All the Lies - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,36

I say, clearing my throat. “Yes, I am wealthy, but I'm not hiding that fact. I just like to wear what I like to wear and not wear what I don't like to wear. I'm not much like you guys. I got the first suit that I saw at the department store and it helped that it also had a nice fit.”

“No.” Alex shakes his head. “That was… Okay. You mostly looked nice because you have a killer body and it was a slim fit, but as far as suits go, it was pretty crappy.”

The more that we banter back and forth, the more relaxed I start to feel. There was a time when Alex and I were close. He was one of the most popular kids in school and I was the kind of kid who had friends in a lot of cliques.

I was a theater kid and the jock. Somehow it all worked out. But people loved Alex. When my family moved to Seattle at the end of middle school, I missed him the most.

At first, we stayed in touch on the phone and Skype, but after a while… You know how kids are.

“Okay, be honest with me,” Alex says, ordering another drink and slurring his words just a little bit.

I nod and wait.

“Weren’t you like, living on the streets at one point? How did you go from there to this?”

I shrug and say, “I was interested in finding some work that I could do on a freelance sort of basis. I wanted to go rock climbing, camping, traveling, and stuff like that. I wanted to make money, but I didn't want it to consume my life. That's when trading sort of came about and the more that I found out about it, the more interested I got.”

This is all true, but it's not the whole truth. I have been doing some day trading, but there’s a whole other part of my life I’m never going to share.

“So, tell me about Emma,” I say, changing the subject.

“What do you want to know?” The tone of his voice changes immediately to something callused and distant.

“What the hell happened?”

He shrugs and says, “Women, you know?”

I hate statements like that. They’re misogynistic, self-serving, and only used by men who don't know how to communicate.

“No, I don't,” I say, leaning back in my chair.

The server takes our plates away and offers us the dessert menu. I surprise myself by ordering a vegan cheesecake on a whim. Not just because it's vegan, but because I'm not much of a dessert person.

“I don't know why she came to see me at lunch yesterday. She wasn't supposed to. She walked in on me with Jen.”

“Jen?”

“Jennifer Lester, my immediate superior.”

I nod, trying to look surprised.

“I know. I'm such an asshole,” Alex says, slurring his words.

He’s had so many drinks in such a short time that I'm actually shocked that he’s still speaking coherently, but he has a high tolerance.

“How long have you been seeing her?” I ask.

“A while,” he says, biting his lower lip. “We were together for three years before I met Emma.”

“Wow, that long?”

“Uh-huh.”

I wait for him to offer me something else, but he doesn’t.

“So, why aren’t you and Jen together?”

“Don’t you think that I want to be? She is off limits.”

I tilt my head, waiting for him to explain.

“Jen is married. Not happily, but they have two kids together who are nine and seven. She made it clear to me on numerous occasions that she has no plans to file for divorce and to uproot her children. In fact, she's perfectly fine with just keeping our relationship exclusively to the office.”

“Shit. I'm sorry,” I say, shaking my head.

“I tried to stop. When I first met Emma, I broke up with Jen. I wanted a clean slate. I got tired of being in this… Unfulfilling relationship.”

I can see his pain, just below the surface.

“The thing is that,” he continues, “Jen and I work insane hours. Her husband understands that and I thought that Emma did, too. Before I met Emma, Jen and I were together all the time. All mornings, all afternoons, and all nights. We would fool around and then we’d get back to work. She had no reason to leave her husband because she barely saw him as is, but she also really wanted to keep her children in a stable home.”

I nod my head, trying to think of something to say.

“You know, women have been in these situations with men for