The High Dive

1. Philadelphia, USA

1

PHILADELPHIA, USA

Now

“T his housing crisis won’t be solved by a couple rent-controlled units in yet another luxury hi-rise. The longer we leave the future of our city up to developers, the worse this situation is going to get. We’re going to have to… have to…”

Alex looked at the notecards propped up next to the tripod holding her phone. Usually, she didn’t need more than a glance at her talking points to record a perfect take, but today was different. Today, getting through even a few basic lines felt nearly impossible. Her mind was elsewhere, already checked out well before she’d set the “Out of Office” message on her email live. She had taken over half an hour crafting it to perfection, making sure it was as comprehensive as possible and relishing the future freedom it represented. She had even put a sun emoji in the subject line of the auto-response—a touch she reconsidered a few times before finally adding it.

Willing her mind to return to work, she did a quick once-over of her next bullet point and faced the camera, adjusting the collar of her shirt to sit properly.

“We’re going to have to use the existing legislation to—”

Her eyes darted down to her notes again, the meaning of her words slipping away even as she said them. She glanced back up at her expression on camera, correcting it to something friendlier. Her eyes felt heavy through her smile, physical evidence of her anxious, sleepless week. Reaching into her tote bag, she grabbed a barrette, placing it in her mouth while her hands gathered roughly half of her wild, dark curls behind her head. She secured them in place, pulling out a few tendrils to seem a little more approachable. As often happened when she was recording herself, the many possible areas of aesthetic improvement began jumping out at her as soon as she fixed one. Her strong Greek nose needed more concealer, her olive skin looked nearly green under the fluorescent office lights, her lips were visibly dry. There were too many things to fix and not enough time to fix them.

She blinked hard, wrinkling her nose and shaking her head to return to the matter at hand. The notecard stack was heavy under the phone, and a flush of irritation rippled through her as she faced down the many videos she needed to record before end of day, a task she couldn’t outsource. After running politicians through the content she had created so many times, her presence on camera just became a natural extension of her job description. It never felt enjoyable, per se, but at least it usually felt efficient —and today, she couldn’t even have that.

Clearing her throat, she took it from the top:

“This housing crisis won’t be solved by a couple rent-controlled units in yet another luxury—”

Behind her, a junior staffer opened the conference room door, ruining the take. The tripod shook slightly as Alex paused the recording.

“Clara, I’m filming something. What do you need?” She made a point to soften her harsh tone mid-sentence, making the question sound a little strange.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Clara slipped into the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

“It’s okay.”

“This will only take one second, I promise.” She was wearing the unofficial summer uniform of the Worker’s Horizon Party’s junior staffers: a party tee shirt, cutoff denim shorts, Birkenstocks. Alex was only thirty-two, but her business casual outfits were starting to make her feel like the RA of the office.

“No problem.” Alex sighed, closing out of the video app on her phone. “What’s up?”

“Nate told me I was supposed to be taking over analytics while you’re gone, but we never talked about it.” Clara pulled out her laptop, her hands shaking slightly.

“I thought he was going to talk to you about it last week,” Alex grumbled, grabbing her own computer and sitting next to the nervous new employee. “We’ll go over it now. It’s not complicated.”

Before she realized what was happening, her open browser betrayed just how much she’d been procrastinating, herself. There was a tab for the luxury company chartering their boat, a tab for each port on their itinerary, a tab for the hotel in Cyprus where the wedding would take place, and a tab for an upscale clothing boutique she absolutely loved—and absolutely couldn’t afford.

Clara cleared her throat, obviously having noticed what was on the screen. “Your trip sounds so cool. I can’t believe you’re living on a boat for ten days.”

“Same,” Alex replied, moving over to a fresh window. It definitely didn’t align with the party’s values—going on such a luxurious bachelor trip for her best friend—and Alex felt an acute embarrassment imagining the whispers that were undoubtedly bouncing around the office.

“My best friend from college is getting married,” she justified. “He lives a pretty crazy lifestyle.”

“Sounds like a good friend to have.”

“Yeah, he’s great.”

An awkward silence began to accumulate, so Alex pushed on. “Anyway, let’s talk analytics.”

Clara dragged her eyes away from the computer screen. “I basically know how to do it. I just don’t want to mess anything up while you’re gone and have to message you or something.”

“Please, I’m fully throwing my phone onto the highway on my way to the airport.” Alex smiled cheekily.

The young staffer looked even more nervous.

“Hey, I’m kidding. If you really need something, you can text me, and I’ll help you figure it out. But I promise it’s not as hard as it looks.”

“Okay.”

The two women got to work, Alex walking them through the ins and outs of their analytics dashboard. As the party’s Director of Social Media Strategy—an impressive title, undermined by the fact that she ran a team of exactly three and collected a barely livable salary—Alex lived and died by that dashboard. It was the heartbeat of the Worker’s Horizon Party: its relevance, its reach, its ability to convert catchy videos and timely memes into actual voter registration. They had exploded in popularity four years ago when she helped Carter Stephens, one of the party’s earliest candidates, go ultra-viral for his impassioned speech the night before Philadelphia’s mayoral election. He lost by a slim margin, but overnight, the party went from 5,000 national members to 270,000—and for the first time since her undergrad years, Alex felt like she had a real purpose.

