#work at goldman sachs
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vishal1595 · 2 months ago
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kalispitronhibernation · 1 year ago
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Actually yeah fundamentally I am just very interested in the dissonance of being gay and being right wing (as in really advocating for those positions) and the kind of mental gymnastics u have to do to justify it. To justify to yourself and to others.
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raven · 9 months ago
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Got a text from my hometown area code asking if this was still (real name) Idk who this person is
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junk-culture · 11 months ago
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i love the government careers website with their neat and tidy little infographics containing sick and twisty information. you could use this image as a jumpscare screen in a horror game. 60 hours a week well that sounds like just the job for me and is a perfectly normal expectation. anyway i also love paying my university £9250 a year so that i can lose braincells doing a group presentation on careers advice like im in secondary school pshce lessons
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beesmygod · 4 months ago
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ed zitron, a tech beat reporter, wrote an article about a recent paper that came out from goldman-sachs calling AI, in nicer terms, a grift. it is a really interesting article; hearing criticism from people who are not ignorant of the tech and have no reason to mince words is refreshing. it also brings up points and asks the right questions:
if AI is going to be a trillion dollar investment, what trillion dollar problem is it solving?
what does it mean when people say that AI will "get better"? what does that look like and how would it even be achieved? the article makes a point to debunk talking points about how all tech is misunderstood at first by pointing out that the tech it gets compared to the most, the internet and smartphones, were both created over the course of decades with roadmaps and clear goals. AI does not have this.
the american power grid straight up cannot handle the load required to run AI because it has not been meaningfully developed in decades. how are they going to overcome this hurdle (they aren't)?
people who are losing their jobs to this tech aren't being "replaced". they're just getting a taste of how little their managers care about their craft and how little they think of their consumer base. ai is not capable of replacing humans and there's no indication they ever will because...
all of these models use the same training data so now they're all giving the same wrong answers in the same voice. without massive and i mean EXPONENTIALLY MASSIVE troves of data to work with, they are pretty much as a standstill for any innovation they're imagining in their heads
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peoplematters · 2 months ago
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anchesetuttinoino · 2 months ago
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Goldman Sachs: il “piano di valutazione strategica delle risorse” prevede di licenziare gli smart worker
Nonostante Goldman Sachs abbia riportato un utile nel secondo trimestre 2024 che è più che raddoppiato, la politica di licenziamento dei lavoratori con scarse prestazioni continuerà anche quest’anno e si prevede il taglio tra il 3 e il 4 per cento della sua forza lavoro, ovvero tra i 1.300 e i 1.800 dipendenti. Lascia perplessi che i profili da licenziare vengano identificati non solo basandosi…
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dentalnet32news · 8 months ago
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msclaritea · 9 months ago
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British billionaire Lord Sugar rips remote work while Zooming in—but he may have a point about mentorship | Fortune
British billionaire Lord Sugar rips remote work—while Zooming in from off-site. But he may have a point that it’s ‘bad for morale, bad for learning’
In a remote interview, the host of the UK version of "The Apprenctice" said no one learns “sitting at home in your pajamas.”
BY JANE THIER
February 05, 2024 2:17 PM EST
“You don’t learn sitting at home in your pajamas,” the entrepreneur and host of the U.K.’s “The Apprentice” said. Don Arnold—WireImage/Getty Images
Lord Alan Sugar hates remote work so much he calls in remotely to the BBC to complain about it.
The British billionaire went viral on TikTok for espousing his anti-remote-work views from the comfort of a remote office—but work experts have agreed with much of what he’s saying.
“You don’t learn sitting at home in your pajamas,” the entrepreneur and host of the U.K.’s The Apprentice said. The interview, conducted last week, was part of Sugar’s press tour following the 18th season premiere of The Apprentice. “I’m totally against it, quite frankly. I think it’s bad for morale, bad for learning. I know I learn from being with other people in an office.”
While Sugar has taken a more incendiary stance than most, his opinions are hardly unpopular—especially among older, more established businesspeople.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin said that failing to work in person is a “grave mistake” and could make it easier for your boss to fire you, since they’re unlikely to know you personally. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon called remote work an “aberration,” and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon said remote workers at his bank should probably work elsewhere, while Tesla’s Elon Musk took it a step further, saying remote employees are simply pretending to work...."
Can we yeet these selfish mofos, into the Sun? The wealth class in Britain is ALL TRASH. 'LORD Sugar'. JP Morgan regularly involves itself in such things as Trafficking (Epstein) Psyops against America (one of the people involved in QANON, worked at JP Morgan). Goldman Sachs is barely legitimate, itself. And we all know how destructive Apartheid Clyde has been. California shouldn't forget how he cost the state its planned Train system, over an Electric Vehicle stunt.
They want their portfolios to stay up, their physical footprint to block land, and most importantly, to use employees for various manipulations. Work Harassment and Psychological Games come to mind. The negative shit people deal with in an office atmosphere. I really think it's all about Control.
As an FYI, if people really think these men are not inherently evil, just remember the type of films we've been getting lately; most, financed by Wall Street. So much Psychological Horror, Underage Sexual themes, and Hyperviolence. Fight for your right to Remote Work!
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river-taxbird · 3 months ago
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AI hasn't improved in 18 months. It's likely that this is it. There is currently no evidence the capabilities of ChatGPT will ever improve. It's time for AI companies to put up or shut up.
I'm just re-iterating this excellent post from Ed Zitron, but it's not left my head since I read it and I want to share it. I'm also taking some talking points from Ed's other posts. So basically:
We keep hearing AI is going to get better and better, but these promises seem to be coming from a mix of companies engaging in wild speculation and lying.
Chatgpt, the industry leading large language model, has not materially improved in 18 months. For something that claims to be getting exponentially better, it sure is the same shit.
Hallucinations appear to be an inherent aspect of the technology. Since it's based on statistics and ai doesn't know anything, it can never know what is true. How could I possibly trust it to get any real work done if I can't rely on it's output? If I have to fact check everything it says I might as well do the work myself.
For "real" ai that does know what is true to exist, it would require us to discover new concepts in psychology, math, and computing, which open ai is not working on, and seemingly no other ai companies are either.
Open ai has already seemingly slurped up all the data from the open web already. Chatgpt 5 would take 5x more training data than chatgpt 4 to train. Where is this data coming from, exactly?
Since improvement appears to have ground to a halt, what if this is it? What if Chatgpt 4 is as good as LLMs can ever be? What use is it?
As Jim Covello, a leading semiconductor analyst at Goldman Sachs said (on page 10, and that's big finance so you know they only care about money): if tech companies are spending a trillion dollars to build up the infrastructure to support ai, what trillion dollar problem is it meant to solve? AI companies have a unique talent for burning venture capital and it's unclear if Open AI will be able to survive more than a few years unless everyone suddenly adopts it all at once. (Hey, didn't crypto and the metaverse also require spontaneous mass adoption to make sense?)
There is no problem that current ai is a solution to. Consumer tech is basically solved, normal people don't need more tech than a laptop and a smartphone. Big tech have run out of innovations, and they are desperately looking for the next thing to sell. It happened with the metaverse and it's happening again.
In summary:
Ai hasn't materially improved since the launch of Chatgpt4, which wasn't that big of an upgrade to 3.
There is currently no technological roadmap for ai to become better than it is. (As Jim Covello said on the Goldman Sachs report, the evolution of smartphones was openly planned years ahead of time.) The current problems are inherent to the current technology and nobody has indicated there is any way to solve them in the pipeline. We have likely reached the limits of what LLMs can do, and they still can't do much.
Don't believe AI companies when they say things are going to improve from where they are now before they provide evidence. It's time for the AI shills to put up, or shut up.
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what-shitfuckery-is-this-ew · 11 months ago
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BOYCOTTING FOR PALESTINE
The Official BDS Boycott Targets
Campaigns
Block the boat: End maritime arms transfer to Israel
Ban Apartheid Israel from Sports (FIFA, Olympics)
CAF get off Israel's train: Boycott CAF
Greenwashing Apartheid
Israeli Spyware
Military Embargo
Farming Injustice
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Consumer Boycotts - a complete boycott of these brands
Cisco
Axa
Puma
Carrefour
HP
Siemens
Chevron
Intel
Caltex
Israeli produce
Re/max
Ahava
Texaco
Sodastream
Intel
Organic Boycott Targets - boycotts not initiated by BDS but still complete boycott of these brands
Disney
Macdonald's
Dominos
Papa Johns
Burger King
Pizza Hut
Wix
Divestments and exclusion - pressure governments, institutions, investment funds, city councils, etc. to exclude from procurement contracts and investments and to divest from these
Elbit Systems
CAF
Volvo
CAT
Barclays
JCB
HD Hyundai
TKH Security
HikVision
Pressure - boycotts when reasonable alternatives exist, as well as lobbying, peaceful disruptions, and social media pressure.
Google
Amazon
AirBnb
Booking.Com
Expedia
Teva
Here are some companies that strongly support Israel (but are not Boycott targets). There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and boycotting is a political strategy - not a moral one. If you did try to boycott every supporter of Israel you would struggle to survive because every major company supports Israel (as a result of attempting to keep the US economy afloat), that being said, the ones that are being boycotted by masses and not already on the organic boycott list are coloured red.
5 Star Chocolate
7Days
7Up
Apple
Arsenal FC
ALDO
Arket
Axe
Accenture
Ariel
Adidas
ActionIQ
Aquafina
Amika
AccuWeather
Activia
Adobe
Aesop
Azrieli Group
American Eagle
Amway Corp
Axel Springer
American Airlines
American Express
Atlassian
AdeS
Aquarius
Ayataka
Audi
Barqs
Bain & Company
Bayer
Bank Leumi
Bank Hapoalim
BCG (Boston Consulting Group)
Biotherm
Bershka
Bloomberg
BMW
Boeing
Booz Allen Hamilton
Burberry
Bath & Body Works
Bosch
Bristol Myers Squibb
Capri Holdings
Costa
Carita Paris
CareTrust REIT
Caterpillar
Coach
Cappy
Caudalie
CeraVe
Check Point Software Technologies
Cerelac
Chanel
Chapman and Cutler
Channel
Cheerios
Cheetos
Chevron
Chips Ahoy!
