavy.