CHAPTER 4
SIOBHAN grabs Liyah’s arm, stopping her from stepping out into the lobby. “We have an explicit invite,” Liyah reminds her. “It’s fine.”
“You have an explicit invite,” Siobhan insists. “I’m a stowaway.”
“I doubt they’ll mind. They’ve all had chances for seconds, and there’s still enough food to feed the entire crowd twice more. They’ll probably toss most of it anyway.”
Siobhan chuckles. “I see, so this is about saving the planet. Here I was thinking you were just looking out for your belly.”
Liyah makes her best innocent face, clasping her hands and batting her eyelashes. “Whatever do you mean? Food waste is a serious problem in the U.S., and stealing this food is the only way to stop it. It’s a public service. Your good deed for the year.” Siobhan tries and fails to bite back a laugh. “Listen, there’s like six women here. If we stick out that badly, that’s on them. They should be embarrassed to even question us.” Siobhan nods hesitantly, still unconvinced. Liyah sighs. “If they do, I’ll say we’re Daniel Rosenberg’s plus-two. He won’t care.”
“I thought you said you weren’t planning on talking to him,” Siobhan says, brow raised.
“I’m not,” Liyah insists. “I’m planning on using him as an excuse to take the food and run.”
“I’ll let you do the talking.”
“Works for me,” Liyah replies, and walks toward the buffet with all the self-assuredness of someone who belongs at the party, Siobhan at her heels.
The spread is truly expansive. It’s like they expected a crowd three times the size. Two guys are chatting at the other end, and from where Siobhan and Liyah first grab their plates, they can’t even eavesdrop. She is curious in a way she wouldn’t usually be about the goings-on of two suit-clad men in their late twenties. One guy has his back to her, but the other seems to be the only other Black person in the building. She wants to ask him what kind of Olympic-level code switching he employs to get through a week at Kinley. He holds himself with such understated confidence; maybe he has the right affect to pull off weaving between AAVE and standard English midsentence. If so, Liyah is envious. Sometimes it feels like she talks one way with her dad’s family and another with the rest of the world.
They’ve inched their way toward the end of the long table (seriously long, this company must pay well) and Liyah’s trying to figure out how to wedge a miniature baguette between some mashed potatoes and sautéed asparagus when she feels someone approach in her periphery.
“You came,” Daniel says as she turns toward him. He balances his plate (equally overfilled) in one hand with ease. The suit he wears is navy, but nicer than the one from Wednesday. She really should ask for the name of his tailor; lapels should not lie so cleanly against someone’s chest. She loses her train of thought somewhere around his pocket square, only regaining it when she passes the bridge of his nose and sees his eyes flick up to hers, as if they’d been somewhere around her lips. “Were you not going to say hello?”
“I would have gotten around to it,” Liyah says.
“She would not have,” Siobhan stage-whispers across the table, making Daniel laugh and abruptly reminding Liyah that there are other people in the room.
“I brought a friend. Hope that’s okay,” she mumbles.
The guy Liyah was watching at the end of the buffet saunters over, clapping a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “I guess I did, too,” Daniel says.
The guy clears his throat. “You gone introduce me?”
Daniel laughs. “Jordan, this is Liyah. Liyah, Jordan.”
“Daniel forgets his manners sometimes. It’s nice to meet you.” Jordan flashes a smile. His teeth look brilliantly white against the deep brown of his lips. The lineup on his fade is perfect, too, done to accentuate the masculine squareness of his face. Jordan is handsome. Almost too handsome, in a way that screams trouble. It figures, though—attractive men tend to be friends with other attractive men. Not that she’s attracted to Daniel. She’s just, you know, seen him. Jordan extends his hand, and Liyah accepts it.
“Don’t I know it. This is Siobhan.” Rather than reach across the buffet, Siobhan offers a wave.
“Nice to meet you,” they say at the same time.
“Are you a market operations specialist, too?” Liyah asks.
“Digital marketing strategist,” Daniel corrects.
“My mistake, I’m still working on my proficiency in capitalism mumbo jumbo. No offense, Jordan.”
Daniel’s eyes cut to her. “What if I’m offended?”