Christina Aguilera
Citi Bank
Codral
Cosco
Canada Dry
Citi
Clal Insurance Enterprises
Clean & Clear
Clearblue
Clinique
Champion
Club Social
Coca Cola
Coffee Mate
Colgate
Comcast
Compass
Caesars
Conde Nast
Cooley LLP
Costco
Côte d’Or
Crest
CV Starr
CyberArk Software
Cytokinetics
Crayola
Cra Z Art
Daimler
Dr Pepper
Del Valle
Daim
Doctor Pepper
Dasani
Doritos
Daz
Dior
Dell
Deloitte
Delta Air Lines
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Telekom
DHL Group
David Off
Disney
DLA Piper
Domestos
Domino’s
Douglas Elliman
Downy
Duane Morris LLP
Dreft Baby Detergent & Laundry Products
Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream
eBay
Edelman
Eli Lilly
Evian
Empyrean
Ericsson
Endeavor
EPAM Systems
Estee Lauder
Elbit Systems
EY
Forbes
Facebook
Fairlife
Fanta
First International Bank of Israel
Fiverr
Funyuns
Fuze
Fox News
Fritos
Fox Corp
Gatorade
Gamida Cell
GE
Glamglow
General Catalyst
General Motors
Georgia
Gold Peak
Genesys
Goldman Sachs
Grandma’s Cookies
Garnier
Guess
Greenberg Traurig
Guerlain
Givenchy
H&M
Hadiklaim
Huggies
Hanes
HSBC
Head & Shoulders
Hersheys
Herbert Smith Freehills
Hewlett Packard
Hasbro
Hyundai
Henkel
Harel Insurance Investment & Financial Services
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
HubSpot
Huntsman Corp
IBM
Innocent
Insight Partners
Inditex Group
IT Cosmetics
Instacart
Intermedia
Interpublic Group
Instagram
ICL Group
Intuit
Jazwares
Jefferies
John Lewis
JP Morgan Chase
Jaguar
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorgan
Kenon Holdings
Kate Spade
Kirks’
Kinley Water
KKR
KFC
KKW Cosmetics
Kurkure
Keebler
Kolynos
Kaufland
Kevita
Knorr
KPMG
Lemonade
Lidl
Loblaws
Levi Strauss
Louis Vuitton
Life Water
Levi’s
Levi’s Strauss
LinkedIn
Land Rover
L’Oréal
Lego
Levissima
Live Nation Entertainment
Lufthansa
La Roche-Posay
Lipton
Major League Baseball
Manpower Group
Marriott
Marsh McLennan
Maison Francis Kurkdjian
Mastercard
Mattel
Minute Maid
Monster
Monki
Mainz FC
Mellow Yellow
Mountain Dew
Migdal Insurance
Marks & Spencer
Mirinda
McDermott Will & Emery
Motorola
McKinsey
Merck
Michael Kors
Mizrahi Tefahot Bank
Merck KGaA
Micheal Kors
Milkybar
Maybelline
Mount Franklin
Meta
MeUndies
Mattle
Microsoft
Munchies
Miranda
Morgan Lewis
Moroccanoil
Morgan Stanley
MRC
Nasdaq
Naughty Dog
Nivea
Next
NOS
Nabisco
Nutter Butter
No Frills
National Basketball Association
National Geographic
Nintendo
New Balance
Nutella
Newtons
NVIDIA
Netflix
Nescafe
Nestle
Nesquick
Nike
Nussbeisser
Oreo
Oral B
Old spice
Oysho
Omeprazole
Oceanspray
Opodo
P&G (Procter and Gamble)
Pampers
Pull & Bear
Pepsi
Pfizer
Popeyes
Parker Pens
Philadelphia Cream Cheese
Pizza Hut
Powerade
Purina
Phoenix Holdings
Propel
Ponds
Pure Leaf Green Tea
Power Action Wipes
PwC
Prada
Perry Ellis
Prada Eyewear
Pringles
Payoneer
Procter & Gamble
Purelife
Pureology
Quaker Oats
Reddit
Royal Bank of Canada
Ruffles
Revlon
Ralph Lauren
Ritz
Rolls Royce
Royal
S.Pellegrino
Sabra Hummus
Sabre
Sony
SAP
Simply
Smart Water
Sprite
Schwabe
Shell
Soda Stream
Siemens
StreamElements
Schweppes
Sunsilk
Signal
Skittles
Smart Food
Sobe
Smarties
Sephora
Sam’s Club
Superbus
Samsung
Sodastream
Sunkist
Scotiabank
Sour Patch Kids
Starbucks
Sadaf
Stride
Subway
Tang
Tate’s Bake Shop
The Body Shop
Tesco
Twitch
The Ordinary
Tim Hortons
Tostitos
Timberland
Topo Chico
Tapestry
Tropicana
Tommy Hilfiger
Tommy Hilfiger Toiletries
Turbos
Tom Ford
Taco Bell
Triscuit
TUC
Twix
Tottenham Hotspurs
Twisties
Tripadvisor
Uber
Uber Eats
Urban Decay
Upfield
Unilever
Vicks
Victoria’s Secret
V8
Vaseline
Vitaminwater
Volkswagen
Volvo
Walmart
Wegmans
WhatsApp
Waitrose
Woolworths
Wheat Thins
Walkers
Warner Brothers
Warner Chilcot
Warner Music
Wells Fargo
Winston & Strawn
WingStreet
Wissotzky Tea
WWE
Wheel Washing Powder
Wrigley Company
YouTube
Yvel
Yum Brands
Ziyad
Zara
Zim Shipping
Ziff Davis
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simply-ivanka · 3 months ago
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How the Biden-Harris Economy Left Most Americans Behind
A government spending boom fueled inflation that has crushed real average incomes.
By The Editorial Board -- Wall Street Journal
Kamala Harris plans to roll out her economic priorities in a speech on Friday, though leaks to the press say not to expect much different than the last four years. That’s bad news because the Biden-Harris economic record has left most Americans worse off than they were four years ago. The evidence is indisputable.
President Biden claims that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, but this isn’t close to true. The economy in January 2021 was fast recovering from the pandemic as vaccines rolled out and state lockdowns eased. GDP grew 34.8% in the third quarter of 2020, 4.2% in the fourth, and 5.2% in the first quarter of 2021. By the end of that first quarter, real GDP had returned to its pre-pandemic high. All Mr. Biden had to do was let the recovery unfold.
Instead, Democrats in March 2021 used Covid relief as a pretext to pass $1.9 trillion in new spending. This was more than double Barack Obama’s 2009 spending bonanza. State and local governments were the biggest beneficiaries, receiving $350 billion in direct aid, $122 billion for K-12 schools and $30 billion for mass transit. Insolvent union pension funds received a $86 billion rescue.
The rest was mostly transfer payments to individuals, including a five-month extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, a $3,600 fully refundable child tax credit, $1,400 stimulus payments per person, sweetened Affordable Care Act subsidies, an increased earned income tax credit including for folks who didn’t work, housing subsidies and so much more.
The handouts discouraged the unemployed from returning to work and fueled consumer spending, which was already primed to surge owing to pent-up savings from the Covid lockdowns and spending under Donald Trump. By mid-2021, Americans had $2.3 trillion in “excess savings” relative to pre-pandemic levels—equivalent to roughly 12.5% of disposable income.
So much money chasing too few goods fueled inflation, which was supercharged by the Federal Reserve’s accommodative policy. Historically low mortgage rates drove up housing prices. The White House blamed “corporate greed” for inflation that peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, even as the spending party in Washington continued.
In November 2021, Congress passed a $1 trillion bill full of green pork and more money for states. Then came the $280 billion Chips Act and Mr. Biden’s Green New Deal—aka the Inflation Reduction Act—which Goldman Sachs estimates will cost $1.2 trillion over a decade. Such heaps of government spending have distorted private investment.
While investment in new factories has grown, spending on research and development and new equipment has slowed. Overall private fixed investment has grown at roughly half the rate under Mr. Biden as it did under Mr. Trump. Manufacturing output remains lower than before the pandemic.
Magnifying market misallocations, the Administration conditioned subsidies on businesses advancing its priorities such as paying union-level wages and providing child care to workers. It also boosted food stamps, expanded eligibility for ObamaCare subsidies and waved away hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt. The result: $5.8 trillion in deficits during Mr. Biden’s first three years—about twice as much as during Donald Trump’s—and the highest inflation in four decades.
Prices have increased by nearly 20% since January 2021, compared to 7.8% during the Trump Presidency. Inflation-adjusted average weekly earnings are down 3.9% since Mr. Biden entered office, compared to an increase of 2.6% during Mr. Trump’s first three years. (Real wages increased much more in 2020, but partly owing to statistical artifacts.)
Higher interest rates are finally bringing inflation under control, which is allowing real wages to rise again. But the Federal Reserve had to raise rates higher than it otherwise would have to offset the monetary and fiscal gusher. The higher rates have pushed up mortgage costs for new home buyers.
Three years of inflation and higher interest rates are stretching American pocketbooks, especially for lower income workers. Seriously delinquent auto loans and credit cards are higher than any time since the immediate aftermath of the 2008-09 recession.
Ms. Harris boasts that the economy has added nearly 16 million jobs during the Biden Presidency—compared to about 6.4 million during Mr. Trump’s first three years. But most of these “new” jobs are backfilling losses from the pandemic lockdowns. The U.S. has fewer jobs than it was on track to add before the pandemic.
What’s more, all the Biden-Harris spending has yielded little economic bang for the taxpayer buck. Washington has borrowed more than $400,000 for every additional job added under Mr. Biden compared to Mr. Trump’s first three years. Most new jobs are concentrated in government, healthcare and social assistance—60% of new jobs in the last year.
Administrative agencies are also creating uncertainty by blitzing businesses with costly regulations—for instance, expanding overtime pay, restricting independent contractors, setting stricter emissions limits on power plants and factories, micro-managing broadband buildout and requiring CO2 emissions calculations in environmental reviews.
The economy is still expanding, but business investment has slowed. And although the affluent are doing relatively well because of buoyant asset prices, surveys show that most Americans feel financially insecure. Thus another political paradox of the Biden-Harris years: Socioeconomic disparities have increased.
Ms. Harris is promising the same economic policies with a shinier countenance. Don’t expect better results.
