2. Quinn #2
Max took two steps into the room and stopped almost between the two dogs. He turned his body sideways and lowered his head a fraction. He didn’t stare at the shepherd or crowd her. He just stood there, patient and broad, offering her time to relax.
The shepherd’s growl thinned.
Max yawned.
It was his professional yawn, the one that said: This situation is beneath escalation, and I invite you to join me in having standards.
The shepherd stilled, then slowly, she lowered her head.
Beside me, Avery let out a soft breath.
Max stayed there for another moment, observing the situation. When he was satisfied, he walked to the fallen leashes, sniffed, then looked back at Avery.
“Yes,” Avery said. “Thank you, Max.”
Max trotted back to the kitchen and settled beside my chair.
I ate in silence for a minute. Avery let me. That was another thing about her. She understood that care was often most useful when it doesn’t ask for a performance.
When I’d first met her in college, she’d been leaning against a campus brick wall in cut-off coveralls, holding a flyer for a volunteer animal-transport weekend.
Even back then, she’d had a buzz cut, and she’d looked exactly like someone my mother would have called a handful in a tone of profound admiration.
I’d thought she was so damn cool. Then I’d learned she was an oil-heiress, a Teddington, which had seemed cartoonish for about ten seconds until she told me, with complete seriousness, that inherited wealth was only interesting if you used it to annoy bad people and subsidize good dogs.
We’d been friends ever since.
She picked up her waterglass and took a sip, studying me over the rim. “You look tired.”
“I am tired.”
“No, I mean, you look so tired, your body is ready to issue a formal complaint.”
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“It’s your eye that’s twitching.”
I touched the corner of my eye. It was, in fact, twitching. “That’s because I’m passionate about the law.”
“That’s because you had coffee for breakfast and spite for lunch.”
“PB and J, actually.”
Avery went very still. “At what time?”
I hesitated. “A little after four.”
“And did you finish all of it?”
“Most of it.”
“How much?”
I stared at my chili, stirring it half-heartedly. “Half of it is currently abandoned in copy room three.”
She closed her eyes briefly and took a breath that suggested meditation had failed her as a practice. “I give you food, dog supplies, and free elite canine daycare. I’m not above physically placing a sandwich in your hand every morning like you’re a Victorian child being sent into the mines.”
“That’s the second Victorian child reference I’ve heard today. I think I should be offended.”
“You laugh, but I’m close to doing it. You have to start taking better care of yourself.”
The blunt concern affected me more than sympathy would have. Avery had seen me run myself ragged often enough to know the signs.
I tried for lightness. “Do you think the mines would offer dental?”
“How badly do you want this job?” Avery asked, leaning back in her chair.
The question softened something in me right where I was thinnest.
“Bad,” I admitted. “Pretty fucking bad.”
She nodded, but said nothing, waiting for me to continue.
“There are six of us,” I said, staring into my bowl. “Everybody knows there might only be two spots next year. Maybe. If the firm feels generous and the economy doesn’t do something humiliating, then two is a safe bet. I just…” I exhaled. “I need to be one of them.”
Avery was quiet, her lips pursed as she thought. In the other room, Steve barked in protest at something. Max raised his head, tilting it to the side, then lowered it again, unbothered.
“You know your problem?” Avery said.
“I have several. Please narrow it down by category.”
“You keep acting like the only respectable version of wanting this is if you grind yourself into powder first.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it, because what she said was uncomfortably close to the truth.
She sighed. “Quinn, you’re allowed to want a life that’s easier than the one your parents had. I’m sure they won’t see you wanting an easier life as a betrayal. You don’t have to work yourself into burnout to get it.”
That landed somewhere deep and sore. I took another bite because answering too quickly would have told her how badly I needed to hear it.
“I know that,” I finally said.
Avery’s expression said she loved me and thought I was full of it in roughly equal measure. “Do you?”
“I do in theory.”
“And in practice, you’re out here unclogging the partners’ toilets like it’s a challenge on America’s Next Top Attorney.”
“That is an excellent title, and I resent you for coming up with it first.”
