The whole conversation had stunned me into absolute silence. Isaac had a picture of my high school prom dress on his phone. And he thought the clothes I’d made in high school were amazing. And he thought I should be designing on my own? I mean, he’d always joked about it in high school, but only at the same time that he’d called me a wannabe and a sell-out for wanting to work in New York fashion. I’d always assumed his opinions were a result of his general anti-establishment view of the world.
But now he actually sounded like he thought I was good at what I did. Or, rather, what I wanted to be doing. It was disconcerting, to say the least.
Moments later, Isaac brought the evening to a sudden halt. “Well, it’s been real, Dandi,” he said, “but I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”
“You do?” I picked up my phone and glanced at the time. It was getting late, but not that late.
“I promised a friend I’d stop by her party.” He looked at Rizzo. “You want to come? There might be some company that interests you, if you know what I mean.”
I rolled my eyes at the subsequent exclamations of machismo, but it could have been worse. He could have included Alex in his invitation. And while the thought of my brother party-hopping in search of women was bad, thinking of Alex alongside him was enough to make me feel like I’d eaten curdled cream and rotten tomatoes.
I followed Isaac and Rizzo out of the restaurant, Alex behind me, feeling suddenly deflated. It had been months, years even, since I’d spent any time with Isaac that hadn’t felt strained and uncomfortable. The dinner had definitely held moments of tension, but the last few minutes when we’d talked about growing up, laughing at old stories, had felt good. Really good. Like maybe it was possible for us to actually figure out a way to actually get along. But then he’d ended the evening so quickly, and in a juvenile way that reminded me of all the reasons why I found him so irritating.
Isaac stopped when he reached the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and turned to face me. “Will you get home okay?” he asked.
I stared. “I live here, Isaac. I know how to get myself home.”
“Right. Okay. I was just checking.” He looked to Rizzo. “Ready?”
Rizzo nodded.
“I’ll see you back at the hotel?” Isaac said to Alex, who nodded in response. Almost like an afterthought, Isaac turned to me one more time, wrapping his arms around me in a vice-like squeeze. “Bye, Dandi. You know I love you, right?”
I shrugged out of his grip. “Fine, fine. Goodbye.”
I watched Isaac turn the corner and disappear out of sight, then looked at Alex, still standing beside me. “He’s something else, isn’t he?”
“He is . . . the most entertaining person I’ve ever worked for. I’ll say that much.” Alex pushed his hands into the pockets of his suit. “Do you want to walk for a bit?”
I hesitated. Did I?
Curse his deep brown eyes. If he hadn’t looked so handsome standing in the glow of the dim streetlight overhead, I might have had the courage to say no.
Instead, I shrugged my shoulders. “Sure,” I said. “Walking sounds good.”
Chapter Six
Alex
We walked side by side for half a block or so, my hands shoved into my pockets, her arms folded tightly across her middle. We probably looked like a walking argument to anyone observing from the outside. I wasn’t all that sure myself why I’d asked her to go for a walk. But I wasn’t ready for us to part ways. I’d been bitter over the comment she’d made about Sasha, but as dinner had progressed, I remembered more and more of the things I’d loved about her. Maybe we had different opinions about LeFranc, but I’d hurt her. Abandoned her. And my integrity wouldn’t let me forget that. If there was a way to make it right, I had to at least try.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she said without looking up. “They were beautiful.”
Relief flooded through me. It wasn’t like I’d been dwelling on the flowers all night, but knowing she’d appreciated the gesture and not felt weird about it was no small thing. “It felt like the least I could do. Is your dress going to be okay? It was one you made, right?”
She looked at me, surprise evident on her face. “You could tell?”
I shrugged but couldn’t keep myself from grinning. She’d made a lot of her clothes while we’d been dating; the dress she’d had on that morning had looked particularly Dani. “Is that such a surprise?”
Heat crept up her cheeks, barely visible in the dim light cast from the streetlamps above us. “Chase is getting it cleaned for me. He says he knows a guy.”
“Like a guy that isn’t just a dry cleaner?”
She smiled at the question. “This is Chase we’re talking about. An ordinary dry cleaner would never do.”
I chuckled. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s perfect, as always,” Dani said.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Silence stretched for several paces before I tried another topic. “I don’t think I realized just how different you are from your brother until I started working with him.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Tonight was actually better than it usually is.”
“I don’t remember you guys fighting all that much.”
“We’re really good at avoiding each other,” she said. “But it’s more that we just can’t relate. It’s like there’s this fundamental difference of understanding that we’ve never been able to overcome.”
“Understanding about what?”
“You name it. Life, work, everything.” She ran her hands up and down her arms. The temperature had dropped during dinner and while it was still mild, she was obviously feeling chilled.
I shrugged out of my suit coat and offered it to her. She shook her head no and increased the speed of her step, lengthening the distance between us.
“Dani, just take it,” I said. “You’re cold. I can tell.”
She hesitated, but finally turned back and reached for the jacket. She draped it over her shoulders without slipping her arms through the sleeves. “Thank you,” she said, a definite edge to her voice.