“I truly do not care.” Maybe Liyah should pause to think before snapping at him, especially given their working relationship, but her limited self-control borders on nonexistent in Daniel’s presence.
“What do y’all do?” Jordan asks.
“We work here at the Field. I’m a graphic designer,” Siobhan offers, stealing Liyah’s chance at what she’s sure could have been several more rounds of witty retorts.
“I’m an exhibition developer-slash-designer. The slash is an important part of my job title, it’s even there next to my picture on the website.”
Jordan quirks his eyebrow. “And for those of us not fluent in museum mumbo-jumbo?”
“I’m probably whatever you’d think a junior curator would be.” She looks down at the buffet table, grabbing a small butter packet and balancing it precariously on the edge of her plate. “Also, if I’m being honest, sometimes my job amounts to colonialism mumbo-jumbo.”
“So where can you work?” Daniel asks. “Without the mumbo-jumbo.”
Liyah shrugs noncommittally. “I don’t know. The world is terrible.”
Siobhan snorts. “Please don’t get her started.” Then, in response to Liyah’s glare, “What? I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying that it’s Friday night, and some of us want to steal food and go home to wine and Netflix in peace.”
“Wasn’t your grandfather in the IRA?”
“I’m saving my car bomb for when the English invade Chicago. Which, by my measure, is not going to be in the next three hours.”
Liyah laughs, then glances at Jordan and Daniel, mildly concerned that Siobhan’s pitch-black humor might’ve scandalized their company. “Well, we’re off to scarf this down in a corner. Nice to meet you, Jordan,” she says, turning away.
“Wait—” Daniel grabs her arm. His touch is gentle, undercut by rough calluses on the pads of his fingers, and it falls away so quickly she might’ve thought she imagined it if it weren’t for the lingering heat on her skin and apologetic look on his face. “Do you, um, wanna sit with us?” Daniel asks.
Siobhan turns bright red. This exchange probably hasn’t helped with her nervousness about seeming out of place. Liyah, in her stead, says, “We’re not really dressed the part. Don’t want to draw too much attention.”
“I promise you, nobody cares.”
“Also, we’ve been looking for an excuse to head out for a drink,” Jordan chimes in, glancing at his watch. “I’d say we need twenty more minutes of face time before we escape, but y’all are welcome to join.”
“Well, that sounds about thirty times more exciting than my original plans,” Siobhan agrees, without consulting Liyah.
If she’d been up front with Siobhan about how she really knew Daniel, she might not be in this predicament. But it’s too late now, and by nine thirty, Liyah finds herself in a basement in River North. When they arrived at the bar (Daniel’s suggestion, apparently his roommate works there), Liyah and Siobhan were wary of the unmarked door in a dark alley. Siobhan even went so far as to warn their companions that she carried pepper spray. But really, Liyah should have expected this when Jordan referred to the bar as a speakeasy. She’d just assumed he meant that the bar was dimly lit with a few velvet chairs, but after they entered and passed through an unassuming dining area, she was floored.
The place is truly committed to capturing Prohibition-era Chicago. The walls are papered in a vintage print and lined with framed photos from the 1920s. There must be significant soundproofing, because the live jazz didn’t hit until they were down the stairs and through yet another set of doors. Liyah nurses an old-fashioned (infused with cigar smoke by Alex, the roommate apparently) and looks around. The concept sounds like true yuppie nonsense, but in practice, it works.
“Thanks for joining us,” Jordan says, and Liyah peels her eyes away from a four-foot-tall photograph of a Black flapper girl smoking a six-inch cigarette.
“We should be thanking you, for the drinks and all,” Siobhan says. Liyah nods her agreement.
Daniel waves them off. “It’s nothing, Alex always gives us the first round on the house. Perks of rooming with a mixologist.”
Liyah nearly chokes on her whiskey. “Mixologist?”
“He’d kill me if he heard me say that, but he does actually have a certification.”
Liyah, having gulped a few sips of water, lifts her tumbler. “It was well-earned. This is delicious.”
“Mine, too,” Siobhan adds between sips of a drink as red as her cheeks.
Jordan takes a healthy swig of his scotch. “Whose idea was it to have the party on a Friday night? It’s been a long enough week as it is.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Daniel taps his glass against Jordan’s.
