Page 2 of Square Waves (Big Fan #2)

Before I can consider his response, the bartender is back with our drinks.

My glass looks unwieldy, a clear, shallow pond of gin sitting atop a long, thin stem, and I wish again that I’d ordered something else.

Maybe Leon will leave me to go meet up with friends?

Or some sun-bleached Instagram model with a surfboard strapped to her truck and a side gig reading tarot cards?

But my luck has always been shitty, and he hops up onto the barstool next to mine.

“Well, to answer the question you didn’t ask, I live here,” he says. “Same as I always have.”

“So is this your local?” Because of course I would walk into his regular haunt.

“Nah. I was supposed to meet up with Zeke, actually, but he bailed last minute. I was already halfway here, so I figured may as well.” He gestures at the baseball game on the TV, and I watch the shape of his shoulder moving under his T-shirt.

Leon was skinny in high school, all limbs.

He’s still got some of that teenage lankiness about him, even though we’re nearing thirty.

“So you and Zeke are still close.”

“Yeah. We try, anyway. He had a kid last year, and it’s—he’s a really good dad. But his wife works nights, so it’s just... getting time with him is hard.”

“Holy shit. Zeke’s a dad.” The idea makes me a little dizzy. If Zeke is already that kind of adult... I try not to play the comparison game, but I am toeing the starting line.

“Does he still have—” I gesture at my hair. In high school, Zeke’s trademark was a gelled mohawk, always dyed the loudest possible colors: sunset pink or fluorescent orange.

“Nah. Kept it for the wedding just to prove a point, but it’s too much maintenance. It’s buzzed down super tight right now. You might not recognize him anymore. He just looks like a regular guy.”

I’m too stunned to say more than “God, I guess we are grown-ups.”

“Sure are, Ms.Martini.” Leon’s tone is a little too pointed. There goes that nice nostalgic moment we were having.

“It’s just a cocktail.”

“And you haven’t touched it.”

I haven’t. The glass is precariously full; I have no idea how the bartender got it over here without spilling. Under other circumstances, I would just slurp some directly off the surface, but not in front of Leon. I refuse to let him see me as anything less than adept.

So instead, I pick it up delicately and raise it to my mouth in slow motion, my lips pursed. I know I must look ridiculous. It takes what feels like a full minute for me to manage a sip.

When I do, it tastes cold and floral and salinated. Perfect. I put the glass back down and close my eyes for a second.

When I open them, I expect Leon to mock me for something—my pincer grip on the stem, maybe—but he’s just... looking at me. His gaze is glued to my mouth. I know it’s not possible, but I’d swear his irises are a few shades darker.

“Good?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Leon looks away and takes a long pull on his beer. “So you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. Are you not going to answer simple questions tonight?”

“I don’t think I am.” As childish as it is, I can’t help but enjoy getting a rise out of him. There was a time when the only thing that could shake Leon from his lazy surfer posture was getting irritated with me. That kind of power is hard to resist.

“Will you answer complicated questions, then?”

“What’s a complicated question? Like, you want my thoughts on Bay Area housing?

For me to weigh in on the political issues of the day?

” I wince as soon as I say it. I very specifically don’t want to talk politics with Leon or anyone.

It’s way too easy to jump from someone’s opinion of President Knight’s second term to the scandal that almost kept him from getting elected in the first place.

Wasn’t that when Cooper Abbot fucked his wife’s college intern?

Wasn’t that intern... me?

I’m anticipating a sharp retort. But Leon sighs and shakes his head. “You know, it’s actually been kind of a long day,” he says. “So if I were going to ask you a complicated question, Cassidy, it might be: Why does it seem like you hate me so much? Still?”

I’m startled. Obviously Leon knows I don’t like him. It’s not hard to miss. But the way he says it—I don’t know. It almost sounds like he cares .

“I don’t hate you” is all I can muster, even if it isn’t true. “And once again, I could ask you—”

“You could,” he says. “But I asked you first.”

He shifts toward me slightly, and I catch a whiff of his scent: Old Spice and skin.

I’m hit between the eyes with a memory from over a decade ago: a summer evening at the beach, a bonfire burning.

Leon and a bunch of boys stripping off their shirts and sprinting into the ocean screaming.

How they ran back, drenched, and launched themselves at us, the knot of girls gossiping on a blanket.

Leon landed half on top of me, and the water streaming off him was freezing, but he was warm.

