The Clasp by Sloane Crosley Read Free Book Online Page A

felt epic. But then the cleaning lady arrived and gave Kezia a knowing nod for being the only other soul in the office. She hated being there to be nodded at, in the society of the overworked and underpaid. Plus Michael, a third-year emergency room resident at Mount Sinai, had changed his shift to make dinner for them. This was a plan-keeping trump card that Meredith never hesitated to play. Michael has arranged for someone else to scrub the blood off a gurney tonight. Are you sure you can’t make it?
    â€œYour place is so grown up.”
    â€œHave you not been here yet?” Meredith looked to Michael to answer this. “That’s so weird. Give yourself the tour. I have to pee and then I want to hear every ounce of Rachel Simone dirt you have.”
    â€œAh.” Kezia casually inspected the molding. “No such thing as a free lunch.”
    â€œIt’s dinner.” Michael smiled from the open kitchen. “All bets are off. She’s been looking forward to this all week.”
    When she began working for Rachel, Kezia would still allow herself to be called in for interviews with competing companies. It was the professional equivalent of going to a strip club: look all you want but go home. And she always wanted to go home. This was back when Kezia loved her job, loved the learning curve, even loved Rachel in her own twisted way. Now that she wanted out, it was too late. Her association with Rachel Simone had calcified in the eyes of the industry—she couldn’t remember the last time she had faked a midday dentist appointment.
    Kezia walked around the apartment, a wide floor-through on the Upper West Side with built-in bookshelves and an office that had been painted a gender-neutral yellow. In the living room, there were framed LPs and art—a canvas with tiny naked people needle-pointed into it. There was a closet just for coats. Kezia’s apartment had no subversive knitting and no closets. Only a corkboard monstrosity from IKEA. Oh, to have two incomes in one home. Like having two hairs coming out of one pore, but pleasant.
    Meredith and Michael shouted at each other with the bathroom door between them, speculating about the location of an elusive carrot peeler. It was conversations like this that really punched Kezia in the gut. Love—reciprocal, romantic, real—would come or not come. The world was not subtle about telling single people what they were missing. That particular brand of want never took her by surprise. But to have an extended conversation about kitchen gadgets without it dooming a relationship to boredom? She had forgotten she wanted that until she witnessed it.
    The matching bedside tables didn’t help either.
    â€œGod, I miss you.” Meredith slapped her left hand on the table as they sat down to eat. “Tell me something about your fabulous life. Are you going anywhere fun?”
    â€œI’m going to a wedding in Miami this weekend.” Kezia tried to sound hopeful.
    â€œI love weddings.”
    â€œSpoken like a married woman.”
    â€œDon’t be grouchy.”
    She wasn’t being grouchy. She loved Meredith. She wanted her to be happy. But she was allowed the occasional conversational revolt. The last time they hung out, for example, Kezia had refrained from explaining that asking a single woman if she wants kids is like asking a one-armed man if he’d like to play tennis. She had said nothing when Meredith started referring to Michael as “M” within a week of meeting him, nothing when she typed “Is this dumb?” and sent Kezia a picture of herself in a bathtub full of M&M’s on Valentine’s Day. Actually, she had said something. She’d said, “Peanut is a classy touch.”
    â€œMaybe there will be hot single men there.” Michael piled food on her plate.
    â€œAlways true.”
    â€œWhose wedding?”
    â€œCaroline Markson.” Kezia smiled.
    â€œOh.” A smirk