Chapter 2 #2
She knocked her glass into mine with a clink. “I’m glad you made it! I know it’s been hell lately.”
“I woke up at 4:30 this morning to draft a purchase agreement.”
“Shit,” Natalie breathed, shaking her head.
I sighed and took a sip of my wine, already relishing its numbing effect on my nervous system.
I glanced over my shoulder. “I need to find little Mina and say happy birthday,” I said. We meandered from the living room to the playroom attached to the kitchen.
Natalie broke off to say hi to Erica.
I dropped down on the carpeted floor in front of where Mina was playing.
“Happy birthday!” I said. The little girl stared at me for a second but didn’t react.
“What’s the name of your doll?” I gestured to the infant-sized baby doll in her hands.
She mumbled something I didn’t understand, handed it to me, and toddled over to a bin on the other side of the room, the tulle skirt of her princess-like pink dress rustling with each step.
She returned a moment later, handed me another doll, and murmured its name.
She reminded me a little of a toddler I used to babysit for when I was a teenager.
When Natalie found me again, I was still on the floor, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the dress on the fifth doll Mina had brought to me.
“Hi, Mina! Happy birthday!” Natalie sang. Mina gave us a bewildered look, her adorable chubby cheeks pulling upward in an almost-smile, before running away, this time back to her grandparents, the doll show abandoned.
“Oysters?” Natalie said. “I’ve been instructed to eat at least five.”
I laughed, sure of two things: the raw bar was definitely Tyler’s idea, and Erica was dreading having leftover oysters at the end of the day.
“Yes.” I pushed myself up from the floor. Natalie and I made a plate of three oysters each and found seats in the dining room. We sipped our rosé and caught up on the first dates she’d gone on recently.
“At least this one didn’t mind when I wanted to take a picture of our cocktails.” She rolled her eyes. As she described the latest guy, I tried to calculate how long it’d been since I went on a date. Could it be two years?
Natalie left her law firm three years ago to take a position on the in-house legal team at a hospital.
The new job came with a lower paycheck but a more predictable schedule and more control over her time, in part because she could hire law firms for the hospital’s bigger, more complicated deals.
She’d been imploring me to do the same for years, and this was her primary reason: I’d actually have time to date.
“I haven’t found my person yet, but at least now I have time to try,” she’d always say. She wasn’t wrong.
But I still wanted to see if I could do it—make partner, make millions, show I could succeed even in such a competitive environment.
Even though it had been particularly rough lately, I still felt that need to prove to everyone that I was smart and hardworking enough to be a Peters & Dowling partner.
When Natalie got up to refill our wine glasses, I checked my phone again.
Lord knows why I haven’t gotten an Apple watch.
This time I had an email from John. Dammit.
My pulse thrummed. I brought my laptop with me so I could slip into another room to work or hop on a quick call with John if I needed to, but I’d been hoping I wouldn’t have to do that this time.
My mind’s eye flashed to images of me in my childhood bedroom on a conference call on Christmas Eve morning, and then me in the guest bedroom of Tyler’s old apartment, typing away while my friends watched the Super Bowl.
My hand shook slightly as I tapped the message with my thumb. Luckily, it was just a discrete question about one section of the agreement. I fired off a reply, hoping it wouldn’t prompt a lengthy exchange.
When John responded two minutes later with, Fair point. Let’s try it, my shoulders relaxed. I grabbed two more oysters, complete with lemon and hot sauce, and returned to my seat.
That small burst of relief was short-lived, however. If he was already reviewing the liability cap section, he’d be sending me his comments soon.
I didn’t notice Natalie had returned until she pushed a glass with a heavy pour of rosé right under my nose. Love her.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, I’m fine. Just a quick work email.” I smiled and took a sip, holding the bright, tart liquid on my tongue for a moment before swallowing it.
“No, I mean…Chris is here,” she whispered, her lips barely moving.
My stomach dropped. I twisted to look over my shoulder and sure enough, there he was. Chris LaMont. Tyler’s old roommate, and my ex-boyfriend.
“Come on. He never comes to things like this, and today he decides to show up?” I hissed to Natalie under my breath.
“I thought you saw him. Sorry. Let’s leave.” She took a big gulp of her wine and rose from her chair.
“No, we can’t leave. He’ll know I left because of him. Besides, I don’t want to.” I forced a deep breath into my chest. I can handle this.