He smelled exactly the same then, and I still remember the twist I felt in my stomach. The rush between my legs.

He’s giving me a perfect opening to say something smart, or mean, or both. And I’m tempted to take it. To pick up my less perilously full glass and just walk away.

But the truth is, for the last six years, everyone in the world has had an opinion about me.

Some people think I’m an evil slut who destroyed an innocent man’s career with her wiles; some people think I’m a victim of the patriarchy who needs to be saved.

But they’re all working off a media narrative—articles they read or podcasts they listened to.

I’ve contributed to some of that with my work with the nonprofit Kindness Is Better, or KIB, sometimes penning my own op-eds and doing public speaking.

I’ve made being Cassidy Weaver, “GenZ’s Monica Lewinsky,” my entire career and a good chunk of my actual life.

But Leon actually knows me. Knew me, at least. Whatever he doesn’t like about me is hard-earned.

An unwelcome thought: If only you didn’t despise him so much, he really would be the perfect hookup.

I mentally bat it away and take another sip of my drink before responding. If I was less tired, I might be able to come up with something clever. But I only have it in me to tell the truth. “Okay, well. You didn’t like me. So I didn’t like you back.”

Leon raises an eyebrow. “When did I give you that impression?”

As if he’s completely innocent here. “Oh, I don’t know, when you made fun of my seventh-grade history presentation grade for being too detailed .

” Instantly, my cheeks go hot. I can’t believe he goaded me into admitting that I’m still hung up on some barb from half a lifetime ago.

But it was the first semester of middle school, when impressions mattered deeply.

Plus, I might have already developed a tiny crush on Leon.

To have him notice me but only to make fun of me—well. Clearly it left a mark.

For some reason, he doesn’t seize the opportunity to tease me. “Why did you care what I thought?” His elbow moves closer to mine. “I almost failed that class.”

I narrow my eyes. I knew Leon wasn’t a hardworking student, but he always gave off the aura of being so smart that he didn’t have to study. I assumed he got effortless A’s and that if he didn’t, it was because he was too cool to care about something as lame as grades.

“People like boys who fail way better than girls who succeed,” I say with a shrug.

At the time, it felt like he was putting a target on my back, pointing out to everyone, This one tries too hard .

And of course, because I am who I am, I only doubled down after that.

And I went even harder when Leon was around.

“That’s true.”

I’m so surprised to hear him agreeing with me—about anything, even something as obvious as the basic dynamics of sexism—that I drink half my martini in a single gulp. “Be careful,” I quip, sliding the olive from its skewer. “Next thing you know you’ll be apologizing to me.”

“Do you want me to?”

I squint at Leon, and I feel like I actually see him for the first time all night.

He’s sun-browned, his skin darker than it ever was in high school, in a way that makes me wonder if he works outside.

When he smiles, crow’s-feet crinkle at the corners of his eyes.

He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and it’s shoved up on one muscular forearm; I see the edge of a tattoo there, a suggestion of all the ways he might have changed in the last ten years that aren’t visible to me yet.

If we were strangers, just meeting, I would be following the thing I feel between us: this gentle, insistent desire to get closer. I would be angling my body toward his. Maybe our legs would brush or I would touch his thigh.

The next steps are well trod. Immediately after Cooper, I was depressed, and then for a while, I was reckless. I slept with anyone I wanted to and some people I kind of didn’t. I know exactly how to map the route from a barstool to a bedroom.

But Leon and I are not strangers. Hardly. Which makes this even more precarious... and, in some ways, even more enticing.

I lean an elbow on the bar, put my chin in my hand. My drink is mostly gone, and I feel loose. Relaxed for the first time in months.

“What would a Leon Park apology even look like?”

He smiles at me, huge, dimple on full display. “It would look like me saying, ‘I’m sorry, Cassidy.’” He reaches out and pats my knee. My breath catches in my throat, and I think he notices because he leaves his palm there just a half second too long. Like maybe he’s gauging my reaction.

Like maybe he wants to keep touching me.

“I appreciate that.”

“Honey, you want another one?” the bartender cuts in.

My gaze is locked on Leon, and if I was feeling like myself, I would say no.I would think, Go home, Cassidy , and then do it.

But between burnout and jet lag, gin and desire, the last six years and the last twelve hours, I’m not entirely sure who myself is. So instead, I say, “Yes, please.”