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probablyasocialecologist · 3 months ago
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This is it. Generative AI, as a commercial tech phenomenon, has reached its apex. The hype is evaporating. The tech is too unreliable, too often. The vibes are terrible. The air is escaping from the bubble. To me, the question is more about whether the air will rush out all at once, sending the tech sector careening downward like a balloon that someone blew up, failed to tie off properly, and let go—or more slowly, shrinking down to size in gradual sputters, while emitting embarrassing fart sounds, like a balloon being deliberately pinched around the opening by a smirking teenager. But come on. The jig is up. The technology that was at this time last year being somberly touted as so powerful that it posed an existential threat to humanity is now worrying investors because it is apparently incapable of generating passable marketing emails reliably enough. We’ve had at least a year of companies shelling out for business-grade generative AI, and the results—painted as shinily as possible from a banking and investment sector that would love nothing more than a new technology that can automate office work and creative labor—are one big “meh.” As a Bloomberg story put it last week, “Big Tech Fails to Convince Wall Street That AI Is Paying Off.” From the piece: Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. had one job heading into this earnings season: show that the billions of dollars they’ve each sunk into the infrastructure propelling the artificial intelligence boom is translating into real sales. In the eyes of Wall Street, they disappointed. Shares in Google owner Alphabet have fallen 7.4% since it reported last week. Microsoft’s stock price has declined in the three days since the company’s own results. Shares of Amazon — the latest to drop its earnings on Thursday — plunged by the most since October 2022 on Friday. Silicon Valley hailed 2024 as the year that companies would begin to deploy generative AI, the type of technology that can create text, images and videos from simple prompts. This mass adoption is meant to finally bring about meaningful profits from the likes of Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot. The fact that those returns have yet to meaningfully materialize is stoking broader concerns about how worthwhile AI will really prove to be. Meanwhile, Nvidia, the AI chipmaker that soared to an absurd $3 trillion valuation, is losing that value with every passing day—26% over the last month or so, and some analysts believe that’s just the beginning. These declines are the result of less-than-stellar early results from corporations who’ve embraced enterprise-tier generative AI, the distinct lack of killer commercial products 18 months into the AI boom, and scathing financial analyses from Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, and Elliot Management, each of whom concluded that there was “too much spend, too little benefit” from generative AI, in the words of Goldman, and that it was “overhyped” and a “bubble” per Elliot. As CNN put it in its report on growing fears of an AI bubble, Some investors had even anticipated that this would be the quarter that tech giants would start to signal that they were backing off their AI infrastructure investments since “AI is not delivering the returns that they were expecting,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria told CNN. The opposite happened — Google, Microsoft and Meta all signaled that they plan to spend even more as they lay the groundwork for what they hope is an AI future. This can, perhaps, explain some of the investor revolt. The tech giants have responded to mounting concerns by doubling, even tripling down, and planning on spending tens of billions of dollars on researching, developing, and deploying generative AI for the foreseeable future. All this as high profile clients are canceling their contracts. As surveys show that overwhelming majorities of workers say generative AI makes them less productive. As MIT economist and automation scholar Daron Acemoglu warns, “Don’t believe the AI hype.”
6 August 2024
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junedenim · 6 days ago
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2010
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beneath the boardwalk, part 8 (series masterlist)
glass in the park
warnings: the usual...angst, fluff, smut, etc.
word count: 13k
In late January, I bought a fur coat. I don't know if it's real or faux because I still haven't determined the difference in feeling between the authentic and the fake but I thrifted it so there's no guilt if it is made out of a poor chinchilla or something. It carried a dramatic feeling with it. I would wear it all the time. Sometimes, I would go out on walks just to wear it. I'd walk from my apartment to Grand Central and take the subway back just to make sure people saw it.
Alex returned to touring around the same time. While I was in a dirty slush-filled New York, Alex was travelling through the coastal cities of France. I knew it was cold there too but I'm sure it was much more conventionally beautiful and I envied him at times when I came home and my socks were soaked through.
We tried to talk on the phone daily, but time zones were difficult. We promised one another to always call on Saturday mornings for me so if we missed previous days in the week, I would always be able to tell him about my work week on Saturday.
Alex seemed to have everything and nothing going on. He'd play shows, get drunk or high, play ping-pong, take pictures of the Belem Tower, and watch Mighty Mouse.
I was busy. I liked it. My work would sometimes be straightforward office work, sometimes I'd visit places to review, sometimes they sent me home early to test products out, and sometimes they had me stay late to review products. I had a group of friends that I went out drinking with on Fridays and it was social drinking, not drinking to get drunk. One night, I ordered a Shirley Temple and laughed about it on the subway ride home at the thought of my younger self seeing me: a sober girl taking the subway home alone from the bar. It was nice to finally like myself. Or at least who I was becoming.
In my empty time, I wrote autobiographical things. I sometimes sent things to Alex but I found my writing became more introspective and it wasn't details I wanted to share with him. I was fearful of why I felt the need to hide it, but I didn't even feel much like reading it.
My friend, Fennel (he hates his name too), said it came from an overprotective biological need that all women must hide things from men, even if they are loving and trusting. I didn't think so. I told him I trusted Alex more than I trusted myself. He told me that was the issue.
Fennel cultivated weed on the balcony of his apartment in Murray Hill. He had a boyfriend named Kaka, who was a former Chippendales stripper and currently worked for Goldman Sachs. Sometimes, when he got drunk enough he'd reenact a routine. They were both in their early 40s, shared a dog named Rooster, and, still to this day, had the most luxurious apartment I have ever seen.
The building had a disheveled front but inside they had an open floor plan, a kitchen that was larger than my apartment, and the glorious aforementioned balcony. Fennel was a creative director at Condé Nast and had taken a liking to me because of my crooked teeth and what he called my "gemütlich" British accent.
I went over to their place nearly every week. They often had parties and I'd arrive in the early afternoon claiming to help them set up but I'd eat their fancy Bonilla a la Vista potato chips and play with Rooster. Their dinner parties were grandiloquent and their house parties were glamourously gauche.
One Sunday, I went over early through Fennel's insistence on dressing me. It was Pygmalion in a way or maybe I was the Edie Sedgwick to his Andy Warhol (I said this to him once and he took great offence because Warhol slept with Edie and he had no intention of taking advantage of me) but I quite liked it. I felt like a living doll and through his higher-up position and wealth, he was able to obtain fabulous pieces that he let me keep.
I walked around barefoot in their apartment wearing a Yohji Yamamoto (Fennel insulted me for not knowing who that was) white dress that flowed with every step I took while discussing Alex, who they had yet to meet.
"I can't believe you've been with him since you were 18." Kaka marvelled at this fact every time we talked about Alex.
"We had some brief pauses in there but yeah. You guys have been together for over a decade."
Fennel chuckled. "We were both in our 30s. It's quite the difference."
I sat on their black leather couch and leaned my head on the back of it. They were both setting the table. I was relaxing. "Yeah but isn't it hard at any age?"
"Sure but if I was still with the same person I was with at 18...well, that was a woman so it wouldn't count," Fennel laughed.
"Are you going to marry him?" Kaka asked. He was a complete romantic who would often say how much he loved love.
"I don't know. Maybe. I don't know if I ever want to get married."
"Independence?" Fennel questioned as he pulled out a wine bottle.
"Parents."
"Ah," he sighed.
"But I have a feeling they always hated each other. I've always loved Alex. Does that make me lovesick and annoying?" I turned my head to ask them.
"Yes, but it's admirable. You seemed to have picked the right one. Good looking, loyal, you talk about him so sweetly," Kaka praised.
"I sometimes wonder if he picked the right one." It wasn't a newfound concern. I always felt secure in my relationship with Alex, not so much in myself. Occasionally, the worry of whether he could do better than me peeked itself out, usually when he was away and I didn't have the physical reassurance.
"Hush!" Kaka told me. "Any woman is better than a man. Take it from me." He kissed me on my cheek and it was nice to feel so fabulous. Fennel let me keep the Yamamoto. I try it on whenever I feel insecure.
*
I got sick on Valentine's Day. I had been unscathed for too long and on the morning of Alex's return from Europe—Valencia, Spain to be specific—I woke up with the urge to vomit. So, I vomited. And when Alex arrived home, I was vomiting.
I heard his bag drop while I was keeling over the toilet. The clacking of his boots on our wood floors stopped at the tile of our bathroom as he said, "Jesus, are you okay?" He hesitated, surely disgusted, before kneeling on the floor beside me, rubbing my back.
I had emptied most of my stomach and was dry heaving mostly. I slumped against the wall, catching my breath. "Welcome home." I managed a faint smile and my sarcasm didn't cause any laughter from Alex.
His hand stroked my forearm. He still had his jacket on and I was in my pajamas. "What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I just woke up nauseated."
"Food poisoning?" He suggested as he stroked his thumb over my knee.
I shook my head. "No, no. I feel fine now."
I attempted to stand up but Alex held me down. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, yeah. I just need to lay down for a little." I slowly stood, reorienting myself.
Alex, still kneeling proposal-style, offered, "Alright. Do you want me to carry you?"
I laughed. "I can manage to walk five feet to the bedroom, Alex." I headed toward our unmade bed.
"I can manage to carry you five feet to the bedroom." He wanted to make sure I knew that.
I smiled and to placate his need to help I had him get me a glass of water. He returned, jacket- and shoeless, with my glass of water. I took a sip and placed it on the bedside table we found at the Grand Bazaar last December. Alex sat in front of me, taking my feet into his lap. "You think it's the flu?"
I shook my head and slumped back onto the pillows up against the headboard. "No, no. I feel fine and I don't have a fever."
"Hungover?" He smirked, poking fun.
"No," I mocked. "An upset stomach. I'm fine now. How have you been? How was the flight?"
"Fine," he quickly answered. "Did you eat anything this morning?"
I shook my head. "I'm fine," I insisted. "How are you?"
"Fine. Do you want me to get you something? Tea? Crackers?" He continued to pester.
"No. Can we talk about something else or else I might vomit on you?" I crossed my arms, frustrated with myself for ruining the morning, frustrated with him for continuing to ruin this reunion.
"I'm just concerned something might be wrong. Should we go to the doctor?"
I rolled my eyes. "I'm fine. I know my own body. It was just a little morning bug."
His eyes shot up and wide looking straight at me as if he had just gotten an electric shock. "Do you think you could be...?"
I took my feet off his lap, criss-crossing them. "Oh, god, I'm not pregnant. Calm down."
"You sure? When was your last...you know?" He moved his hand up and down in front of his stomach.
I raised my eyebrows and laughed. "Period? What are you? A 12-year-old boy, you can't say the word?"
He sat awkwardly, a nervous look on his face. "No, it's just, you know..."
"I don't know and I don't know where this sudden weird behavior of yours is coming from." I sipped on the water and rolled my eyes behind my closed lids.
He reached out to rub my knee again. It was becoming rather annoying like a fly pestering you. "I'm concerned. That's all. So? When was it?"
I shrugged. "Like a month ago. I don't know."