There was a language to politics that engrossed her, the perpetual challenge of finding the right combination of words to sell your ideas. It didn’t matter what was true on a data sheet or a survey, it mattered what people believed was true, and the analytics gave her a constant, real-time view on how well the party was doing at the game of perception.

“That’s basically it,” Alex said after giving Clara a brief-but-comprehensive tour of the dashboard. “I mean, there’s more, but you don’t need to know that stuff for vacation coverage. You just basically have to make sure our accounts don’t burn down.”

“And the new video script is—”

“Yes, I’m getting the rest of the content over to Jackie before I leave, don’t worry.” Alex balanced being polite and encouraging with the frequent impatience she felt toward junior staffers who clearly did not read her emails in full. “It’s on my list to finish the research today.”

“Okay,” Clara said, tentatively closing her laptop. “Thank you for going over all that. I’ll let you get back to your video.”

“I’m here until five. I’ll probably be in the conference room until then. Just DM me before you come in next time, in case I’m filming?”

“Yes, of course.”

Alex did not point out that this was office protocol for the social media department. Instead, she smiled in a neutral, distracted way, eager to have the room to herself again.

Two more days, Alex thought.

This trip would be her first true vacation since starting this job, and it was testing the limits of the party’s technically unlimited time-off policy. She always told her employees that vacation was important—and in an objective sense, she knew it was—but until now, she hadn’t had what she considered a good enough reason to disconnect for more than a few days. Now that everything was finally in motion, she was no longer hesitant to disconnect from work: she only wanted to pull the plug as soon as possible.

Without realizing it, her shoulders had begun to relax in the quiet of the empty space. She leaned back in the chair, stretching her neck in each direction before reaching for her old WHP mug of now-lukewarm coffee. Through the glass wall of the conference room, she could see Nate and Clara talking by the microwave, probably discussing the absurdly lavish boat she had seen on Alex’s computer screen. She took a sip, finding the temperature of the liquid slightly less unpleasant than the prospect of joining them in the kitchen to heat it up.

She flicked open her video app once more, adjusting the stack of notecards under the screen. Her eyes fixed on her own image and a heavy sigh escaped her, looking even more tired than before her analytics tutorial. It didn’t matter: she had to get through this, or the rest of her prep would be totally derailed.

“This housing crisis won’t be solved by a couple—”

The phone began to buzz in its tripod, the video interrupted by an incoming FaceTime call from ELENA ONASSIS. She let out another great exhale before swiping to open the call.

“Hi, baby!” Elena smiled from her messy home office. Round-faced and only slightly wrinkled for her age, she felt as warm as the sun, even through the phone.

“Hi, Mom.” Alex smiled back, sitting up a little straighter to avoid any possible lectures about the effects of bad posture. “Lunch break?”

“Yes,” Elena replied, holding up the plate of protein-rich snacks she always assembled for herself at exactly 1 PM.

Alex held up her coffee in return. “Me, too.”

“That’d better be a joke.” Elena frowned. “You need to eat, baby.”

“I know, I will. I just have to record a bunch of videos before I leave, and I don’t want food in my teeth.”

“Lex, you know how I feel about your Columbia Club diet.”

Alex winced. “Please don’t call it that.”

Her mother shook her head, undeterred. “This happens every time you see them, and I’m sorry, but anyone you need to lose ten pounds for—”

From off screen, Alex heard the unmistakable sound of one of the daycare toddlers barging into her mother’s office, followed by her harried, apologetic assistant, who quickly grabbed the child and closed the door.

Elena sighed, adjusting the curls escaping from her overworked claw clip. “I need to put a lock on this damn room. Anyway, you don’t need to be losing weight for them.”

“I know that, thank you.”

“If anything, you should be putting on muscle.”

“Can we just not talk about this?”

If some women of a certain age were starting to embrace the concept of body neutrality, her mother was not one of them.

“Paul sent me the nicest email, by the way,” Elena continued, taking a bite of a Babybel cheese. “Let me find it.” She tapped around on her computer, chewing.

“He told me, Mom.” Alex muttered.

“Ah! Here it is.” Elena popped on her reading glasses, a glittery purple that matched her nails. “He said: ‘Hi Elena, I just wanted to say that Guy and I will miss you at our wedding. We would have loved to have you there, but anything bigger would necessitate me inviting my father’s entire company, and I just can’t bear the thought. (I can only talk about golf for so long!) We’ll take excellent care of Alex, and I’ll stop by Rochester for lunch as soon as I can. Love, your almost-son-in-law.’ Isn’t that so sweet?”

“It’s extremely sweet. I think he’s better at being your kid than I am, honestly.”

“Oh, stop it. I just thought it was adorable. ‘Love, your almost-son-in-law.’ He’s such a nice boy.”

Alex flinched at the mere mention of a son-in-law , an unintentional tripwire she couldn’t ignore.

“Well, I guess it’s good you have him, since he’s probably the closest to an actual son-in-law you’re going to get,” she finally said, rather petulantly.