Liyah rolls her eyes. “Yes, I truly pity the two of you. Free gourmet food as far as the eye can see. Tragic.”
“The best we ever get at the Field is free pizza. And not even, like, Malnati’s or anything.” This is not the first time Siobhan has complained that Jeff never caters deep dish. Siobhan likes it so much that Liyah’s half convinced it’s the reason she chose Chicago when she graduated from Trinity College Dublin.
“Nah, the food is great. It’s more working the room full of very, very white guys when I’m supposed to be off the clock.”
Liyah winces, the feeling all too familiar. She spent all of undergrad being confused for the only other Black woman in her major. The Field isn’t a paragon of diversity by any means, but it’s just about gender balanced and she’s not the lone person of color in her department.
Daniel groans. “Remember last Christmas party? The photographer practically chased us around with his camera.”
“They still call it a Christmas party?” Liyah cringes.
Jordan nods. “Yup. And they out their damn minds if they think another picture of us’ll convince anybody. Having the same three people of color on the website more than once is worse than nobody at all.”
Liyah laughs. “They should teach a class on how to deal with tokenism in college. It would have been more useful than most of my general education requirements. I don’t do any math, like, ever.”
“I hope it’s not rude to ask, but why do you work there, then?” Siobhan says. If she’s uncomfortable with the topic of race, she doesn’t show it. But, then again, she’s shared an office with Liyah for three years, so she might have been acclimated by immersion.
“It pays,” they say at the same time.
“To be honest, I genuinely like it,” Daniel adds. “Not all of it, but I do get to be pretty creative.”
“I like the people part.” Jordan flashes a smile. “Gotta put this charm to good use, right?”
Siobhan nods, perhaps a touch too vigorously. Liyah stuffs down a laugh, lest she cause a full-chest blush. She is thankful her own skin doesn’t show her emotions quite so plainly. Siobhan finishes the last of her drink. “I have to use the toilet. Liyah?”
They’re barely out of earshot when Siobhan grips Liyah’s arm and leans toward her ear. “Are you going to explain why you knew those two fine things and didn’t think to share them with me until now?”
Liyah laughs loudly enough to startle the table they pass by. “I met Jordan tonight, same as you.”
“But you met Daniel on Wednesday! And all you told me is that he was ‘some corporate guy who barely had one functioning brain cell.’”
“I said he probably shared a single brain cell with the rest of his office.”
Siobhan pushes open the door to the restroom. “He seems perfectly intelligent. You just don’t want to be doing the marketing thing.”
“You’re right, I don’t. And I especially don’t want to be spending my Friday night with him! This project might go for months, Siobhan. I’ll see him plenty during work hours.”
“Hear me out,” she says. “What if you saw him plenty outside of work hours, too? And you brought me? And he brought Jordan?”
“Siobhan—”
“Please, Liyah.” She presses her palms flat together, holding them in front of her pouting lips. “Only a few times, until I work up the courage to ask Jordan to drinks myself.”
“I don’t think you realize what you’re asking of me. It’s hard enough to tolerate him in a professional context, I’m not going to make it to the first event if I see him more than that.”
“He can’t really be that bad, can he?”
Liyah shakes her head. “You don’t know the half of it.” An understatement. After their conversation on Wednesday, it seems like Daniel doesn’t even know the half of it. In some ways, Liyah feels like she doesn’t, either. That summer was more than half her life ago, and it was never Daniel himself being unkind. Before running into him, she thought she had let it go. But when she looks at him and sees glimpses of the boy he used to be, it’s hard not to feel a hot thread of shame and disappointment needle through her chest. “What happened to needing to use the toilet?”
“I wanted to talk to you!” Siobhan says, confirming Liyah’s fear that she was never going to disappear into the stall and forget about it. “Will you consider it?”
“I don’t know if I’m even capable of being nice to him.”
Siobhan snorts, folding her arms across her chest. “You haven’t been tonight, and he doesn’t seem to mind.” Liyah opens her mouth to protest, but Siobhan continues: “Think of it as practice! Or like a vaccine. You’ll inoculate yourself to Daniel on the weekends, and then working with him won’t be quite so difficult.”