He was bug-eyed and staring into my soul. "Well, are you late?"
"I don't keep track of that stuff." It was probably laziness or maybe because I was on birth control. Granted, I wasn’t very regular with that anymore. I never liked taking it and Alex hadn’t been there for a month.
"You don't keep track!" He stood up, pacing like it was the 1950s and he was stuck in the hallway while I was giving birth.
"You don't even have a period." I crossed my arms and leaned further back into bed. I was tired. He must have been jet lagged too. Why weren’t we sleeping?
"Yeah, but I am having sex with you."
"We last had sex a month ago. I'm not pregnant."
"And have you had a period since?"
I sighed. "No."
He exhaled and his head fell to his chest. He looked like my father. His head slumped after my mother disappointed him. It terrified me. Like I had done something wrong by not shedding my uterine lining. I didn't feel pregnant. Alex's concern made me concerned but I was more scared by the way his head sank.
"Should I go buy a test?" I asked. I didn't feel like fighting that I wasn't. I got an eerie feeling like I was overhearing my parents fight but I had suddenly body swapped with my mother. It felt like some trust had snapped in between Alex and me. For him, he'll say it wasn't and that it was based solely on concern. I thought otherwise. Like his paranoia had overtaken him.
"I'll go," he offered.
I shook my head and went to my dresser for a change of clothes. "No, it's fine." It's wicked that in my mind I held more worry over someone catching Alex Turner with a pregnancy test than actually being pregnant.
I threw the fur coat on and made my way to the nearby CVS. I had never bought one before. I don't know if I thought I ever would but I suppose I imagined it over different circumstances—a happy one, maybe with someone beside me with equal excitement. I bought a tube of toothpaste and a bag of Cheetos. I still had vomit on my breath.
Alex was sitting on the couch when I returned. His fingers were tapping the armrest and he had the TV on The View but he held a locked stare with the front door, meeting my eyes as I walked in.
I tossed the plastic bag on the coffee table and collapsed on the couch beside him. "I don't have to pee."
"Okay."
I grabbed the remote sitting between us and began to flip channels. Not much of anything good was on that early. I felt Alex staring at me but he didn't speak so I didn't speak. I landed on Notting Hill. "I hate this movie," I said just to have something to say.
He didn't say anything. Not even a Hugh Grant joke.
A half-hour passed in silence beside the movie before I stood up, dug the box out, and went to the bathroom. Not a word from Alex. I slammed the bathroom door shut.
I fumbled with the test for a while, struggling to open the box's lid. I wondered if Alex didn't join me in the bathroom because he thought I needed privacy or because he was upset. I think he was mostly just a scared little boy.
He felt so little to me in that moment and not in the way I loved. He was small and made my blood boil, even if I couldn't fully blame him for his concern. But his silence bugged me. His impassive form on the couch, a refusal to move or communicate. He had a habit of getting in his own head and barring entry. He'd say it was his personality. I'd say it was immaturity.
I took the test and waited for the results to appear alone in the bathroom. Negative, as expected. Still, I was left with uncertainty about what to do. I was mad at him but I didn't want to yell. I was relieved but I didn't want to celebrate. I was left where he was: silence.
Alex was still where I had left him. I put the test on the coffee table and sat down beside him, the last 10 minutes of Notting Hill playing. But he didn't move to look at it. His head turned to me instead. He was reading my face rather than the test. I stayed neutral and stared onward, refusing his enticing gaze.
"I'm sorry if I made you..." He hadn't fully grasped what I was thinking. I tend to think men and women are mostly the same but I find our biological difference is showcased in those times of stress. "It's negative. Right?"
I nodded, staring at Julia Roberts, arms crossed. "Mhmm."
He scooted closer to me. "Jane." His hand landed on my sweatpants-covered thigh and my eyes decided to finally snap over to him, small, tiny, scared little boy Alex. "I would've..."
"What?"
He looked at me as if he didn't expect a reaction from me. His expression was stunned and his hand stilled. "I don't know." You brought his hand up to his forehead, pushing his long strands back over his head. He took a deep breath. "This whole morning has felt like whiplash."
I scoffed, "Yeah." My head turned away from him. I was battered with the feeling of numbness. In the past, I think I would've cried. Or yelled. Now, I felt indifferent. I didn't know how to feel about that either.
"Have I ruined Valentine's Day?" He asked in an attempt to make me laugh.
I shut off the TV and stood up. "Yeah." I walked away to the bedroom. Alex stayed out in the living room.
When I went out to the kitchen, Alex was asleep on the couch. I made as much noise in the kitchen as possible to wake him up. I knew he was jet lagged and tired but I was a scorned woman.
I started the tea kettle and turned around to see a yawning Alex. "Do you want tea?" I offered.
He shook his head and placed his hands on the back of a chair. "I'm sorry for being an asshole." I turned away, not particularly interested in looking at him, instead I searched for a mug. "I suppose I have a habit of that. But I figured we could go out tonight. Go to a pub. Get some drinks."
Alex smiled, proud of himself for upholding a minimal tradition in my eyes. "I have plans tonight."
I didn't expect him to roll over and die. "Oh. Okay." He sat down on one of the stools and said nothing else.
There was no fight in him, meaning I had to be the one to fight. "Fennel and Kaka are having a party. I told them we'd go."
"That'll be fun.” He sent me a complacent smile. “I'll finally get to meet them."
I smiled back just as limitingly. "They've heard a lot."
He looked down at his hands. "Bad, I'm sure."
I exhaled. "I don't hate you, Alex."
"Feels like it." He was moody and refused eye contact, almost like he was me. We had been around each other for so long that we had become each other. People would say this to me but I rarely saw it.
"Call it PMSing. It just wasn't the best greeting."
He nodded, the understanding slowly seeping into him. "I know. I'm sorry for that."
"I woke up early to be awake when you got back and there I go getting sick."
He looked guilty. Solemn and culpable. "I should be making you tea."
I turned back with a smile. "Yeah. You should."
He walked closer and hugged my side. He placed a kiss on my temple and squeezed me close to him. "Go sit down. I'll bring this over to you."
I kissed his cheek. "Alright."
*
Fennel and Kaka's apartment was stuffed with everything. People, liquor, drugs, music, hearts. Alex wore a white shirt with a suit jacket over top. I wore a pink floral Roberto Cavalli cocktail dress, Fennel provided. Maybe it was because of our fight earlier or maybe I had just changed since I had seen Alex last, but I held a superiority complex over him. The silk of my dress wrapped me in elegance and the rough quality of his suit jacket. Oh, shit, I was becoming posh.
Looking back, I wasn't dignified or aware enough that my mother held these opinions of my father as well. However, I was also in a bitter state, and even Alex said I looked better than him so I wasn't really kidding myself.
People held cocktails and canapés were being moved throughout the room. Alex and I stood in the corner silently, I sipped the edge of my gimlet to keep it from spilling. Alex drank a whiskey. I kept thinking about it, in an ashamed way, but then I found humour in it and thought it best to break the ice and tell Alex what I was thinking. "We really are my mother and father."
He turned, originally with a neutral look on his face before spotting the crack of my smile. He breathed laughter out and lifted his glass, taking a slow sip from it. I imagine he was looking for something to say. We hadn't spoken for so long that his vocal chords must’ve needed a refresher course. He dropped the glass to his side. "I hope all the good parts."
I chuckled. "You say that like there are some."
He tossed his head side-to-side. "They've always had elegance to them. They intimidate me. The way the act is, you know..." He moved his hand like he was fishing for the word, trying to find it in the ocean of his mind.
"Posh?" I suggested.
His jaw dropped. "Now, Janie, I would never say that."
"Oy! Jane Cavendish!" It was Fennel, approaching us with Kaka following behind him. They were both dressed in matching maroon suits, each with a cocktail. "Beautiful. Always beautiful. And this must be Alex. Oh, how we've waited for this moment."
"Don't say that. You'll make him nervous," I told them. Alex didn't like it when I told people this. He found it to be invasive for other people—those not close to him—to know his emotions. I found Fennel and Kaka to be trustworthy of this information.
Alex peered over at me like I was his mother embarrassing him in front of his friends. "It's nice to finally meet you both." He shook their hands and they were both very impressed by this. I could tell.
"You both look lovely," I told them.
"Ralph Lauren," Fennel replied. He moved his hand down the fabric of his suit. "Red velvet. Feel." He reached out for my hand and rubbed it up against the velvet, the smoothness running under my fingers. "Now, you, Alex." He grabbed Alex's hand doing the same. It was awkward and made me giggle but Fennel always had a way of putting people at ease. At the sound of my enjoyment, Alex chuckled, nodding his head in approval of the fabric choice.
Kaka told Alex, "Has Jane told you how jealous we are of you two?"
Alex looked over at me at the knowledge of this news. "No, no. Why?" He shoved his hands in his pockets.
"The romance," Kaka swooned. "I wish I could have met Fennel sooner but we were a mess at your age. To find your love so early and keep it going and in the way you two are. If I was doing that at 23, I'd be a mess. Young love is just so lovely. Sorry, I'm a little inebriated."
Alex chuckled. "That's fine."
"You're a very beautiful couple," Fennel said. "I know a lot of ugly ones. Inside and out."
"Well, we had a fight before this so, if that brings us down from paradise for a bit." Alex seemed shocked I had said this. I thought I sounded like my 17-year-old self again. It was honest to me but it was also childish.
Fennel waved his hands. "Fights are great. You should have makeup sex in the bathroom."
I asked, "But where will everyone do coke?" We all laughed. Alex too, if not out of humour than of peer pressure.
Hours passed. We talked with some of my co-workers and Fennel's and Kaka's cultured friends. While Alex was in the bathroom, I talked with David Remnick and nearly fainted out of nervousness because I couldn't remember how to say Ibuprofen.
Alex and I went to the balcony to smoke. The city rushed by below and we each lit a cigarette up alone. I sighed and leaned on the railing, my head in my hand. It was so hot in the apartment but I felt so chilly outside as the wind rushed by. I felt Alex place his hand on my back. He was like a hot water bottle. He knocked against my spine like he was checking to make sure all my vertebrae were still in place. "You look like Juliet."
I turned my head to look at him but his head was off to the left, the smoke escaping out of the side of his mouth. He looked like he was stargazing, even though he couldn't have seen any in that light-polluted sky. His touch on me was this firm thing. I had never felt him so strongly like he wanted me to know he was still standing there beside me.
"The moon is so bright," he said. I looked into his eyes, searching for it in there. I followed his line of sight before my own landed on the glowing sphere hanging up in the sky. It stood bold against the black void surrounding it.