We walked in silence a few more moments before she asked, “Was it really his idea?”
“Was what his idea?”
“The Compassion Experiment. I mean, I don’t mean to discount what he’s trying to accomplish, but Alex, your fingerprints are all over it.”
Before graduating and taking a job working for Alicio in New York, I’d spent a semester abroad in London interning for a nonprofit. I hadn’t been an actual part of the event planning, but we’d been a small team. We had all been involved in every aspect of the organization. Dani knew my history there. She’d see right through me if I tried to deny any influence on Isaac’s event. “Isaac did say he hired me because he knew what his weaknesses were and hoped I could compensate for them.”
“So, what? His weakness is that he’s shallow and self-centered?”
“His weakness is that he has zero business experience and has no idea how to build a positive brand image.”
“So he called you? An accountant? To help him with his image?”
I stopped. “My undergrad degree was in business. I took marketing classes. You know all of this about me. Why does this matter so much?”
She turned to face me. “It just feels so unlike him.”
“Just because a charity event was my idea doesn’t mean Isaac didn’t have a desire to make a bigger difference. He’s the one who has figured out all the details. I might have planted a seed, but he’s doing all the work.”
She scoffed. “That feels even more unlike him.”
“Dani, can I say something as a friend?” The minute the words came out of my mouth, I regretted them. I was asking for more than I deserved.
“No Alex, I don’t think you can,” she said, her voice cool.
“As Isaac’s friend, then.”
She raised an eyebrow, which I took as encouragement to press forward. “I want to preface this by saying that obvio
usly, I am also very different from your brother. We have different opinions on everything, from what we find entertaining to what we feel constitutes appropriate work attire. But even acknowledging those differences, I don’t think you give him enough credit.”
She took a deep breath. It felt intentional, like she was measuring her next words very carefully. “What makes you think I don’t give him enough credit?”
“He does,” I answered without hesitation. “He wears your disapproval on his sleeve. I think that’s why he hesitated to even tell you the details of this event. He’s really excited about it, and he didn’t want you to—”
Her shoulders slumped. “Do exactly what I did? Doubt him? Squelch him? Rain on his shiny YouTube parade?”
“See?” I said. “You really don’t like what he does for a living. And he feels that. Keenly.”
She closed her eyes, one hand clutched around the edges of my jacket, the other pressed to her head, thumb and forefinger rubbing her temples. “Did Isaac ever tell you he was accepted into MIT?” she asked.
My eyebrows shot up. “No, he didn’t.”
“He was also offered a full ride to Clemson, and Georgia Tech,” she said. “I used to hate it. How hard I had to work when it was always so easy for him. He was so smart. Test scores higher than everyone else we knew. And for what? For a little bit of YouTube notoriety? How long is that going to last? When all of his subscribers grow up and turn into adults who no longer want to watch Random I, what then? He could have done so much with those smarts.”
“Okay. I see your point.”
“It’s not so much that I disapprove. I’ve watched a few of his early episodes and I almost get it. I don’t always understand the randomness, but he’s funny. I’m willing to give him that much. And I like that he’s always challenging people to be kind. But I can’t stop thinking about what he could have accomplished had he gone to college.”
“There’s more than one way to find success,” I said. “His isn’t the most conventional path, but it’s still his. And he’s accomplished a lot, even without a fancy education.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she said with a sigh.
I wondered if she actually believed it. I’d heard Dani talk about her own career. She had a very clear definition of success and it had a lot to do with progress based on merit and hard work, and not things like YouTube views or notoriety. Even convincing her to go to the interview I’d set up for her at LeFranc had been tough. Because she hadn’t “earned” it and didn’t want her path to senior designer tainted by a favor from her boyfriend or even just a stroke of good luck. She would have the job because she deserved it, or not at all.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“I don’t . . .” She hesitated, her eyes focused somewhere at my feet. “I’m not sure I’m up for talking about why you left New York. But . . . why Isaac? It’s not like you’re lacking qualifications. Anyone would have hired you.”
“Anyone would have hired me to keep doing what I was already doing at LeFranc. But I didn’t like my job at LeFranc. Isaac offered something different. Plus, I needed a place to stay and the job came with one.”
Her eyes jumped to mine. “You couldn’t go home?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “I did, at first. Malorie said I was welcome to stay. But her girls are teenagers now. All they did was giggle whenever I was around.”
My father’s second wife was well-intentioned. She technically lived in my house—the one I’d inherited from my father when he’d passed away a few years back—but Dad’s will stipulated that she and the girls could live in the house until the youngest graduated from the private school he’d also paid for in his will. They’d been happy together; I couldn’t begrudge Dad wanting to take care of Malorie and her girls. Still, the two weeks I’d spent living with them before moving in with Isaac had been long enough.
Dani chuckled. “They still don’t feel like family, huh?”
“Not hardly. And Malorie was . . . flirty. It was weird.”
“Oh, wow. That’s awkward. She isn’t that much older than you, is she? I can’t remember.”
“Ten years, I think?”
Dani started walking again and I fell in step beside her.
