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When Roman first saw her in his peripheral, gray top, hair now down and falling around her shoulders, he was sure he was imagining it, like the phantoms of his father that he saw on his bedroom walls when he was ripped too quickly from a deep sleep. He was only on his second martini.
He turned slowly towards her, afraid the apparition would disappear, but she was solid, statue-still to the point that he wondered if she had somehow managed to sit directly next to him with no awareness. Of all the upscale bars in all of Manhattan. But he distantly remembered that he still had his location turned on, something he had done off and on for her without drawing attention to it, hoping that she would come find him.
He caught the bartender’s eye and made a tapping motion in front of where she sat.
“Another martini. Dirty.” He resisted the temptation to put too much emphasis on the last word. She didn’t respond.
As the drink was prepared, he tried to study her without being too obvious. They hadn’t spoken directly since the tailgate party, a seemingly definitive end on her part although he had hoped it wasn’t. The smallest glimmer of hope had come in the form of a tissue handed over a pew at his father’s funeral, but it had been so smooth and subtle that through his tears he couldn’t verify that it had been from her while also knowing that only she would do something so quietly kind for him. But that wasn’t a truce, and he was too smart to think so.
He knew he should say something, that this could be some kind of second chance. He could say something to disgust her and at least have the experience provide some negative reinforcement that he could masterbate and cry to later. But he resisted; it would only give him a temporary respite, and if this really was some kind of crossroads for him, he may as well not burn every bridge on the way out.
She probably wanted an apology: for not stopping the dick pics when she asked, for not standing up for her, for firing her once because his father wanted to test him or punish him and once because she didn’t validate him like he wanted, for not rising to her expectations of him. That seemed like a reasonable thing for her to want. But as he tried to imagine forming the words, his tongue remained stationary. Sorrys weren’t something he had learned to give or receive.
“You know, I don’t think I actually wanted the top job,” he murmured instead.
It was the first time he had said the words, and he saw the slightest lift of her eyebrow, which he took as a good sign. The phrase had appeared to him in the form of a question by his therapist not long after his father died, Do you actually want to be in charge of your father’s company?, and he had faltered, stalled. After a while, he had replied: “Well, he wanted it to be me at the end.” But that wasn’t an answer.
“I wanted dad to want me to have the top job,” he went on. “I wanted him to think I would do better than Ken or Shiv or whatever cunt Swede with a few bil came along, but . . .” His voice trailed off, and he turned ever so slightly in her direction to see if she would respond. She sipped her martini.
“I wanted you to think I could do it,” he continued after a moment.
She tilted her head a bit, her brows raising again as if to remind him that there was a time she did.
“That’s the only way I could have done it or would have wanted to do it really. Only if you were there to support me,” he said, taking a long drink and looking at her more blatantly. She still wasn’t facing him, but her face had visibly softened from the ice queen frozen face she had when she initially sat down. “I liked when you were CEO, before I fucked it. I mean, I definitely missed those special conference calls-” he cut himself off with a disjointed chuckle, realizing that he shouldn’t have brought that up especially considering what his missing them wrought, but then continued, “But it felt right with you in charge and me as your errand boy, rockstar COO, but not quite mole woman when you’re the face of the company, you know? We did good.”
“We did,” she said quietly, sipping her drink. It felt like years since he had last heard her voice, and it pierced through him so profoundly that he felt he had to lean back in his chair with the weight of her admission.
“I heard Matsson is keeping you?” He figured it was safe to ask a question now that he had gotten her to speak.
“Yep.” He heard the clink of her rings against the glass stem.
“So we know he can make one fucking good decision, at least.”
He was now looking at her unabashedly, and he could see that the comment caused an upturn at the corner of her mouth. He found himself wanting to put his face against hers, not to kiss her, not exactly, just to feel her, feel close to her again.
“I don’t know how long I’ll stay. Maybe all this is a sign I should take an early retirement.”
“Yes, Gerri. Join me in the ranks of the unemployed. We can be poors together.”
“What a sad little billionaire you are,” she said, that slight upturn turning into an unambiguous smile. Perhaps, the gentle insults were comforting for both of them. He certainly liked to think so.
“I think you can manage it if you skimp a little on your designer glasses budget,” he shot back, practically vibrating with joy at the verbal sparring he had missed.
“And what are you going to do now? Become a tabloid menace?”
She finally turned to face him, and he couldn’t conceal his amusement.
“I was thinking of doing what every bored rich asshole does: invest in my interests,” he said with a flick of his wrist, downing the rest of his drink and motioning to the bartender for two more even though she was only halfway done herself.
“Niche pornography?”
“Har har, no. Films. Good ones, not any of that hack shit Waystar has been making. Maybe start my own production company and give those artsy A24 fuckers a run for their accolades.”
Gerri tilted her head and raised her brows.
“Why are you surprised? I minored in film studies, you know. I wrote a screenplay once.”