I looked at Alex, bold as ever. I couldn't manage anything with my tongue. I just stared at him while he stared at the moon. I don't know if he felt my eyes on him or if he was so enraptured with the moon that he couldn't handle looking anywhere else.
I sighed, standing up straight. I don't know what I was thinking by standing up so quickly. I don't know why I didn't just stay there and watch him for hours. "I've never understood the whole man-in-the-moon thing."
Alex shrugged, still staring above. "You can see anything if you look long enough."
I scuffed my cigarette out on the railing but kept the dog end in my hand. "Do you think if I stare at it long enough I'll see you?"
He hummed his response. I wasn't sure if we were speaking in some kind of code or just dancing around one another's words. Everything felt off, even if we looked so on track. I was uneasy in finding a response. He acted like he wanted to be alone but his hand persisted its touch on my back. His lips wrapped around his smoke and his eyes stared off into the lights of the city.
My arms crossed and I stood at what felt like such a distance. I stepped sideways, figuring Alex to be done with me and on to his stargazing. I'd have greater engagement talking to the walls inside and at least then I'd have a cocktail too. I turned away and his hand grazed across my back as I moved.
"I feel like I've done something wrong," Alex finally spoke. I had my back to him and it felt like I may never look at him again. Either he or my feet wouldn't allow me to turn around to see him. "I overstepped earlier."
My hand went to my forehead and it was like my brain was going to swell up and push itself out of my skull. I spun around on my heels. He was leaning back against the rail nonchalantly but held such caution in his bones. His eyes had a hard time staying on mine as he committed to the nervous habit of playing with his nails and tapping the end of his cigarette. "It's fine. I don't want to fight about it. I'm tired."
"Okay." He deflected his silence onto me, acting as if I was the one causing tension between us. Earlier that was the case but I dropped it in the kitchen and moved on with life. The whole day Alex held a wall around him. It wasn't a new thing for him to have his guard up, but I usually wasn’t the one blocked from entering.
I swore to myself long ago, after our break-up in '07 that I wouldn't be accusatory to Alex. Trust had always been strong but we always had a weak link. His stare now penetrated me and I felt like the nervous one. My arms stayed crossed but my hands began to squeeze the sides of me and I looked away, inside at the party, which had grown louder as the pretense of class had dropped with the amount of alcohol and drugs. "Did something happen on tour?"
My eyes moved back at his quietness. I had a sick feeling in my stomach but I didn't feel like I had a right to. I'm the one who fucked up before so I'd forgive him if he did now. Instead of guilt, he stared at me like he didn't know what language I was speaking. "No. Why?"
I don't know if he wanted me to feel sorry for him because I was accusing him of something that he didn't do or if he was as lost as I was when it came to this stalemate. "You just seem off. That's all."
He shrugged. "It's been a weird day." I was hit with a wave and I'm still figuring out whether it was from nostalgia or because I actually did see it but I swore he looked 17 again at that moment. I'll always see glimpses of that. The locked-in memory of his first impression. Through his long hair and whatever frustration he seemed to have, I smiled because we were standing in a garden. One that was on a balcony and was mainly weed other than one pot of zinnias.
I dropped my arms and plucked at the fabric of my dress. I didn't tell him what I thought. I thought myself to be a little childish in my reminiscing but it was Valentine's Day and I don't know why we went to this party because I always just wanted Alex to myself. I was a desperate woman with a sole propensity to be alone with Alex, especially when it was the day of his homecoming. I blamed it on my period, which I got the following day (not pregnant).
"You didn't want to come here tonight?" I said it as a question but it was a statement. I was already sure of Alex's stance. His inability to relax around strangers and his reluctance to engage in small talk. I knew he also had an inclination to be alone with me.
He played nice though. Always gave in to me easily on these kinds of dilemmas because it's what I wanted. He couldn't give me much in other areas (I had just finally won the whole location problem) so he found it expected to do what I wanted to do when he was around. But, sometimes (I use sometimes very loosely because I do in fact like getting my way), I liked doing what he wanted to do. Most of all, my favourite thing was talking to him. So, why would I spend a whole night chit-chatting with other people? (Besides, David Remnick because that really was a dream come true).
"I'm having fun." He wasn't very convincing. A tone of neutrality and a shrug of his shoulders that just looked like disinterest.
I chuckled to myself. "I'd like to give myself some credit. I know you better than anyone else so I know that you're full of shit."
He laughed and finally dropped his cigarette and his rough shoulders. "I'm just tired."
"Sure," I dragged out, unconvinced. "I'm kind of wishing we just went to a pub or something."
Alex looked down and rubbed his forehead. "Yeah. I'm wishing a lot of things right now."
My brows furrowed and I wanted to look closer at him but his hand and hair shielded his expression. "Like what?"
He put his hands in his pockets and looked out at the city. "I don't know. I think I'm just a little messed up right now."
I stepped forward, wanting to stand next to him, wanting to touch him. I moved close enough that he was forced to look at me. "What's going on?"
The browns of his eyes looked darker and shinier as if they had been glazed over. I wanted to touch his face and have him lean into my hand, but I wanted to hear what he had to say first. He fidgeted with the cuffs of his jacket but I had him cornered. "Just in my head. The usual."
"About what? Me?" It might have been selfish to think so but he looked like he might cry while looking at me and I don't think I had felt that insecure in front of Alex in years.
He shook his head. "I don't even want to say it. It's so stupid."
"I don't want you to leave it in there."
His eyes darted in a million directions before landing on mine. "Just things are changing."
It took me a second to understand. It took me a gust of wind passing before I pointed to myself. "Me?"
He rattled his brain with the shake of his head. "I'm just in my head, Janie."
I grabbed his upper arm, forcing him to take notice of me. "Well, let me in. You know, I like when we talk." I smiled up at him and he released the hint of a smile, a sparkle behind his eyes. "I like knowing what's going on and what you have to say, what you're thinking. I don't get much of that while you're away and I think we both stew in our thoughts for so long that we're practically bored of it by the time we see the other and then we think we don't have to bother saying anything. But I've never heard about this and I want to know about this. I want to know about you if you let me."
A grin covered his face, so wide his teeth peeked through to wave to me. "What?" I asked. His smile just seemed to grow bigger and his eyes cast down on me. I thought he might kiss me but I'm glad he didn't, I didn't want to get distracted. "What?" I insisted, punching his leaning figure.
"Nothing," he said so cheerfully. I thought he might have taken something to cause this sudden change. He put his hand on my shoulder like he wanted to touch me but wanted to make sure we kept our distance. "I just love the way you talk. I don't know. Like the way you know how my brain works and you feel everything I'm feeling. I just...I love talking to you too. It's what I've always loved about you. I feel like I can't do this with anyone else. Just lay myself out and never have to worry. I think I forgot the feeling."
I wrapped my arm around his neck, closing the distance, and having us stand chest-to-chest. "We'll blame the jetlag."
"Sorry for being moody. I think it's an after-effect of prolonged homesickness."
"It's fine. I suffer from it too." It made me smile that we both considered each other home. It was cheesy and cliche but that didn’t make it untrue.
"Do you think there's a cure?" He moved closer and it took me that long to realize we hadn't kissed all day between the vomit and the fighting and the party. I should be put in jail for this.
I didn't kiss him right away. I hugged him first just to feel him, make sure he was there, all of him. "I might start with getting out of here."
Alex insisted, "Don't make me force you to leave."
"I wouldn't if I didn't want to. I'm craving shitty fries and chairs that squeak." And him. I really craved him.
"You love it when we play poor together."
"I love when we're together." We finally kissed at that point, waiting any longer felt like too much. He was right with me and I never wanted him to leave. If we kissed any longer we might have fallen off the side of the balcony. Together.
I dragged him through the apartment with me, trailing like my puppy but he was my loyal dog. His hand was clasped in mine and I kissed both Kaka's and Fennel's cheeks and promised to have dinner sometime soon for a more proper introduction to Alex. "Enjoy your Valentine's, love," Kaka said in his drunken impersonation of a British accent.
"You too," Alex said for both of us.
He put my fur coat on me and we left onto the sidewalk of the loved-up city. We decided to walk back in the direction of our apartment and land at a shitty bar along the way. We walked side-by-side like we were two anxious teenagers again. I suppose we had regressed in the absence of one another and the readjustment was more structurally unsound than usual.
"So, uh," I started, "you think I've changed too much?"
He threw his head back. "Don't listen to me."
I grabbed his arm, tugging on it. "No, I want you to be honest with me. None of this evasiveness."
Alex put his arm around my shoulder, pushing me into him. "I'm just catching up a little. You've been busy while I've been gone and I like that."
"But too much too quick?" Fennel and Kaka and the load of other people they had in their apartment could be too much. It overwhelmed me at times and I knew most of the people in the room.
We stopped at a corner, waiting for a light. He turned his head to look directly at me. "Just give me a bit of a grace period." He smiled so carefully. Not in a calculated way but to reaffirm his statement.
I smiled back. "I'd give you anything you want." It was probably too much to give a person, something I wasn't even willing to give to myself, but we were sharing a desperate kind of love. It wasn't the healthiest but he was the only person I knew would love me no matter what.
He seemed struck by this statement, unable to tear his eyes away to spot the green light in front of us. I pointed ahead at it but he didn't move his feet. He bent down and kissed my cheek firmly. I think he would have stayed there forever if I hadn't pushed him and insisted we cross the street before the light turned red again. He leaned down and whispered, "Ditto."
We stopped at The Scratcher in the East Village. It was Irish but akin to English by nature. It had exposed brick and when I asked the bartender for a Guinness (me) and lager shandy (Alex) he talked with me about England long after he had given me our drinks. The lighting was low and it was late but the bar was still full with mostly lonely hearts, save us and a few other couples.
Alex found us a table in the back corner by a group of rowdy men and for a bit it did feel like we were back home. "That's what I love about New York," I mused to him. "I find pieces of home here. I never found that in Los Angeles. Too deserty."
Alex leaned his cheek on his fist. His eyes looked tired but his smile stayed exercising. "You seem really happy here."
I shrugged. It was hard to admit these things. Like if I spoke it out loud it would cease to be true. "I guess, in a way, it feels like it’s something I did on my own. I know I'm not alone but...you know what I mean."
His eyes flashed down at the table and he sat up straight, leaning back against his chair. "Yeah. I know what you mean." He sipped his drink and I could tell he was going to say something once he washed his words down. "I really like it here too." The infliction in his voice was distracted as if he was thinking about 10 other things. I didn't know which one to ask about.
