Chapter 3 - Connor
CONNOR
THURSDAY
“Bro,” I hear from behind me just as the footsteps slow down.
I’m sitting at my desk, two monitors plus my laptop in full view and my headset halfway off, still cradling over one ear.
And for fuck’s sake, if I hear that word one more time…
If I had a dollar for every time someone called me “bro” in this office, I wouldn’t need a trust fund.
“What’s up?” I say, removing my headset and placing it on the desk.
My finger is moving of its own accord and tap, tap, tapping on the tabletop.
It’s the fifth time Cash has interrupted me in the past fifteen minutes, and I’m starting to think that he must be either very good or really bad at his job because he’s never doing anything. He’s grinning like we’re best friends.
“You’re the only one who isn’t participating in the fantasy football league, bro.”
I sigh and turn to face him. He’s wearing slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and an obnoxiously expensive watch on display.
His Patagonia vest has seen better days, but the company’s logo shines brightly on his chest, like a beacon of supreme pride.
Almost like the ultimate flex. A finance bro through and through.
“Right,” I reply, glancing at the time on my watch even though I know I have another thirty minutes before the next calendar block. “Haven’t had a chance to look.”
“Oh, no worries, dude,” he says with a chuckle.
It’s almost like a combination of confusion and annoyance that I haven’t, in fact, had a chance to leisurely sign up for a fantasy football league I have no interest in.
“But if you could at least sign up before leaving for the trip, that would be awesome.”
I nod slowly. “Sure,” I say as I unplug my laptop from the dock. I stand, not aggressively, just fully, and Cash takes a small step back. I’m taller than him by a few inches, and it shows, especially when I’m this close. “I’ll see if I get to it after work.”
“That’s fire,” he says, a half step behind me now as I turn away.
Fire? Jesus Christ.
I don’t say anything. Just keep walking.
The office is still buzzing behind me—calls, pings, the low drone of overachievers who think working themselves to the bone for a deal is a noble pursuit. I used to be like that. Used to want to be the best at this. Until I started asking myself what this even was.
By the time I’m on the street, it’s dark.
That in-between time when the city shifts—less finance, more Thursday bar crowd.
A strange quiet hums under the usual noise, like New York itself is catching its breath.
Summer nights usually mean packed sidewalks and rooftop laughter, but tonight the air’s unseasonably crisp.
A rare break from the humidity. The kind of night that should feel like a gift.
It doesn’t.
I loosen the top button of my shirt and start walking. I could call a car, but I’d rather take the long way home and move my body. Pretend I’m grounded and all that shit.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I don’t even have to look to know it’s my father calling. I almost let it go to voicemail, but I don’t. Because not answering somehow feels worse.
“Connor,” he says in that clipped, efficient tone he uses for his quarterly earnings calls. “Did you confirm with Joe about dinner tomorrow?”
I pause at the crosswalk. “I told you, I can’t commit to that yet.”
“It’s just dinner,” he replies, like that makes it harmless. “He’s a partner at Vista. They’re looking to expand their team. It could be a good move for you.”
There it is. A good move. A step on the path. The words land with the weight of decades of him trying to mold me into something solid and comprehensible, someone he could point to at dinner parties or charity events and say that’s my son.
The path has always been their world, not mine.
Grades, internships, Ivy League, analyst, associate, VP. Each rung on the ladder its own box I’m expected to check, not because I want to climb it but because climbing is the only acceptable motion. The only proof I’m not falling behind.
And for years, I did it. I ran until my lungs burned and called it ambition.
But lately, all I can feel is how narrow it’s gotten. How the path feels less like a staircase and more like a windowless tunnel. Not even a light at the end.
“I’ll… see what my schedule looks like,” I say because it’s easier than no. I will deal with the aftermath later—a problem for future me.
“Good,” he says, already satisfied. “And bring Athena if she’s back from the Hamptons.”
The light changes. I start walking again. “Sure, Dad.”
“Proud of you,” he says and hangs up before I can answer.
I slide the phone into my pocket and keep walking, letting the city swallow me block by block until the gold-lit awning of my building finally comes into view.
“Evening, Mr. Paul,” Alfred says as I push into the lobby of my building.
His tone is warm and familiar. He’s always been polite but never fake, which is exactly why I like him so much.
He’s wearing the most doorman outfit there ever existed, but it suits him and his role just perfectly.
The building where I live is as subtle as a slap in the face.
Gold leaf trim, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, velvet benches no one ever sits on, and a chandelier so large it looks like it was brought in directly from Versailles in its own private jet.
The ceiling is domed and hand-painted by an artist I should remember but don’t.
The residents love it. Take real pride in it. I once saw an older man with sparkling New Balance shoes give a ten-minute speech to a real estate agent about the original plaster work.
I’ve lived here long enough to stop noticing the extravagance. But sometimes, when I come home late and the lobby is quiet like this, the opulence screams at me and makes me feel lonely.
