Chapter 31
brIGGS
The opposing counsel in the contract dispute was a man named Omar Phelps who had been practicing law for thirty-one years.
He had a technique I could only describe as aggressive exhaustion.
His whole strategy was to make the other side so tired of arguing that they conceded points not because they were wrong but because they were depleted.
It was not an effective strategy with me.
I was not about to let him bully me. I respected him but I wasn’t going to run from him.
Today was the opening number of the dance.
We would do it all again tomorrow. I wasn’t excited, but I wasn’t dreading it.
I liked the challenge. It felt good to exercise my legal chops.
I couldn’t wait to get home. And that was not a sentence I found myself saying very often.
I missed Mandy. Knowing she was in my space waiting for me was a feeling like nothing I’ve felt before.
Sitting in court all day, all I could think about was her.
What she was doing. What she was wearing. What we’d do when I got home.
I stepped out of the elevator and into the foyer and paused. It was my apartment, but it didn’t feel, sound, or smell like my place.
Music was coming from the kitchen. Mandy was attempting to sing along to what I thought might be a Taylor Swift song. It was hard to say.
The smell of savory pot roast wafted around the space.
I took my jacket off and draped it over the chair by the door.
She had her back to me, standing at the stove with her doing a cute little shimmy as she sang.
The lights in the kitchen were on but the rest of the living space was shrouded in darkness.
Not complete darkness. I almost laughed when I saw several flickering candles on various surfaces.
She was never anywhere without them. I stood and watched, saying nothing.
It was a look into a life I never knew I wanted. I never let myself imagine what it would be like to come home to someone. To have that settled feeling of a partner that cooked for me. Slept in my bed. Shared their life with me.
I did not want to go back to my old life. I knew that right then. This was what I wanted. I needed her to be a part of my life from here on out.
The song shifted. She reached for the phone to skip it and turned. She saw me and jumped.
“Oh—” She put a hand to her chest. “You have got to make noise when you come in!” She held up a wooden spoon like a potential weapon. “How long have you been standing there?”
“A minute,” I said. “Maybe two.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Thank goodness you’ve already been subjected to my horrible singing.”
“It smells good in here,” I said. “You’ve been busy.”
“I have.”
I walked into the kitchen, slid an arm around her waist, and kissed her.
“Good news and bad news,” she said when I stepped back.
I loosened my tie. “Good news first.”
“The pot roast is tender.” She turned back to the stove and lifted the lid on a pot that immediately produced a wave of hunger. “I’ve been checking it every twenty minutes.”
I looked at the pot. Then at her. “What’s the bad news?”
She put the lid back down. When she looked at me again, I was pretty sure I saw sadness. Regret. And that was never a good look.
“I have to go back to LA tomorrow morning,” she said quietly.
The kitchen stayed warm. The music continued. Someone singing about a Manchild.
I nodded slowly. I was absolutely disappointed, but I wasn’t going to put that on her. She had a life back there.
“What time?” I said.
Something moved in her face. Relief, maybe, that I hadn’t turned it into an argument. “Early. Seven. Cleo is letting me take the plane back. Thankfully it’s still here in New York.”
I nodded, understanding our time together was a lot shorter than I thought.
“Then it’s all the more reason to enjoy tonight,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be. This is not your fault. You have work. I get it.”
“Set the table,” she said. “It’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
I did as I was told while doing my best not to look like someone who just got their puppy kicked.
We sat across from each other at the kitchen table. The smell from the meal was incredible. And it looked even better. I took a bite.
“Mandy, damn, this is good.”
“It’s just pot roast.”
“Every time I’ve made pot roast in the crock pot it comes out like shoe leather.”
She pointed her fork at me. “Crock pots are foolproof.”
“Apparently not.”
“They are. The fool in that scenario is the variable.”
I looked at her. “Careful. I’d hate to have to have a cook-off with you.”
“Oh, I think you’d win hands down,” she said with a smile.
“So, what crisis awaits you in LA?” I asked.
She made a sound that was not quite a sigh. “A groomzilla.”
“Is that worse than a bridezilla?”
“Significantly. Women planning their weddings have strong opinions because they’ve been thinking about their special day for twenty plus years.
They know the territory. They’ve thought about it.
Their opinions are at least coherent.” She twirled her fork.
“A groomzilla is a man who has not thought about any of it for his entire life and has now, with approximately three weeks until his wedding, decided he has thoughts and feelings about every single element. A big man means big feelings. None of them account for the decisions that were made in the previous eight months.”
“What’s the specific grievance?”
“The cake.” She leveled her gaze at me. “Have you ever seen a full-grown man cry because his wedding cake isn’t chocolatey enough?”