"Tour's almost over." I was ashamed that it flew by for me. Maybe because I was more occupied. I thought it should have felt like it dragged on forever. The way I used to feel about it. Granted it was shorter than the previous tours but I had never been this involved with Alex. We shared a home now, yet, his things—his clothes next to mine and the record collection collecting dust—didn't make me long for him, yearn for him. Perhaps, it was growing up. Perhaps, it was growing apart.
I circled my finger around my glass's edge. "I don't know if I'll be able to get off for the London shows."
"That's fine." He has always been so accepting. Like most things, it was a blessing and curse. Sometimes, I hated that he didn't put up a fight. He never told me what he desired, even with things like LA. It was a work obligation, not something he wished for. Maybe it's because I always wanted too much and Alex balanced it out by wanting too little.
"I got off work tomorrow. If you want to do anything."
He smirked. "I have one idea." Alex did desire some things.
*
I cut Alex's hair a week later. He complained of it being too long and I suggested he go to the barber and then he said I should do it. It was late but we were very happy.
We shared a glass of wine. I had Alex sit in the bathtub and I kneeled on the tile floor. We washed it first and then emptied the bathtub before I began to cut it. "What if you end up not liking it?" I questioned. I wasn't nervous. If anything I was power-hungry holding the kitchen scissors.
"I'll like it. It'll grow back either way. How bad could you fuck it up?” He chuckled before saying, “Last time you did this we broke up. Can't fuck up more than that."
His laughter induced me to join him. I sipped the wine before passing it to him. It felt very adult and I told him that. He said, "I could do this forever."
*
Alex experienced his first nor'easter blizzard at the end of February. I had experienced my first at the beginning of the month. He was quite excited for it. It was childish excitement like he was going to receive a snow day. I suppose his snow day was the fact that I didn’t have to go to work. I ended up getting Thursday and Friday off, which, well, did feel like a snow day.
However, it was cold. Like really cold. We ventured outside at the start of the storm to collect groceries and experience the snowfall. We got into a snowball outside our building’s front door before the snow turned to slush. Alex accidentally ended up hitting Russ Tillerson, who lived on the floor below us. He had a good spirit and laughed before shoving snow down Alex’s back, smushed in between his skin and his coat.
It took me a good few minutes to recover from laughter over Alex’s shivers. “It’s not fun,” he insisted, still patting snow out.
I hit his thick jacket with my gloved hand. “You’re not a good sport.”
He pouted and whined, “I don’t want to be a good sport. I want to be warm.”
I stroked his cheek, rubbing the icicle crystals stuck on my glove onto his skin making him wince. “Awwww. Poor baby. I’ll run you a bath when we get back.” He quite enjoyed that bath.
The days were fun but long. We watched TV and had sex for most of it. We ate sloppy like we were at a slumber party. We got high Friday night while watching Goodfellas. I ate a bag of salt & vinegar chips and half a pack of Chips Ahoy! Alex ate a whole pack of Oreos and drank enough Coke to shut down your organs.
“I’m sorry I’m so high,” I apologized.
He waved me off and sunk deeper into the couch pillows. “It’s fine. I wish we had more Coke.”
“We could do coke coke.”
“You have coke coke?”
“No. But we could get some?” It was candy in my new circle. Easy to obtain, sweet to do, horrible for you.
“Nah,” he rejected. “You’ve done it?”
“Yeah. I used to do it with…what’s his name…Robert.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry I’m so quiet,” I apologized again.
“You’re good.”
“Ray Liotta is so hot.”
“You’re so hot.”
“Mhmm.” My eyes moved away from blue eyes to Alex’s brown. He had sat up from his slump and was leaning on the armrest, observationally. “Don’t do that.”
“What?” He smirked, all-knowing.
“You know…how horny I get…” His smirk grew. “Don’t look at me like that!”
He curled his fingers, beckoning me to him. “Come here. Let me do you.”
I laughed and closed my eyes, prepared to succumb to sleep. His foot knocked mine. “What?”
“C’mon.”
He came to me. And, well, in me.
*
Alex left halfway through March, narrowly missing another nor’easter, but this time less severe. Opal came a few days later for work. She stayed at the Bowery Hotel, a few blocks east of me. I had walked by it a million times and always longed to go in. It was my second most desired hotel after the Plaza. 
She was there for work but apparently now had a boyfriend there too but that was all supposed to be obvious. Opal talked about things like you already knew everything about it. She told outlandish stories where she'd say, "You know how Charlie is" when I had never heard of Charlie before. Nonetheless, she was exciting and good company.
Alex was in Baltimore by the time I called him while drunk. Opal and I had gone to House of Yes and said yes to every drink along the way. Opal left with some guy who wasn't her boyfriend but it's okay because they had an open relationship, I think. Therefore, I was left outside House of Yes going home alone. I don't blame Opal for ditching me; the guy was hot and I insisted she go by saying I wasn't drunk, just tipsy.
I called Alex and lit up a cigarette at the same time. He picked up after 2 rings while I was still muffled by the cigarette in between my teeth. "Hiya, honey," I mumbled.
I heard laughing, either from him or the drunkards around him. He had been drinking too but not heavily. "Hey, sweetie." He moved away from the sound. I imagined him tucking himself away in the back end of the tour bus.
"I'm needy and I miss you," I whined.
His soft chuckling rang through the phone. "What's that mean?"
"It means I'm walking to the subway in Brooklyn." I scraped my heels against the cement.
"Ah. You and Opal have fun?"
"Yeah, but I'm drunk and alone. She's probably having sex right now. Everyone is having sex right now." House of Yes was a very sexual place in 2010.
"I'm not."
"Yeah,” I giggled. “I figured that one out. Could you imagine? You're on the phone with me having sex."
"What? Like phone sex?" He teased me.
I scolded him, "I'm not having phone sex in public. I meant like you were fucking someone else and on the phone with me."
"Why would I fuck someone else?" His tone was puzzled and I think he was drunker than I thought he was at the time.
"I don't know. I'm drunk. There's no logic to my thinking."
"I don't think I'll ever have sex with someone else. It'd be weird."
"I'd have sex with other people."
"Really?" He didn’t sound worried. Just curious.
"Yeah. Like George Clooney or something."
"I'll let you have Clooney. I’d fuck Clooney."
"Nah. He wouldn't settle down with me anyway."
There was a pause of silence before he expressed, "Miss you."
"Yeah. Me too."
He buzzed as if the words were sinking in. "End of the month and then I'm all yours."
"I like that idea. I've been hanging out with Opal so much I think she's starting to hate me."
"No. She just needs hot ass like the rest of us." It had been a very lonely month in the sex department.
"I'm not hot ass?"
"You're the hottest ass."
"Subway's here."
"Okay. Let me know when you're home."
"Yeah. Love you."
He hummed in agreement.
*
Alex returned at the end of April. We relaxed back into domestic obliviousness. That weekend, we went over for dinner at Fennel and Kaka's. We drank wine, ate fancy chicken, and played with Rooster. 
We sat at one end of their dining room table. Alex's nervousness had faded but he remained stiff, the obvious odd man out. We were laughing about work and Sally Condalteen's explosible haircut, all out of Alex's frame of reference. 
Fennel, observing this, gasped and said, "I just realized I haven't even heard the story of how you two met."
I turned to Alex, who was looking at me. I was like a mother training a child to speak for themselves. "You tell it. I've never heard your side of things."
"Okay. Uh, well, Jane had a class with Matt, who is the drummer of, you know, the band, and he invited her to our first gig. We sort of knew each other—small college and that kind of thing—but never talked. So, at the venue, I went up to her and called her the wrong name. The whole night I figured I screwed things up and made a fool of myself. Then, I'm outside smoking and she comes out and I thought maybe I wouldn't say anything but then I realized I'd probably never get another chance, so..."
"You went for it?" Kaka, a big woosy romantic, grinned.
"Obviously," I answered.
"What about you? What did you think when he came up to you?" Fennel asked me.
I shrugged. "Nervous. I think. After, terrified."
"Why?" He was like a psychologist desperate to get to the bottom of things.
I shrugged. I didn't want to reveal my whole emotional state to them but their eyes stared at me. "He knew me better in one conversation than anyone in my life. It's stupid."
"No!" Fennel insisted. "It makes me believe in soulmates."
"Oh, god," I exhaled exasperatedly, rolling my eyes.
Kaka swatted at me. "Don't be so pessimistic."
"I have to be. I'm a realistic woman." Or a doubtful one. I was a recovering romantic at best.
Fennel turned his bark onto Alex. "You think you'll marry her, Alex?"
"Don't answer that,” I quickly insisted. “They're wanting to cause trouble. They did the same thing with me."
Alex looked tempted but listened to my instructions. He turned to the two men. "How'd you two meet?"
When we left there was a drizzle of rain. Not enough to wet your clothes, but enough to huddle close to one another as we walked to the subway. Alex squeezed my hip, playing with the sculpture of the bone. "Do you want to get married?"
"We've talked about this." The whole subject made me feel awkward. I felt too young for the subject.
But then Alex said, "No. I mean, do you want to get married tonight?"
"It's midnight!" Deflection.
"Then, in the morning."
I shook my head. "No."
Alex looked like the air had been taken out of him. He readjusted and continued walking. "Okay."
"Maybe in like two years." Or two decades. The whole thing gave me body sweats.
"What's the difference between now and 2 years?" He didn’t ask it accusatorially. He was inquisitive.
"We're 24!” Frontal lobe and all that. “I can't tell if you're being serious now or not?"
He lightly shook his hair around. "Maybe a little. If you wanted to, I would. I'd do whatever for you. If I can give it to you, I will."
"Are you sure?" He worried me too much when he talked about giving things to me. He had always stretched himself and I was sure one day he would break.
He squeezed my hand. "What's going on?"
"What's going on with you? This overcompensation or whatever. I don't want you to give me everything. Keep some for yourself."
He looked at me for a moment, thinking it over. Then, he said, "Fine. Half to you then."
"40%."
"45%."
*
We went to Coney Island because I really wanted to ride the Cyclone. It was the first really hot day of the year. Unknown to us, it was also Memorial Day Weekend, which meant the beaches were open, which meant everyone, their mother, and their grandmother were at Coney Island.
Alex could wait in lines. I could whine to Alex while we waited in lines. He bought us enough tickets to ride the Cyclone and then go home because I was miserable in the heat and in line. But the line to get on the Cyclone was long and we had been standing there for what felt like hours.
