2. “Come Back”
“COME BACK”
Ishould have said no.
It was the first thought when she closed my door.
The loudest thought.
I ignored it completely.
She was standing in my office wearing black, carrying a wedding ring like an albatross.
Her hair was down.
In twenty-six years of knowing her, I could count on one hand how many times I’d seen her hair down.
I’d apparently been counting.
I leaned back in my chair.
I needed distance.
Distance was something I could maintain.
“Sit,” I said.
She sat.
“Grounds?”
“Infidelity. On his side.”
“How long?”
“Six weeks since I found out. Two years before that.”
I looked at her face.
She was holding herself together with a spine like steel and eyes that didn’t move.
But I could see the small scar on her upper lip from where she’d bitten it at twenty.
I could see her hand shaking slightly in her lap.
I could see all the damage she was working very hard to hide.
I knew why she was shaking.
I’d known for four years why she was shaking.
I’d watched her at Sunday dinners and pretended not to understand the geometry of her hands on the dinner table.
Pretended not to notice when she laughed and the laugh didn’t reach all the way to her eyes.
Pretended not to count how many times she looked at me and then looked away so quickly it was like it never happened.
I was forty-six years old and I’d built a law career on my ability to hide my tells.
I’d built a marriage and then unmade it on the same principle.
I didn’t tell people what I felt. I didn’t let them see the pressure building under my skin. I was the kind of man who made calculated decisions and then made them stick, consequences be damned.
Except I couldn’t quite make this stick.
“You need someone else,” I said. “My associate James is very good.”
“No. I want you.”
The word hung in my office like a physical thing.
I’d trained myself for fifteen years not to hear certain things when they came out of her mouth.
I’d trained myself to spend Sunday dinners sitting across from her without feeling the specific gravity of her existence.
I’d trained myself to be professional.
I’d believed all of that right up until three minutes ago.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because my father trusts you.”
I nodded.
“Then you need to understand something. If I take your case, I’m your attorney first. Your father’s friend second.”
“I understand,” she said.
I stood up and walked her to the door.
I told her to schedule a consultation with my secretary.
I watched her walk out in that black dress with her wedding ring still on.
The moment she disappeared from view, I locked my office door and sat in the dark for seven minutes while my heart tried to break through my ribs.
Seven minutes.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi.
Four. Five. Six. Seven.
I was sitting at my desk, and she was gone, and I was trying to remember the man I’d been before I knew her name.
That man had been married.
To Helena.
Ten years ago, I’d thought Helena was what I needed. Steady. Smart. Someone from the right family. Someone who understood that marriage was a partnership of assets and compatible social calendars.
I’d been wrong about that.
I’d been wrong about a lot of things.
By year three of my marriage to Helena, I’d realized that I was incapable of giving her what she wanted. She wanted a husband who could love her. I was a man who’d spent the previous decade learning not to want anything that couldn’t be acquired through professional achievement.
One night, sitting across from her at dinner, she’d asked me directly: do you even like me. And I’d had no answer because the truth was more complicated than that. I’d liked her. I just didn’t love her. And by then, she deserved better.
We’d ended it.
Cleanly. Professionally. Exactly the way I ended everything.
The divorce had been a masterclass in restraint. No fighting. No drama. Just the division of assets and the careful extrication of two lives that had been bound together by law but never actually by anything that mattered.
The worst part had been Caleb.
My son had been six when we told him. Still young enough to believe that his father was a solid thing. A man who made decisions and kept them.
By sixteen, he’d learned that his father was the kind of man who tried very hard not to walk away from anything, and sometimes still did.
Caleb still came every other weekend. He still let me drive him to soccer. He had stopped letting me hug him goodbye, but he had not yet stopped letting me try.
I had built a careful father out of myself, week by week, and I was not yet sure whether the careful father was the real one or the apology.
And now I was about to do something that would test it.
After the divorce, I’d spent ten years being careful. Not dating. Not looking. Just working. Building the practice. Stacking wins like I could trade them for something I actually wanted.
Then I’d walked into a Sunday dinner at Chip’s house and seen his daughter the way I had not seen her before.