Someone swings the door open, and Liyah presses back against the wall to let them through. “I don’t think it works like that,” she grits out.
Siobhan pouts again, making her eyes go round. In the dim light of the bathroom, they’re the same pale blue as the eyes of the husky who lives in the apartment above Liyah. Literal puppy-dog eyes. “Liyah, I did all those graphics for you. Over many lunch breaks. Unpaid, I may add, so—”
“God, fine! Okay! I’ll help you see Jordan again.” She holds up a finger. “But only until your wings are strong enough. Then I’m pushing you out of the fucking nest.”
Siobhan wraps her in a warm hug (one of her best talents—she smells delicious and applies just the right amount of pressure) and whispers thank you repeatedly into Liyah’s ear.
“You’re too good at guilt-tripping,” Liyah says after she pulls back.
“Well, I was raised Catholic.” Siobhan winks. “Let’s go get them another round. We’ve been in here so long they’ll think we’ve got the shits!”
“SO THAT’S LIYAH. Holy shit, man.” Jordan gives Daniel a long look.
Daniel takes a swig of his gin and tonic. Last he checked, Jordan was with Nisha, but sometimes his flings are as short as they are intense, and he’d been grumpier than usual at the office today. Also, Jordan wasn’t lying about his charm—if he decides he wants to go for it, it’s usually a done deal. For about three months, that is. “Yeah, from the plane.”
“Yeah, I got that. You’re telling me you didn’t get her number?” Daniel shakes his head. “Not even her Instagram?”
“Dude, I told you already, no.” Daniel tips his head back to drain the rest of his glass. He has a feeling he knows where this conversation is going, and he doesn’t particularly want to be sober for it.
“You’re fucking hopeless.”
Daniel stares down at his empty glass. “Wow, thanks.”
“No, I mean, look at you! If a girl who looked like that was flirting with me…” He shakes his head, pursing his lips.
“Antagonizing,” he corrects. He thinks about that moment she realized who he was—how her eyes widened a fraction before she turned away, how the air on the plane seemed to go from stale to positively stifling in milliseconds—more than he’d like to admit. “Not flirting with me.” Jordan sucks his teeth disapprovingly. Daniel exhales. “Seriously, man, she genuinely dislikes me. There’s a lot of glaring involved.”
“She’s probably imagining you naked. Which is very clearly what you’re doing to her.”
“I can’t take you anywhere. You watch too many romantic comedies. And too much porn.”
“Hey, it’s gotten me this far.” Jordan punctuates this with a dazzling grin.
“Yeah? How’s Nisha?”
The grin falters. “I ain’t getting into all that. This is about you and your total lack of game. You need a wingman.”
Daniel shakes his head adamantly. “Dude, I told you, we’re working together! I do not need a wingman.”
“You absolutely do. Lucky for you, I’m at your service tonight. I can distract her friend and y’all can make a quick getaway.”
“You and Alex are too much alike. I don’t need your help getting laid. And, again, if I did, it wouldn’t be with a client.”
“Oh, so you want a date? Aite, then by the end of the night, I’ll have made sure you have a reason to see her again.” He pats Daniel’s arm. “I got you, man.”
“I’m on thin enough ice with her as it is. Please don’t—” Daniel starts to protest, but Liyah and Siobhan are back, carrying a new round of drinks.
Siobhan passes one to Jordan, and Liyah sets Daniel’s down in front of him, making a show of looking him up and down. “You know, I read somewhere that liking gin and tonics is linked to psychopathy.” Daniel shoots a look at Jordan as if to say see, genuine dislike. His eyes, unfortunately, are met with a subtle wink.
“It must’ve been an old study—we also like bourbon now,” he replies, surprising a smile out of Liyah as she takes her seat.
The four of them fall back into easy conversation, even with the constant fear of Jordan playing a modern reimagining of Yente, sans babushka. It’s fun being here, hanging out with people other than Jordan, Alex, or, let’s be honest, Sweet Potato. Somewhere in the din of the music and conversation, it hits him how much of a homebody he’s been as of late. Months of his sister Kayla’s incessant nagging to go out more, and it’s the soulful timbre of a jazz singer in a tasseled dress that sinks it in. He won’t tell Kayla. She’s already taken on too much of his happiness as her personal responsibility as elder sibling, especially since last year. Plus, she can be insufferably bossy. Liyah would love her.