"It's been 5 minutes," he noted. "We can come back another day."
"No," I moaned. "I want to do it today. I had it all planned out. I had planned to ride a rollercoaster today."
He laughed. "How do you plan to ride a rollercoaster?"
"You eat light so you don't throw up."
Alex tossed his head back in laughter. Suddenly, he snapped his head down with a concerned look on his face. "Have you not eaten anything today?"
"Well, yeah, I didn't want to throw up."
"God,” he scoffed, “no wonder you're in a horrible mood."
"I'm not in a horrible mood."
He gave me a look. He grabbed my hand and yanked us out of line. "Where are we going?"
"To eat. The Cyclone will still be there next weekend."
When we went next weekend, I loved the Cyclone and wanted to ride every ride there. I then threw up after the tilt-a-whirl.
*
I wrote a piece for The Paris Review in June. Alex sent it to what felt like everyone we knew. He attached it with a note that The Paris Review was located in New York and not Paris. He was very fascinated by that.
He had flown to London for the theatrical release of Submarine when the piece was published. It felt like a mighty contrast. The songs Alex had written for Submarine were what I would describe as the last box that had yet to be unpacked in our apartment. They were vulnerable but covered in metaphors I'm not sure anyone understood other than me. 
He had played them for me, asked for my opinion, revised, and played again. It was the first time Alex workshopped music with me since "Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts." I always thought it was because he didn't have the band to work with. He has denied this and said that the songs were meant for me first, the movie was inconsequential. I'm not sure how true that is and how much Alex just wants to take credit for being a romantic or something. 
Either way, he wrote me a note before he left. He tucked it in my journal to make sure I wouldn't find it until he left. It read, There’s a piece of you in this, and in me.
My piece was fictional. It was about a girl who drinks too much coffee. It's hard to explain without it sounding stupid. 
I didn't write about Alex much. Opal found this weird when I had shown her my work last year. She said he was such a big part of me that it seemed bizarre I didn't write about him. My explanation, mostly, was the protective quality I held over Alex. His songs were shielded in forty different metaphors before you got to me. In my work, as evidence here, I name names, especially in these years when my name was so attachable to Alex’s.
I had shifted back to writing fiction because that's what most literary magazines like The Paris Review accepted. Of course, I'm not a girl who drinks too much coffee at all.
I liked the stability of the Condé Nast job but I had been indulging myself in fantasies of writing a book again. When Alex returned to New York, I told him this over lunch. We went to Lexington Candy Shop, which is a diner, not a candy shop. Another thing Alex wouldn’t shut up about.
I drank a malt shake (coffee-flavoured) and Alex had a Coke (the old-fashioned way where the syrup and soda water is stirred together, not the really old-fashioned way with coke like Alex wouldn't stop joking about) while we waited for our food. "I think I want to go for it."
Alex was contagious. You could believe you could do anything with that smile. "You should. You have one guaranteed customer."
"Well, you'd read anything I'd write."
"'Cause it's good."
"Don't butter me up."
"Come on, you know you're a great writer, Janie. You don't get into The Paris Review as a shite writer."
"Shut up about The Paris Review," I laughed.
I reached across and squeezed my hand. It made me squirmish. "I'm never shutting up about The Paris Review and that's because I read this really good piece about coffee in it and—"
"Stop talking about coffee too. You're making me stressed."
"Ease up. You'll be a New York Times bestseller by this time next year."
I stood up, running away from his stress-inducing words. "I'm going to the bathroom."
He crossed his arms. "That won't change anything."
We returned home. Alex put on a record and I decided to act like I was reading a book until Alex sat beside me. Then, I decided to makeout with him. Hormones. I'm not sure what his excuse was since he wouldn't stop grabbing my ass. "Are we about to have sex to The Beatles?" I asked as "All My Loving" sounded out through our apartment.
"Yeah. It's what John Lennon would have wanted." He pushed me down into the couch cushions. I was the meat in a sandwich between the two.
"I love this song," I mused against his lips.
"Good,” he huffed. “Let's fuck to it."
"Stop," I shrieked, laughing too hard to focus on his penis. I pushed him up off of me and sat up, collecting the trash that had accumulated on the coffee table.
Like any typical guy, he said, "Come on, Janie, I had to take care of this myself all week."
I knocked, "You masturbated all week?"
"I did other things too," he joked.
I was slightly fishing for a compliment but I was genuinely curious too when I asked, "What do you do it too?"
He laughed at my question. He scruffed my hair up. "You, you fucking idiot. What else? What do you think about?"
I shrugged. "I don't masturbate."
"Liar."
"I don't," I insisted.
"You told me you used to have a vibrator."
"Not anymore." I hadn’t thought to bring it through customs. It was tossed around the London to LA move.
"You don't masturbate? Why?" Alex was still stuck in that heightened sexual teenage boy phase. It made it so sex seemed like the only answer. He eventually grew out of this but it was an enduring fixture of his personality for a while.
I shrugged. "I don't like it."
"How can you not like it?”
"I get all sad after. I don't really do it anymore." It made me depressed for the whole day after. I would think about growing up too quickly and dying alone. Maybe that’s just how I was in the aughts. I didn’t give it up completely. Things would change soon after this conversation. I also got on anti-depressants. 
"Why?"
"Is it shocking that someone isn't thinking about sex 24/7?"
"Well, yeah.” I did think about it often but not like Alex, still-not-fully-matured did. “I'm not good enough to masturbate to." Now, he was fishing for compliments.
I stood up from the couch and walked to the garbage bin. "No, it's more like...the other way."
He turned to me with an open jaw. "I'm that good in bed?"
"Don't get an inflated ego on me. I'll refuse to have sex with you if you start boasting."
"I won't boast. I'll just show off." He pulled me down, stuffing me between him and the couch. He made a great effort into "proving it." In a way, it kind of ruined it. I mean, he had this smug look on his face the whole time and he was so into the thought that he was good at it that he started to not be good at it.
"When you get off your pedestal, sir, can you actually fuck me?" I asked.
He seemed to snap out of it and realized he was inside me and not himself. "Fuck. Sorry."
Later, around "Devil in Her Heart," Alex laid his head on my stomach. He'd move around and kiss around my stomach, sometimes rising up to my breasts, but mainly hanging out around my belly button. 
I sighed from exhaustion, lust, and resignation. "I have to get glasses."
Alex laughed against my liver. "You can see fine. I think you've got a couple decades before you have to worry about glaucoma."
"No. The doctor told me I have to get glasses."
Alex seemed to find this really funny. "Are you serious? You're gonna look so geeky."
"Gee, thanks."
He kissed my diaphragm repeatedly. "I like nerds. Are you going to have to wear them all the time?"
"No, just at night. I've been struggling in the dark."
"You're gonna get night vision. Like Batman."
I got the glasses about a week later and I walked back into the apartment wearing them. Alex looked up from the couch, placed his hand over his heart, and said, "Everyone must hate you."
I tossed my keys in the little dish by the door that Alex had made it at a ceramics session that we did together about a month prior. "Enlighten me," I said with a laugh.
"You're just fucking gorgeous, Janie," Alex decided. He looked back down at his book like I burned his eyes.
I kicked my shoes off. "Careful. I'll get a complex."
"What? Like you'll finally believe me."
"I believe you," I promised. I had grown confident in myself or at least confident enough in Alex to believe he wasn't lying to me. "Or I'll try to."
I sat down beside him on the couch and wrapped my arms around his neck. "Here," he pointed his finger to the middle of the page, "read this sentence."
I rolled my eyes but obliged. "'So they went on for a good while, talking now of their cards and now about me, as though I were not in the room'—how long do I have to do this for?"
He smashed his lips against my cheek. "That's all." He returned to his book and I ordered us dinner.
A few days later, we were trapped inside due to the pouring rain. I was working on a review for work and Alex was reading. He had a cigarette in his mouth but it was unlit. I think he was going through the motions but couldn't go outside to smoke it and I refused to let him smoke indoors. 
My feet poked at the side of his body. Every five minutes or so, I'd poke my toes into him. He'd laugh, whether provoked or ticklish, it was an acknowledgment of our presence with one another. 
Thunder pounded through and Alex squeezed my foot to get my attention. I looked up at him through my lenses. He smirked, which I knew meant he was thinking something foul. "Can I fuck you with your glasses on?"
I don't mean for this year to seem particularly nasty but we did...you know...do it all the time. There wasn't much else to do. We were together all the time, we would talk over dinner, share this alone time together, and then I or Alex (usually Alex) would hit a point in the evening where we might as well just get on with it. Besides, this instant was pretty important. You know, with the thunderstorms. And my glasses. Alex really likes that part.
*
Alex and I went to an antique store in Dobbs Ferry because Fennel, who had been vacationing in Mykonos for the last month, needed me to pick up a statuaries from this rare antiques store. We decided to make a day trip out of it. Not there was much to do in Dobbs Ferry.
We shared headphones on the way up. Our moods were transactional through the iPod. Alex had this habit of scrolling his finger back and forth on the dial. It would make this scrolling noise, but I kind of liked that noise so I never stopped him. 
We walked the town's aqueduct for a bit. It had felt like the city was on fire but just a little north felt cooler. Maybe it was the fresh rain with that dewy smell. Alex's jeans ended up getting grass stains on the butt of them because he sat down in the wet field.
At lunch, we shared a stack of pancakes and Alex let me eat all the bacon. "I can't remember the last time I had a proper breakfast," I said as I chewed into the syrup-soaked fried batter.
Alex chuckled. "It's noon. I think it's more like lunch."
"Shush," I forced him out. I looked around and observed the tiny diner we were in. It's exactly what you'd imagine for a small town with men having coffee at the counter and mother and child having lunch. "I like it here."
Alex nodded with a smile. "You like a small town."
I shook my head. "Just for a bit. Not forever."
*
At the start of August, Matt visited us for a week. He slept on the couch and ate all our food but we all had a great time. Not since Barnsley had just the three of us hung out, especially for an extended period of time. Matt and I—just the two of us—hadn't hung out in close to eight years. Not that we ever were best of friends but it's weird how he had adapted more into Alex's friend than my friend. Nonetheless, he still felt like a brother to me. Or maybe brother-in-law.
Alex went out to the store one evening, leaving just Matt and I and whatever movie we were semi-watching. Matt sat up from his slumped back state, placing his beer on the coffee table. "I'm gonna have a smoke. You gonna join me?"
I giggled. "Oh, Matt, you know just the way to my heart."