The first time I really saw her she was five years old. Patent leather Mary Janes. Her hair in braids. Her hand holding her father’s hand like he was the only thing keeping her tethered to the ground.
Twenty years later, she was twenty-five, and she was looking at me with a particular kind of attention that made me understand that I was going to have to leave Chip’s house forever if I wanted to be the man I’d always believed myself to be.
I’d made a decision that night, and I’d held onto it for four years.
I would not look at her.
I would not want her.
I would not be the man who took advantage of his oldest friend’s daughter.
I’d been very good at that decision right up until she walked into my office in a black dress and said: I need a divorce.
Seven minutes in the dark, and I was back at her christening. Back at her high school graduation. Back at a hundred Sunday dinners where I’d trained myself not to feel the way she moved through the room.
The moment she disappeared from my office, I knew I should have said no.
I should have recommended James.
I should have walked away.
Instead I’d let her go.
I’d let her get in the elevator and ride down forty-three floors and step out onto Park Avenue.
And I’d texted her.
Two words.
Come back.
I was still sitting in the dark when she came through the door.
She didn’t knock.
She’d had someone unlock the door.
She’d made a choice.
“I lied,” she said.
“I know.”
She crossed to me. There was lipstick that had bled at one corner of her mouth. She looked like she’d run back to me. Her hands were shaking.
“I want you because no one will believe I’m not using my father to get an advantage. Except they won’t believe I’m not using you either. At least with you it’s the truth.”
She was standing in my office in that black dress, and her eyes were bright with the kind of fear that looks exactly like wanting something.
“What’s the actual truth, Eden,” I asked.
She, after a long beat, said the thing I’d been waiting four years to hear.
“I have wanted you to look at me for four years.”
My whole body registered: I have been counting four years too.
I pulled her toward me.
I locked the office door from the inside.
I put both hands on her face and asked: “Are you sure.”
“Yes,” she said.
I kissed her.
Not gentle. This was the kind of kiss that said I’d been holding this for so long that the pressure had warped my bones.
She made a small sound, and then her hands were in my hair, and I was backing her toward my desk, and every rule I’d written was burning down.
I kissed her again and she hitched herself up onto my desk.
My hands went to the backs of her thighs.
Her hands were on my chest under my sweater, her fingers in my hair, pulling, demanding more of me than I’d given any other person in my entire adult life.
I asked again, against her mouth: “Yes?”
“Yes,” she said, urgent now, her breath coming faster.
I undid the buttons of her blouse. One. Two. Three. Four. The silk opened and I could see the pale skin of her collar, the delicate line of her shoulder, the place where her neck met her shoulder.
I kissed there.
Her breath hitched.
I felt her heart hammering under my hand.
She was small and her skin was soft and I’d had four years of practice at not touching her, so now touching her felt like the most important thing I would ever do.
I pulled her skirt up and she wrapped her legs around me and the pressure of her against me was almost too much. Almost too good. Almost everything I’d been denying myself for four years.
I could feel how ready she was.
I could feel her wanting me the way I’d been wanting her.
Her hands moved to my belt and I let her. I let her unfasten it. I let her hands find skin under my waistband.
She reached for me directly and I was almost gone. Almost lost completely to the pressure of her hands on me, the way she was looking at me, the desperation in her voice when she said my name like it was a prayer.
But Chip was somewhere in the city. Somewhere in his office or at home or with people who would notice if his daughter didn’t come home tonight.
And she was wearing a wedding ring that belonged to another man.
And we were in my office where anyone could unlock the door.
I pulled back. “Are you sure,” I asked, hearing how rough my voice had become.
“Yes. Please.”
I was almost gone.
But she was my oldest friend’s daughter.
She was in the middle of a divorce.
She was in my office where anyone could walk in.
I pulled back. “Not here,” I said, and my voice was almost unrecognizable. “Not like this. Not on a Tuesday morning in an office that is forty-three floors above Park Avenue.”
I could feel her frustration.
I could also feel mine, running deep and hot through my veins like fire.
But this needed to be different than every other thing I’d ever done. This needed to be the one time I didn’t just take what I wanted and walk away from the consequences.