She grinned then, so suddenly it was impossible not to love. “Thank you.”
I looked down into my bowl again so she wouldn’t see the stupid, stinging gratitude in my eyes.
That was another thing she did. Cut straight through the part of me that wanted to dress up every hurt as a joke and stand back like I’d solved it.
Max rose and leaned his head on my knee, as if he knew I needed the extra comfort.
I smiled down at him and scratched behind his left ear, the better one.
“There he is,” Avery said softly. “Your union rep just clocked in.”
“He senses weakness.”
“He senses blood sugar.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Max looked up at me with grave, dark eyes. There was something about the weight of his head on my leg that always made it harder to lie, even by omission. Maybe because he never expected me to be impressive, just present.
I slid my fingers over the smooth plane of his skull and let myself breathe. Avery let the silence stay just long enough to count as kindness, then rose and took our bowls to the sink.
“Eat the bread,” she said over her shoulder.
“I’m going to.”
Max shifted closer, settling his weight more fully against me now that dinner had been eaten. Outside, the light was draining off the windows. Inside, the house hummed with dog breath and the quiet competence of a life Avery had built on purpose.
My workday still clung to me in patches, but it no longer felt like the only thing in the world. That was what Avery’s home did. It reminded my nervous system that not every room I entered required proof of usefulness.
Avery dried her hands on a dish towel after rinsing the dishes.
“So,” she said. “Tell me exactly who called you Jacobson, and let’s decide together whether we should show mercy to his car.”
I laughed, for real this time, and Max thumped his tail against the chair leg in approval.
By the time Max and I left Avery’s, the sky had turned that wonderful blue-gray New York evenings did so well, when the light softened just enough to make even scaffolding look beautiful. The air had cooled enough to be pleasant, and the sidewalks in the Village were still busy.
Max walked at my left knee, his gait as smooth and efficient as I imagined it had been when he was on actual missions in the service.
“I’m just saying,” I told him as we crossed Hudson, “if a man makes half a million dollars a year, he should at minimum be able to remember the name of the person unclogging his toilet.”
Max gave me a quick glance that, on a human, would have read as diplomatic concern.
“Thank you. Exactly.”
He sneezed.
We cut east, then north, leaving behind the prettier brownstones and tucked-away gardens for blocks that felt more mine.
We passed the bodega on the corner where the cat slept on top of the beer fridge, the florist whose prices made me break out in hives, a nail salon with three women laughing hard enough to make everyone outside curious, and the Dominican bakery that always smelled like butter and cinnamon.
A delivery bike shot past us as the sound of someone arguing affectionately in Italian drifted from a second-floor window.
Two women in activewear worth more than three months of my subway fare were being walked by a tiny white dog in a raincoat.
This part of my walk home had become one of my favorite rituals. Maybe because it marked the clean break between the act I put on during the day and the life that was actually mine. Maybe because Max liked routine, and I liked the version of myself I was around him: less polished, more honest.
By the time we reached Hell’s Kitchen, the sidewalks had widened a little, and the buildings had lost some of their charm in favor of practicality.
My block was mostly older walk-ups, though it also had a locksmith, a deli that sold those terrible roses in cellophane sleeves, and a dingy dry cleaner that had somehow survived three rent hikes even though I rarely saw people going in there.
My building consisted of three stories of peeling paint, narrow stairs, and a front door that swelled in damp weather, so it had to be shouldered open.
The vestibule light had been replaced at some point in the last week, which gave the place the unfamiliar glamour of adequate visibility.
I wrestled the door open, let Max in, and climbed the stairs to the second floor with him pacing sedately beside me.
I unlocked the door to my apartment, then stepped inside. It was small enough that you could stand in the kitchen and see every major life choice I’d made in the last three years.
It was also, in my completely unbiased opinion, lovely.
The open-plan living room and kitchen had old hardwood floors that were in dire need of refinishing—the landlord kept promising to do it but never did—and the couch, which I’d found on Facebook Marketplace, was covered in throw blankets to cover the ugly upholstery.
A short hall off the living room led to a small separate bedroom and a bathroom barely wide enough to turn around in.