“Hey, Alfred.” I give a tired half smile. “Cold tonight.”
“For summer? Absolutely,” he says, tapping something on his tablet. “The city doesn’t know what it wants lately.”
I chuckle lowly. “Tell me about it.”
“You’re later than usual today.”
I nod. “Meetings.”
He gives me a knowing look. “Long meetings make for short lives, you know.”
“I’ll quote you on that.”
The elevator dings before he can answer, and I step inside. The metal doors close, and I stare at my reflection for the brief ride up—crumpled collar, under-eye circles, a man who looks like he needs eighteen hours of uninterrupted sleep and possibly a new identity.
My apartment is quiet and dark.
Athena’s absence hums through it, not like an echo but a gap. A missing note. Her presence lives in the empty side of the bed, the untouched custom-made coffee mugs, the closet that’s now perfectly organized because she’s not around to wreak havoc with all her clothes strewn about.
She moved out seven months ago, and I still haven’t told anyone. It’s final this time—not like the other handful of times we’ve been apart for a few months and end up getting back together, that comfort in the familiarity of knowing someone.
Every time my mother calls, she asks if Athena’s coming to brunch next Sunday, and I stall.
Say she’s busy or at the Hamptons’ house with her parents, which is much easier than saying that I ended it, explaining why, and then having to listen to my mother go on and on about the expectations they have from me, how eyes will be on you two soon, and maybe you can have Grammy’s ring whenever you’re ready to propose.
Her voice always drips with expectation, like she’s waiting for me to catch up to the life script she’s already written in her head. Husband. Father. Managing Director. In that exact order.
It’s not that Athena was awful. She wasn’t at all. She was ambitious. Polished. Of a good family. Everything I was raised to want and definitely fit into those expectations my parents—particularly my mother—droned on and on about.
But every time we talked about the future, I felt like I was standing on a ledge.
And when I finally jumped—when I said I can’t do this anymore—I thought I’d feel free.
Instead, I landed in silence. In questions I couldn’t answer.
In a body that stopped sleeping and a chest that wouldn’t loosen no matter what I did.
The night I went to the emergency department, I thought I was dying.
Full-on chest tightness, blurred vision, hands going numb.
I left the office at ten and collapsed on the sidewalk, not dramatically like in the movies—just slowly, knees buckling, breath clawing at my lungs.
For a second, I swore this was it. That my body had decided it couldn’t keep running at the speed everyone else demanded of it.
I told the nurse I had no prior history and that I worked in investment banking, and she just nodded like that explained everything.
And maybe it did, and I was more of a stereotype than I wanted to admit, and the only thing missing from being a walking finance bro was actually using the word “bro” in conversation.
I open the fridge and grab a beer, then let the cold bottle rest against my forehead for a second before twisting the cap off.
The invitation to Switzerland is still stuck to the fridge, printed on thick cream cardstock like it’s a royal event.
Jack and Elle’s names are in bold script at the top—my cousin, the golden boy, marrying into money like expected and somehow still likable and down to earth.
He invited me a year ago, back when I was technically with Athena.
We were supposed to go together, and I think she expected I would propose during the trip because the hints started early on and kept coming. That part didn’t stick.
The pre-wedding trip is two weeks in a chalet somewhere near Lucerne. Hiking, boat rides, scenic trains. Jack’s friends are all investment bankers and start-up founders who grew up together. I’ll be the odd one out, which says something, considering I grew up adjacent to them.
The apartment smells faintly of cleaning products, which somehow makes it worse.
On the counter, my abandoned experiments sit like quiet accusations: the dead sourdough starter I forgot to feed, its surface collapsed in on itself; a stack of clean, unused recipe books from the month I thought cooking might fix me; the guitar propped in the counter with sheet music still clipped open to lesson two.
I keep thinking the right thing will spark something. Anything.
Shake me out of this gray fog.
But every time, I start with this surge of determination and end up here again—restless, flat, circling the same empty rooms.
Jack keeps saying the trip will be good for me, that I’ll have fun. “It’s a chance to unplug,” he told me last time we talked. “Just show up, man. We’ll take care of everything.”
Unplug. That’s what everyone keeps calling it, like I’m a device overheating. Maybe I am.
I should one hundred percent skip it. But I won’t. Because it’s also expected of me to show up at this family affair, where everyone who is anyone will be seen, and I cannot disappoint my parents, it seems.
Athena would’ve loved this trip. She thrived in these circles, fluent in the language of clinking glasses and polite laughter. I would’ve played the part at her side, and my mother would’ve been satisfied. But now it’s just me, and I can already hear the questions waiting when I get back.
I take another sip of the beer, then let it go warm in my mouth. Two weeks. That’s all. I’ll fly in, smile at the right people, eat some fondue, and keep my head down. Be normal. Be fine.
And maybe if I fake it hard enough, it’ll stick.