Page 9 of Made Man

I stalk up the three carpeted steps to VIP, drop into a suede upholstered booth, and scan for the bottle service girl. I need a drink.

Gianna and the guys follow, crowding into the curved bench. Alex ends up pressed flush against my side. He shoots a wry smile down at me. He’s a tall one, and he knows it.

Wyatt was average height. Taller than me, but no more than five nine or five ten. He might have kept growing in college—Marco sure did—but at first, it hurt too bad to see him, so I made a point not to look, not at his socials, not at his parents’ house in case he happened to be visiting.

He was done with me, so I was going to be done with him forever.

After he left, his younger sister walked the dog for a while. When the first wave of burn-the-world-down rage subsided, I timed my walks so I’d run into her, like I did with Wyatt in the beginning. She always had her earbuds in, though, filming videos or doing lives, so I could never make friends with her and ask her how Wyatt was doing. If he’d picked a major. If he had a girlfriend. If he missed me like I missed him.

Like a phantom limb.

Then, one day, his sister got a serious boyfriend, and there were no more walks. They probably rehomed him. Wyatt was the only one in that family with a heart big enough to love an animal.

I tried to get over him. I’m not stupid. Dad would never tell me what happened down in the basement, but I can imagine. Shit went down, and Wyatt decided he wanted out.

My brain doesn’t blame him.

My heart wants to tear his out and throw it on the ground and mash it into pulp just like he did with mine.

For a few years, I starved myself of him. I cultivated my playlists so I’d never hear a song that we listened to together or see one of our shows. I was going to move on. A husky gamerwith a C average who never made varsity? He was replaceable; I would replace him.

But I never did. Because I didn’t want someone else. I wanted Wyatt Foster. I want what he felt for me.

“Champagne?” A pretty woman in a short dress interrupts my private walk down memory lane. She’s holding up bottles in both hands.

I nod, she pours, and I focus on calming my breath. Do other people still think of their exes a dozen times a day, eight years later?

Sometimes I think I’m not even remembering it right. Love couldn’t possibly have really felt like that. Nothing in life feels that good. I’ve mixed up reality with a dream or a hallucination from the trip I went on that time I mixed up a fifteen-milligram gummy with a thirty and got too high.

No heart can be that full. No one can be that happy.

Alex clinks his glass with mine, startling me back into the moment. His shoulder is pressing mine, and he’s leaning in. His breath is astringent and hits me full in the face when he shouts over the music. “So, Gianna says you’re a day trader?”

“Something like that,” I shout back. Day trader or stockbroker is close enough to my real job that I can talk about it, if I want, which I don’t. I want to go back home and rot on the couch. This space is too big, the ceilings are too high, the lights are flashing too quickly, the walls and floors and booths are too black. How much grime is the paint hiding? A lot, I bet.

“Got any hot tips?” He smirks, revealing sharp incisors and very expensive veneers. He has the slightest accent. I can’t quite place it, but I’m not interested enough to ask.

“Buy low. Sell high.”

He smiles wider, as if he’s genuinely amused, as if I’ve said something actually amusing. I’m so bored. Men like these turn iton and off like lamps. That’s fine when I’m ovulating, but I’m on week one of my birth control this week.

I sip more champagne and survey the dance floor so I don’t have to think of something to say. It’s a young scene. I’m not quite too old for the crowd, but I’m pushing it.

The DJ crossfades from one song to another that sounds exactly the same. The dance floor rises up and down in drunken waves. Huge, shimmering snowflakes hang from the rafters, dusting the people below with glitter.

I yawn.

“Keeping you up?” Alex asks, still smiling.

I wish he wouldn’t. It’s so fake. This isallso fake—the sea of lip filler, the bleached smiles and BBLs, the smoldering looks that make promises no one intends on keeping much past closing time. I had a man who looked at me like that once, but he meant it, for all that it mattered in the end.

For the millionth time since that last night in high school, my heart adjusts to the disappointment. I don’t get to fall in love in a club at Christmas under spinning silver snowflakes. I fell in love already, and lucky me, it stuck.

I pretend that I didn’t hear Alex and survey the room as if I’m fascinated by other people having fun. I scan half the room before my gaze is drawn to a cluster of finance bros gathered around a high top by the bar.

They must not have stopped home after work because they’re still in their khaki slacks, collared shirts, and power vests, each holding a beer, hands on hips and slightly stretching their lower backs in the most casual way as they listen to the head bro animatedly regale the group about something or other. They’re absolutely generic. A dime a dozen.

I can’t look away from the one in a navy-blue vest. Well, they’re all wearing navy-blue vests. I can’t look away from the one with his back to me, stocky, medium height, brown hair.He’s standing like the others, but there’s something about his stance. A familiar sullenness. I’d recognize it anywhere.

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