“Is it weird for you? To own a house you can’t live in? I mean, she and your dad were only married for what, three, four years?”
I shrugged. “Seven years. And three of those, Dad was sick. She took care of him better than anybody else could. She probably deserves to live in that house forever.”
Dani pulled my suit coat closer around her. “I remember the night you told me about losing both your parents.” She shook her head. “It still doesn’t seem fair.”
A memory flooded my mind of Dani in my arms, our legs propped up on the coffee table in front of the sofa in my New York apartment. “I remember that night, too. You cried.”
She huffed out a small laugh. “It was a really sad story.”
Losing both parents to cancer within a couple of years was a sad story. I was generally used to the sympathy expressed whenever people found out. But Dani had given me more than sympathy. She’d taken a little bit of my sadness and felt it like it was her own. I’d never forgotten how different that felt, how she’d made the burden feel a little lighter for her willingness to help me carry it. “That’s the night I really started to fall in love with you.”
She stopped on the sidewalk, gripping the lamppost beside her. She closed her eyes, her lips pressed together in a thin line. “Don’t, Alex,” she said, leaning toward the lamppost, her voice so soft I almost couldn’t hear. “You can’t say things like that.”
“I’m sorry.”
She pushed away from the post and walked down the sidewalk at a good enough clip, it was clear she wanted to put some distance between us. I followed behind, respecting the distance, waiting for her to make the next move.
Finally, she turned around, the fire in her eyes evident even in the dark, across six feet of sidewalk. “So Isaac knew you were back in Charleston because my mom told him about our break-up?”
I nodded. “I think so, yeah.”
“And he just called you up and offered you a job?”
“Basically, yes. He sent me a resume request through LinkedIn.”
She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “There are so many weird things about that sentence.”
I grinned. “It felt a little weird to me, too. But I appreciated him trying to keep it professional.”
“Is it just you and Isaac living together?”
Ha. If only. “No; the whole team lives there. It’s a pretty big house.”
Her eyes went wide. “Tyler? Vinnie?”
I nodded. “And Mushroom. I’ve never actually figured out what his real name is. Oh, and Steven. He’s the co-host Isaac hired last year.”
“Mushroom’s name is . . . Marvin? No. Marshall. Which almost sounds like Mushroom? I haven’t met Steven.”
“They’re all friends from high school, right? Except Steven?”
She nodded. “From elementary school, even. At least Tyler and Vinnie have been around that long.”
“It’s a very interesting group,” I said. “But honestly, it hasn’t been as difficult as I expected it to be. We all get along, and I appreciate how much they look out for each other. They treat each other like family. And they are genuinely the most nonjudgmental group of men I have ever been around.”
“Hey-hey, you do you, bro,” Dani said, in a voice lowered to sound like her brother.
“That was an unnervingly accurate impression,” I said. “But mocking aside, that is why I like it there.”
“I bet you were overdressed your first day of work.”
I laughed. “I feel overdressed when I’m wearing the most casual thing I own.”
It couldn’t last, not with the history between us, but it was nice talking back and forth like we used to. It felt good to laugh with her.
After a few moments of silence, she stopped one more time to face me. “I hear what you’re saying, but I’m still not sure it adds up in my brain. You and Isaac living together, working together every day. I don’t want to make it all about me, but he’s my brother. Is that part not weird for you?”
I sighed. “It was, at first. It felt a little like I was torturing myself just by being around him. But I was desperate. Things with Alicio got really bad. I had to separate myself from him, from the whole company, and it didn’t feel like I could do that without leaving the city. I looked for work in Charleston, but nothing felt right. When Isaac reached out to me, he tossed me a life preserver. I actually didn’t plan to move in long term, not initially. I thought I’d find my own place somewhere, but then your brother made it really easy to stay, and odd as it may seem, I feel accepted living with him and his friends. I never felt that living here in New York.”
She breathed out a painful half-laugh, half-cry. “You didn’t feel accepted by me?”
I closed my eyes. “Of course I did. At times, anyway. But Dani, our life was so wrapped up in LeFranc. And the LeFranc version of myself—the parties, the entertaining, the high society networking—that isn’t me.”
She turned and started walking again and I hurried to catch up.
“Is that supposed to make it easier for me?” Her steps grew faster as she spoke. “That after you abandoned me without any explanation, you had a Kum-ba-yah experience at my brother’s house and found your true self? Why didn’t you call me, Alex? You can’t even claim out-of-sight, out-of-mind on this one. You work with Isaac! A living, breathing reminder that I, his twin sister, exist.”
“I know that. I know I treated you badly and if given the choice to do things differently, I would take it a thousand times over. But I felt betrayed, too. There was so much pressure from Alicio. Keeping up appearances, playing the role of a LeFranc in New York society. I was such a disappointment in that regard and yet, it was a world that seemed so important to you. That version of me was the one you wanted to be with. I tried to talk to you about Sasha, but you always took her side. Your star was rising, and my concerns were nothing but a flaming arrow that might shoot it down. I didn’t know what to say to you. I didn’t think you would understand.”
Love Redesigned Page 6