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“Do you know what the problem is?” he asks.
“I think so. There are a few of the account execs who aren’t pulling their weight. Some of them are fifteen or twenty years older than me…”
“Wow… that’s really old. Do they still have their own teeth?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Hilarious. You’ll be twenty-eight next year… just you wait.”
“Hmm… you see, the problem with that argument is that you’ll be thirty-three. No matter what happens, that five-year gap will always be there.”
“Don’t I know it.”
He tilts his head, frowning at me. “Are you sure your problems are all about work?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know… I just get the feeling you’re fobbing me off with all this crap about Doreen and Dad, and account execs.”
I hate that he can see through me so easily.
“Okay… if you must know, I’m bored… and lonely.” That sounds like too strong a word when I say it out loud, but before I can retract it, Drew perches forward on the edge of the couch, putting his beer bottle on the table between us.
“When was the last time you went out with anyone… other than me?”
“Sadie.”
His shoulders drop, and he shakes his head. “Sadie? But that was three years ago.”
“I know.”
“I get that it’s not every day you find your girlfriend having sex with the man you thought was your best friend, but three years? I didn’t think you were even that serious about her.”
“You’re starting to sound like Dad.”
“Like Dad…?”
“Yeah. He told me I was crazy to go out with her, insane to move her into my place, mad to trust her.”
“What made him say all that? He barely knew her.”
Neither did Drew. He was away a lot at the time, and I’ve never really talked about Sadie since. “Dad didn’t know her at all. He’d never even met her. The problem was, she worked in a bar and came from the wrong side of town, as far as Dad was concerned… which was why he sent me to Europe for four months.”
“In the hope you’d get over her?”
“There was nothing to get over. He sent me in the hope she’d prove herself unfaithful in my absence… which, of course, she did.” There was more to it than that, but I’m not going into it now. It’s ancient history.
“So, he did you a favor.”
“He wasn’t being altruistic, Drew. He just wanted to be right, that was all.”
He frowns. “Wait a second… is that why you left TBA and went to work for the opposition?”
“Of course. I wanted to hurt Dad, like he’d hurt me.”
“Wasn’t it Sadie who’d hurt you? And Austin?”
“Yeah. Austin more than Sadie, if I’m being honest. But I was lashing out. When I got back and found her and Austin together, Dad told me I was stupid not to have seen it coming. Maybe he was right about Sadie, but I never thought Austin would do something like that to me. And in any case, there was no need for Dad to be so cruel about it… or so vindictive. I decided, there and then, to hurt him back the only way I could.”
“By going to work for Moss and Dixon?”