Her face relaxed, and he suddenly wondered if she didn’t know. She had been somewhere in the background of his life as far as he could remember, and that led to a strange balance of ‘things I know about you but don’t always consciously remember’ and ‘things I maybe should know about you but don’t.’ He was reminded of a few years ago when he had forgotten her late husband’s name (and kind of his death too) and felt like a complete dick about it. Truthfully, Baird had been a big presence, literally and figuratively, but he was never looking at him.
It wasn’t like they hadn’t sometimes talked about things that weren’t work or the people they both know, but he was struck by how disappointed he was that something as basic as a huge personal hobby had either never come up between them or had slipped her mind.
The tension was filled by new drinks appearing in front of both of them, and Gerri gracefully downed the rest of her first, pushing the empty glass towards the bartender with a nod.
“It’s good that you have a plan, something you could maybe be serious about,” she said finally.
The ‘maybe’ stung.
“I can be serious about things I love.”
He had intended to say it tersely, annoyed that even after all the work they did together, she still seemed doubtful of his ability to actually treat anything without levity. Instead it came out soft and low, his finger running around the rim of his glass as he looked away from her. He hoped she understood that.
“You know why films?” he continued. “There’s so much bullshit, so much meaningless bullshit that is out there, but every once in a while people can create something beautiful and true.”
She was quiet for a moment, his ears tuning into the sound of her new glass being placed back on the bar.
“I imagine you’ll relocate to LA?”
He chuckled.
“Not if I can help it. I like being up in the canyons away from shit when I need a breather and the weather is actually liveable, but I can’t stand the people. People in LA are always trying to improve themselves or at least seem like they are. I appreciate the New Yorker commitment to being fucking terrible and not giving a fuck. It's more honest.”
At the sound of her slight laugh, he turned to look at her. Again, he felt himself wanting to lean into her somehow, but he merely moved his chair a bit closer.
“Can you honestly say when you retire you’ll go back to Bumfuck, Nowhere instead of staying here?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a slight sigh in her voice. “My parents are gone, and my whole life has been here since I was 25. But without Baird and with the girls off in other places, there isn’t technically anything keeping me here.”
His face fell as he mouthed a barely audible “ah” and he looked down into his drink. He was hurt, but he had no right to be. What should he have expected? It wasn’t like she would stay here for him, her ex-cowoker who she was suing for sexual harassment and who she probably shouldn’t be having a drink with right now. But by being here with him she was giving some sort of inch, a centimeter perhaps, and he wanted that mile.
“Maybe I’ll make like Karl and get in on a private island somewhere,” she continued lightly.
“See, I’ve always thought that seems like a good idea until you actually do it, and you’re fucking bored after a week with no one around.”
“Perhaps I don’t need people like you do, molewoman that I am,” she mused, sipping her martini.
“Maybe you heartless bitch,” he said with a smile so she would know he was jesting.
She put the drink down, her face becoming a bit more serious.
“It’s a good thing, you know?” she said, leaning towards him ever so slightly. “You’re fucking atrocious at showing it, but it’s good that you care about people.”
The pain in his chest was immediate, a pain he couldn’t explain and that drove him to lean forward ostensibly to ease it, but as she tucked her hair behind her ear, exposing her neck, he couldn’t resist any longer and pressed his face right below her ear. On the way his nose clipped one of her large earrings, but he couldn’t care less as he took a deep breath, smelling the remnants of her perfume.
“Roman,” she said as a warning, although not a particularly stern one.
“Mm?” he answered, focusing hard on the feeling of her heartbeat against his cheek. He tilted down, pressing his dry lips against her pulse over and over.
“Roman, we’re in public,” she said a bit more forcefully. He couldn’t help but notice that she was making no effort to get away from him when she absolutely could.
“Is that the only problem?” he asked, smiling against her skin. “Because we could go somewhere private. My place? Your place? Pick a hotel. Pick a country.”
She threaded her fingers through his hair, gripping tightly enough to lift his head away from her so she could look him in the eye. He was already turned on from their banter and her smell, so there was no chance he could hold back the whimper that escaped him at the pleasure-pain.
“You’re drunk,” she said firmly.
“Yes,” he said, his voice strained. “That’s where I’m getting the courage from.”
For a moment they just looked at each other, her gaze trying to decipher his intentions, his eyes watering. He blinked quickly, afraid he might start crying and not sure why.
Coming to some sort of conclusion, she let go of his hair, smoothing it down a bit, but it was impossible to conceal what she had done, the product causing it to stick out despite her effort. He didn’t care, his wet eyes still fixated on her as she called the bartender over to ask for the check only to be informed that it was on Roman’s running tab. She thanked the bartender and grabbed her purse, putting it over her shoulder and standing up. He wanted more than anything to fall at her feet, so he gripped the chair tightly to resist.
“Are you coming?” she asked casually.
He nodded and hopped to his feet.
He didn’t know where or for what, but he would follow her anywhere.