“You know that’s not what either of us meant. I’m just glad you’re taking some real time off, for once. You spend too much time at that office.”

“I know.”

Normally, Alex would push back on her mother’s anti-work commentary, but with the wedding looming, she bit her tongue. There was only so much she could dismiss Elena’s advice when her own choice to constantly prioritize work clearly wasn’t working in her romantic favor.

After a pause filled only by the sound of Elena chewing a protein bar, she continued: “I got you something, by the way. The package arrived this morning.” She saw her daughter begin to protest and raised a hand. “And if you don’t like it, I have the receipt. But it’s a combination bon voyage-late birthday gift. Maybe even a little bit of Christmas. We’ll see how many shifts Dad picks up.”

“How’s his back?”

Elena shrugged in lieu of a real response. Nick had already maxed out the number of lumbar-supporting additions he could make to the driver’s seat of his taxi van, so now it was just a question of fate.

“And anyway, you guys already got me a birthday present,” Alex continued.

The care package her father had sent at the end of June mostly consisted of Buffalo Bills merchandise that she had no intention of wearing, but it was plenty for her.

“That doesn’t count.”

“Well, thank you. I’m sure I’ll love whatever it is.”

“It’s a necklace. And don’t worry, it’s moissanite.”

“That’s very kind of you.” She deliberately did not say she was at no risk of assuming her mother had bought her diamonds.

“It’s nothing.” Elena paused, judging her words carefully. “I just don’t want you to worry, baby. These people love you, and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have invited you.”

Alex didn’t have the energy to explain that this wasn’t quite true: Paul loved her, the rest of the group was mostly indifferent. And one of them actively avoided her.

“Right.”

“And I don’t want you spending a bunch of money on stuff you don’t need just to impress them, either.”

Alex thought of reminding Elena of the pricey and painful dating coach sessions she’d splurged on for Alex’s thirtieth—but she thought better of it, preferring to avoid the topic entirely.

“Mom, come on.”

“I’m serious.”

“Can you please stop? How long are we going to do this?”

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Lex! I know that 99% of the time, you make great money decisions. But I know you’re so anxious to see Danial, and—”

The sound of his name felt like a knife through her heart.

“Mom, I have to go. Someone is calling me,” she lied.

“Okay, I’ll talk—”

Alex ended the call without a goodbye, feeling terrible for hanging up on her mother but needing a moment to fight against the wave of nausea rising in her throat. The stack of notecards glared at her from under the tripod, a visual reminder of the mountain of work she had ahead of her. But at the mere mention of his name, the insecurity she was doing her best to fight returned with a painful intensity.

She walked herself through her list of reassurances. Her beauty treatments—nails, brows, lashes, spray tan, and a wax that would leave her bald from the eyebrows down, save for a tasteful triangle between her legs—were scheduled. She had rehearsed the most exciting-sounding description of her life enough times to make it sound casual and offhand. She had subscribed to multiple clothing rental services to hack her way into a nicer wardrobe, which she would immediately cancel upon her return. This was the best she would ever look, and you don’t have to worry about what Danial thinks, she told herself . You don’t even need to think about him.

But it was no use. She shut off her video app entirely, opening her laptop once more. The screen had barely illuminated before her cursor was already moving to a shameful little Incognito window, open to a single page: the work profile of Danial Azad, Managing Director at Horace Capital Partners.

There he was.

Exactly as he’d looked in college, yet somehow even more handsome, his long features matured into a masculine sturdiness. His scruffy facial hair was gone, replaced by the five o’clock shadow that appeared nearly the second he shaved. His inky-black, wavy hair was salon-cut and gelled into slicked-back submission and, even in the cropped employee portrait, she could clock his impeccable suit. Through his left eyebrow remained the familiar, pencil-thin scar that stopped just above his lashes.

She had memorized his professional bio—at this point, she knew it better than her own—but reading it still gave her a strange sort of pleasure. After a few years at Barclays and a quick passage through Silicon Valley’s top VC firms, Danial was now the youngest Managing Director at a highly successful private equity firm. From her sleuthing, Alex had deduced that this put his total compensation package north of a million dollars annually. He wasn’t generationally wealthy like the rest of the Columbia Club, but he was well on his way. If he stayed on this track, he could be worth twenty million by forty-five, and she had no doubt that this was exactly the number he had in mind. Every decision in his adult life had been driven by maximizing revenue, directing every ounce of his brilliant energy to the most insidious enterprise he could have possibly chosen.

She shook her head, sighing until she’d expelled enough breath to calm her nervous system. Almost as a reflex, she reached over to her bag and fished out a notebook and pen, her preferred system for any kind of serious work. From its position hovering over Danial’s headshot, she dragged the cursor to another link on the company page—NEWS AT HORACE—and clicked, scrolling to the most recent story: coverage of the firm’s highly controversial takeover of a Pennsylvania manufacturing plant. She opened her notebook and flipped to a fresh page, clicking open her pen. Her eyes were glued to the screen, soaking in the carefully worded PR as her hand danced furiously across the paper, taking bulleted notes on everything she saw.

This would be the first time she’d seen Danial in over ten years—and this time, he wouldn’t forget her.