I considered this. “I have not.”
“I have. Last Tuesday. On a video call. Tears, Briggs. Real ones.”
“How chocolatey does he want it?”
“That’s what I asked. He said, and I’m quoting, more than this.
” She put her fork down. “He tasted the sample once. He hadn’t told anyone he wanted it more chocolatey.
He hadn’t mentioned chocolate at any point in the planning process.
He just felt, upon the tasting, that more chocolate was required and that the correct response to this feeling was to cry. ”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I would handle it.” She picked her fork back up.
“Which I will. I’ll add a chocolate ganache layer and do a drizzle and have the baker do a second tasting next week and he’ll declare it perfect because it will taste like a chocolate bar had a child with a wedding cake.
” She paused. “And then something else will happen. There’s always something else. ”
“How do you not lose your mind?”
She thought about it seriously. “Because underneath all of it, someone is getting married. They want the day to be perfect. I like that they are both so invested in making the day special.” She shrugged.
“I can work with chaos. Chaos means it matters to them. As long as there is a method to the madness, I can overlook the crazy demands. To a point. But it does require a lot of hand holding. My job is to take the stress off the bride’s shoulders, and if that means I have to deal with her neurotic future husband, so be it. That’s why I get paid the big bucks.”
I leaned back in my chair, studying her across the table. “Tell me more about these groomzillas. I need to understand what I’m up against if we ever renew our vows.”
She pointed her fork at me. “Don’t even joke about that. One Vegas wedding was enough.”
“Come on. Humor me. What’s the worst one you’ve had?”
She took a sip of wine, considering. “Okay, so about a year ago, I had this groom who decided, two days before the wedding, that he needed to choreograph a flash mob for the reception.”
“That doesn’t sound terrible.”
“He wanted to choreograph it himself. He had never danced before in his life. He insisted on teaching thirty people—including both sets of elderly grandparents—a routine to Thriller. In forty-eight hours.”
I nearly choked on my wine. “You’re lying.”
“I swear on my life. He sent me a video of himself doing the routine in his living room. It was—” She paused, searching for words. “Creative. Very unique.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him it was a wonderful idea and that I’d help coordinate it.
Then I quietly hired a professional flash mob company, had them learn a simplified version of what he wanted, and positioned them strategically throughout the crowd so they could guide everyone else.
He thought he’d taught them all himself. ”
“That’s genius.”
“That’s survival.” She speared a piece of carrot. “Then there was the groom who wanted to arrive at his wedding on a horse. Not unusual, right? Except the wedding was on the twenty-third floor of a hotel. In downtown LA.”
“And he wanted a horse?”
“Exactly. I spent two hours explaining the hotel would never allow a horse in an elevator. There were weight limits. He finally agreed to leave the reception on a horse with everyone in the parking lot to watch him ride off on his mighty steed.”
“Damn.”
“I have dozens of stories. One groom insisted on wearing light-up sneakers under his tuxedo. The one who tried to surprise his bride by hiring her ex-boyfriend to play guitar during the ceremony.”
“Please tell me you stopped that one.”
“I did. That was a hard no.”
“No wonder you can afford a house in the Hollywood Hills. You can charge whatever you want.”
She grinned. “I do okay. Though honestly, most of my clients are lovely. It’s just the memorable ones that make for good stories.”
We finished eating, and I helped her clear the table. She tried to do the dishes, but I stopped her.
She disappeared into my room to pack while I loaded the dishwasher and put away leftovers. I didn’t want her to leave. But I understood she had to.
When I finished in the kitchen, I found her in my bedroom, standing by her open suitcase on the bed. She was just staring at it, not actually packing anything.
“Need help?” I asked from the doorway.
She turned to look at me. “I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t want you to go either.”
“Then why does it feel like we’re saying goodbye?”
I crossed the room and pulled her into my arms. “It’s not.”
She reached up and cupped my face. “So, what do we do?”
“We make the most of tonight,” I said. “And then we figure out the rest later.”
She smiled, and then she was kissing me. She broke the kiss to move her suitcase to the floor, and then I was lowering her onto the mattress.
I took my time. We’d had plenty of urgent, desperate sex over the past week. Tonight, I wanted to savor her. Memorize every sound she made, every place that made her gasp.
I kissed my way down her neck while my hands worked the buttons of her blouse. She arched beneath me, her fingers threading through my hair.
“Briggs,” she breathed.
“I’m here.”
I stripped her slowly, piece by piece, kissing each new bit of exposed skin. By the time I had her naked beneath me, she was trembling.
“You’re beautiful,” I murmured against her collarbone. “Every single inch of you.”
And I showed her just how beautiful I thought she was the rest of the night.