We travelled up to the apartment building's rooftop. It was sparse besides a picnic table and a grill. The Fourth of July party had been held up there. Alex and I went for the free food but had to endure several Revolutionary War jokes. Matt sat on one side of the table and I sat on the other, an ashtray between us.
"I can't remember the last time we smoked together," I commented.
Matt lit his up before handing me the lighter. "At least not cigarettes," he laughed. "It's funny. This is all we used to do."
"Used to? Speak for yourself." I knew Matt didn't smoke that much anymore. Not like Alex and I who upheld equality with one another on who was going to get lung cancer first. We smoked enough to decide we'd both probably get it under the same time. Depressing romanticism.
"It's weird to think of a time before you and Alex got together," he said, flicking the ash.
I fanned the smoke away from my eyes. "Yeah. It's hard for me to imagine."
"And you guys are good and all that?" His tone was traced with suspicion or maybe I was just misplacing it there.
"Yeah." He nodded but stayed silent and I grew worried that I was being left out on something but I didn't want to touch it. "And you? Are you good?"
He chuckled. "Yeah. I'm good, Jane."
I joined him in laughter. "Good."
The roof door opened and Alex walked through. "Thought you two ran off."
"We kind of did. We made it as far as the roof," I told him as he walked over to us.
He sat next to Alex and grabbed a cigarette from himself. "Am I joining one of those fabled smokes?" He asked.
"What?" Matt questioned.
I explained, "When we were younger, and used to sit out on the kerb with one another. I call them Fireside Chats like FDR."
Matt laughed. "I was drunk for most of those. Memory is a little fuzzy."
"You're not alone in that." I stubbed at the cigarette and rested my head on my palm. "I don't want to drink tonight though."
Matt raised his eyebrows. "Pregnant?"
"Shut up." I rolled my eyes and wondered if Alex had told Matt about the scare back in winter. "I have work tomorrow."
"Oh," Matt uttered, "little Janie's all professional now."
Alex nodded. "Yeah. What losers the rest of us are."
"Yeah. If Jane of all people can settle down—"
I interjected, ready to fight, "I was not that horrible." Alex and Matt only met me with a stare causing another eye roll from me. "I'm going to bed."
Alex and Matt stayed put and I assumed they were going to have one of their own Fireside Chats. "We'll try and be quiet," Alex told me before I pecked his lips.
I walked over and placed a kiss on Matt's cheek. He slapped his hand over the cheek, wiping it down. "Ew. You slobber like my mum."
"God. What a baby you are." With that, I went downstairs. I'm not sure what time they went to bed but when I left for work the next morning, they were both dead asleep. Not even the sound of me dropping my coffee arose them.
*
Alex was writing something. I woke up and the red light of the clock blared out, the time reading 4:34 AM. I rubbed my eye, scrubbing the dream out of me. His pen moved across the page and he was propped up against the headboard with his notebook tilted under the soft light coming from his small bedside lamp. 
He felt my movement and turned to me as I flipped onto my side to look up at him, his eyebrows knitted. "Did I wake you?"
I shook my head against the pillow. "I don't think so. Why are you still up?" I held the tip of his elbow to keep in touch with him.
"Woke up about an hour ago. Couldn't fall back to sleep." He was scratching his pen up and down across his page, just making lines. 
I flipped onto my back, roughing my hands through my hair. "Probably because it's so fucking hot in here." Our landlord had turned the AC off a week ago when it seemed like it was finally getting cold until the temperatures started shooting back up this week. "I might take a shower. I feel so sweaty." I sat up, throwing my legs off the bed. 
I could hear the smirk in his voice. A light chuckle as he said, "Let me know if you do."
My phone rang. "I bet it's Stacey," I told Alex. "She still doesn't understand the whole timezone thing."
"She's 18 and she still doesn't know about timezones?" Alex questioned.
I sighed as I tied my hair up. "Let me rephrase. She doesn't care about the whole timezone thing."
"Ah," Alex said as I picked up the phone.
I moved into the bathroom, preparing to start the shower as I talked to Stacey. I sat in the bathroom, on the toilet seat, for about 10 minutes before I moved back into the bedroom. "Shower time?" He asked him with a grin that could kill.
"No." I shook my head walking back over to my side of the bed. I threw my phone down on the bed and picked at my fingernails. "My dad had a heart attack."
I could hear Alex closing his notebook but didn't look up. I wasn't sure how to deliver news and make eye contact at the same time. "Is he okay? Are you okay?" He crawled across the bed and stood up beside me.
I dropped my hands and moved past him going to our dresser. "Yeah. No. He's fine for a guy who just had a heart attack. I mean, he'll live and all that." I hadn't realized that I started pacing back and forth across our bedroom. I would stop at our dresser but then I would keep moving.
"Good. Now. Jane. Sit," Alex instructed me.
I listened. He was my guide. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to figure out what I was doing. "I should go back home."
"Okay. I'll look for flights." He moved for my laptop, sat in my backpack on the floor. 
I stayed on the bed. "Should you?"
He looked up at me. I was looking at his eyes but I didn't even realize what was going on. I hadn't processed anything. I was busy facing the fact my parents could in fact die and that I also was not immortal. Alex wasn't sure what to do or what I wanted him to do. "Do you want me not to go?"
I shook my head. "I'm not sure if I should go."
Alex moved toward me on his knees. He stopped in front of me and leaned over my knees. "I think you should. At least for Stacey."
"Right." I’m not sure if I went for Stacey. She would have Greg and Harper, even my mother, for comfort. I’m not sure if I felt an obligation to go too. It seemed cruel not to show up after a medical emergency but since the move to America, I hadn’t seen them other than during Christmas. They had never visited me. They rarely called me. It made me think that if I didn’t show up they wouldn’t be that shocked. But I knew I wasn’t held to the same standard as them and having a heart attack is much more serious than anything I had going on.
We got into a taxi at some point but I think I was still trying to figure out if I was still in a dream or if we were in fact going to JFK Airport. Alex must have packed the suitcase because I don’t remember doing anything. I became a functioning human being around when we sat at our gate for about 15 minutes. The flight wasn't boarding for another hour. Alex had gotten me a coffee and a glazed donut for Dunkin' Donuts. He got a Boston Kreme and coffee for himself.
He sat with his hand on my knee as I scarfed down my donut as a form of something to do. I wiped my fingers on the napkin and leaned back in my chair with the warm coffee in my hand. "I broke my wrist when I was 10," I told Alex. I could tell he wasn't expecting me to speak. "I sat waiting for my mum to pick me up for over an hour. They finally decided to call my dad and he showed up in 15 minutes. Five minutes less than his drive from work to my school."
"I honestly wasn't expecting the story to go that way," Alex confessed. There’s a million untold stories from my childhood that Alex had never heard. They were tricky for me to go about.
I breathed a laugh, relieving the tension from both of us. "Neither was I. It was right after Tommy and I guess a broken wrist was one step away from being dead." Alex squeezed my thigh and I thought about Tommy. I hadn't thought about him in a while.
We sat together for a moment before Alex bit into his Boston Kreme. The cream smeared over his nose. I laughed, which pleased him even if I was mocking him. “It’s all over your face. You look like you can’t properly feed yourself.”
We boarded the flight and arrived in London a little after 6 PM. I fell asleep after take-off and didn't wake up until the jolt from landing. Alex stayed awake the whole time.
We took the train out to Bath and Greg would pick us up at the train station. Halfway through the train ride, I said to Alex, "Thanks."
He pushed my hair back and stroked my cheek. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "I've never been to Bath."
I laughed into the palm of his hand. "I'm glad this is working out for someone."
Visiting hours had ended about an hour before we arrived. The family report was that he was fine and Greg drove Alex and me back to the family home. We had dinner together where we mainly talked about my father. Alex and I went to bed after in a stripped-down guest room.
*
We had been in Bath for two days when Alex finally asked the question what I knew he had been thinking since we arrived. "Can we go on a drive?" My car had sat in my parents' garage since I drove it down when they moved. I'm sure they hated it being stuffed in their driveway but Alex was insistent on keeping it so I insisted to my parents to not get rid of it. For some reason, they didn't.
I didn't know much of Bath. Stacey told me she sometimes went to Henrietta Park with her friends so I decided we would drive there. Alex fiddled with things. The radio, the window, the glove compartment. He was trying to check if everything still worked. He missed this car more than I did. I rarely thought about it other than the remarks my mother would make over the rare phone calls that it was still sitting in the garage. 
Alex sighed and leaned back in the passenger seat. "I love you."
I chuckled at the affection but replied, "Love you too."
He looked over at me. I could feel the stare but my eyes remained on the road. "Just getting to do this with you. I love it. I love that we've been in each other's lives for so long."
"Me too."
"We've been together long enough that when I sit here now I'm reminded of how much I loved you then. And, you know, how much I still love you now. More now."
My eyes hurt. I don't think I had cried since we'd been there. I felt overwhelmed by it all. But always him. I couldn't look at him for safety and emotional purposes. I loved him for being there and for being there for such a long time. He had always been my best friend. Even when I had just met him. Like fate. Soulmates or something. "Alex. I have to drive."
He chuckled. "Don't wreck the car now." He kissed my cheek.
*
a/n: well, there we go. i'm very into writing this right now so hopefully have another part soon. i'll probably do a one-off piece before. we shall see...
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tempting-seduction · 7 months ago
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Born on 16 March 1965, Mark Carney is a Canadian economist and banker who was the governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and the governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020. He is chairman, and head of impact investing at Brookfield Asset Management since 2020, and was named chairman of Bloomberg Inc., parent company of Bloomberg L.P., in 2023. He was the chair of the Financial Stability Board from 2011 to 2018. Prior to his governorships, Carney worked at Goldman Sachs as well as the Department of Finance Canada. He also serves as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.
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docholligay · 3 months ago
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You know bad fandom takes about Michiru pass over me like a fuckin half-threatened prairie thunderstorm but occasionally:
Michiru???? Michiru KAIOH??? Wearing ACQUA DI GIOIA????? The perfume that smells like that white candle your mother in law got from bath and body works??? It's always sitting in the bathroom and the wick is still white as hell and you don't know how to tell her that you have to actually burn the candle to get the scent, but it wouldn't fucking matter anyhow, because you know that light aquatic floral would contribute just as noticeably as her overthought grout shade. The perfume you give your niece who is interning at Goldman Sachs, a perfume that cries out, 'I am completely office safe and unchallenging. You can sit next to me on the subway and forget all about me. Was I even here? Please write a letter of recommendation."
THAT PERFUME??? For MICHIRU???
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