I knew Chris would be invited to this party, but the anxiety tearing through my stomach told me I hadn’t believed he’d show up.
I frowned at my little plate of oysters with their perfect dollops of hot sauce, and my stomach lurched again.
Dammit. I hated myself for letting his presence make me lose my appetite.
I don’t know why I even care after five whole years.
But our breakup took a toll on me, which Natalie knew.
I looked up at her. Sympathy covered her face. She glanced down at her watch and said, “We’ll stay until they do the cake, and then slip out and go back to your apartment. Sound good?”
“Yes, perfect.” Gratitude for my loyal best friend settled my stomach, if only slightly.
“How’s work going?” Tyler asked, placing an overflowing plate of food in front of the empty chair next to Natalie.
“It’s going well! Nothing terribly exciting to report,” Natalie said. I knew she wasn’t lying about things going well like I so often did.
“What about you, Val? Has it been nuts as usual? I heard the private equity business is going off.” This was how ‘BigLaw’ lawyers spoke to each other.
“How are you?” was replaced with “How’s work going?
” Since, for us, they were the same thing.
The litmus test for our sanity was how many hours we billed last week.
“I’m…surviving,” I responded to Tyler, forcing a closed-lip smile.
“Hang in there. Hopefully it slows down soon.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t think it would. “How’s the break going? You find a dads’ softball league out here in the ‘burbs yet?” Tyler had left his law firm job a few months ago to stay home with Mina for a bit.
“Not yet, but that’s a great idea. I’d love to crush some other dads on the softball field. Maybe I can find a spring league.”
“I’m sure whoever’s team you end up on will be very grateful,” I said.
Tyler shrugged. During law school we’d learned he was a great softball player, but he was humble.
“And then you have coaching all of Mina’s sports to look forward to,” Natalie added, looking over into the playroom at the gaggle of babies. I followed her gaze to where Mina was banging a toy pot on the counter of a toddler-sized kitchen.
“I’m counting down the days. Can’t wait to get her on the golf course, the tennis court, the tee ball field.
” Tyler looked over at his daughter. “You guys, I’m obsessed.
She’s the coolest little kid. I would be so happy being a stay-at-home dad.
” His eyes gleamed with pride and love. Happiness and envy warred inside me.
What was it like to love someone so much that nothing else compared or mattered?
It must feel great. My younger self assumed I would know what that felt like by this time in my life—thirty-one years old.
But that hadn’t been my path. Not since Chris let me walk out the door and never called me again.
I bit the inside of my cheek and refocused on our conversation, all the while attempting to put a lid on the void yawning open inside of me. “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “I knew since the moment I met you—this guy has major dad vibes.”
Tyler laughed, a full-bellied guffaw that traveled into the next room where a few of the adults looked up. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, Val!”
Natalie and I broke out laughing, too. “It’s true!” I defended.
“Yeah, we both agree, we even talked about it at the time, after our first grad school softball game,” Natalie said, wiping away a tear of laughter with her manicured fingertips.
Tyler shook his head and took another big bite of his burger, eyes still alight. He swallowed before adding, “Unfortunately, I’ll need to start looking for an in-house job for the fall. We just took on quite the mortgage.”
“You’ll find something with a better balance,” Natalie assured him.
He clinked his beer can against her wine glass.
I walked into the kitchen a few minutes later to grab us some waters from the cooler, but Chris stood right next to it, talking to a girl I didn’t recognize.
Probably a new girlfriend. He was never one to suffer long relationship gaps.
I spun around before he could look up, my stomach flipping over, and slinked back into the dining room.
“Can you actually grab the waters?” I whispered to Natalie.
She tilted her head to see through the arched entry separating the dining room from the kitchen, immediately clocking my obstacle. “Absolutely,” she said with resolve before pushing back in her chair.
“Hey, Nat,” Chris said when she reached the cooler.
The stilted, sharp, “hi,” she gave him in return could cut glass, and I smirked to myself.
I twisted the cap off the water bottle after she handed it to me and sipped it slowly.
Why did Chris have to be here and remind me how easy I was to drop?
It made me feel even worse about my appearance and mental state today.
Luckily, I managed to avoid speaking with him using similar tactics for the rest of the party.
He never approached me, either. Probably because I didn’t give him any openings to do so.
If he even wanted to.
One hour and a loud, off-tune rendition of “Happy Birthday” later, Natalie and I left together to head back to my apartment.