“Liyah, check your email!” Siobhan all but shrieks.
Liyah groans. “Please, no, it’s a Friday night. I’ll look tomorrow.”
Siobhan digs into Liyah’s purse herself and thrusts the phone at her. “No, now.”
“God, okay! Sorry, Jordan,” she says before unlocking her phone. She taps a bit, then her jaw slackens. She looks up at Siobhan, as if to check that she read it right. When she nods, Liyah’s face lights up. “Oh. My. Fucking. God. We got it.”
“You got it.”
“What did y’all get?” Jordan interjects. Daniel would have asked, had he not been busy absorbing the sheer joy radiating off Liyah.
“My exhibit—Jeff got the board—he, wow…” Speechless is not a look Daniel expected to see on her.
“Liyah here pitched an entire exhibit based off a few skeletons we’re acquiring.” Siobhan fills the men in. “Our boss’s bosses green-lit it. And I’ll get to be lead on graphics, so it’s a pretty big deal.”
“Wow. Mazel tov,” Daniel congratulates her.
Liyah’s eyes meet Daniel’s, and she smiles at him. A teeth-baring, eye-crinkling smile. Holy shit. “Thank you. I’m beyond stoked. I’d try to be modest but right now I’m honestly too excited.”
Jordan raises his glass. “To no modesty.” Daniel sighs, the only one here who truly appreciates how much Jordan lives up to his toast. They all clink glasses and sip their drinks. To Daniel’s delight, Liyah has yet to wipe the smile off her face.
“Now you’ll just have to convince Jeff on the land acknowledgment.”
“Ugh, Siobhan. Don’t remind me,” Liyah says. Then, by way of explanation, she adds, “It’s for the colonialism mumbo-jumbo. As you can probably imagine, basically all artifacts exhumed prior to this millennium—and some after, honestly—were taken without the permission of the indigenous peoples who occupied the land. There’s a paragraph about it on the website but I want something below every case in the exhibit.”
Daniel frowns. “And you don’t think that’s gonna be an easy sell?”
Liyah shakes her head. “Jeff can be … traditional.”
Jordan laughs. “We deserve extra benefits for dealing with ‘traditional’ bosses, among other things.”
Liyah nods. “They should pay for therapy. Or at the very least, our bar tabs.”
“If you lot know of any good support groups, we’re all ears.”
Jordan perks up at Siobhan’s words. Oh no. There’s a familiar glint in his eye, an expression Daniel recognizes from watching him pitch ad campaigns to clients. He doesn’t need to say anything for Daniel to know in his bones that Jordan has thought of an opportunity to shove him and Liyah together, likely dooming their new working relationship—and therefore his freedom to pick his own accounts—from the start. “Why don’t we start one? We can meet here and drink away our sorrows.”
Daniel is surprised. From Jordan, he expected much worse.
“Half of our sorrows are caused by dealing with the middle-aged men in our department.” Liyah uses the little black straw from her drink to point between him and Jordan. “You two won’t get offended?”
Daniel leans forward, holding eye contact for a beat. “I thought you didn’t care whether you offended me?”
“I don’t.” She looks from him to Jordan. “My concern is for group morale. It’s meant to be therapeutic, after all.”
“Ah. Well, I think our masculinity will survive,” Daniel says.
Liyah’s gaze drifts down his face, then back up. “Shame,” she says, smile wicked.
Their sparring is cut short, yet again, because Daniel laughs too hard to source a rapid-fire comeback.
“So, what?” Siobhan says from her side. “We form a support group?”
Daniel clucks his tongue, thinking. “No, too tame. It’s dire stuff, surviving our late twenties.” After receiving agreement from the group—with much less fight from Liyah than expected—he draws up a contract on a napkin:
HOUSE RULES
Meet: Friday nights, 10 9 (Siobhan wakes up early), at Prohibition
Anything said here stays here
No toxic masculinity
Jordan Ames
Aliyah Cohen-Jackson
Siobhan Gallagher
Daniel Rosenberg
And thus, the Speakeasy Survival Club is born.