21
The world feels different the next morning.
For starters, my living room is immaculate except for the wine stains on my sofa slipcover and the rug. Even my broken coffee table has been cleared out. How did I not hear a vacuum going in here? Maybe I’ve built up an immunity to Jack’s noise.
There’s a note stuck to my fridge with a magnet, too. The magnet is of a white pina colada–like cocktail with a wedge of pineapple on the rim. Below are the words “Penis Colossus—Cancun.”
I’ll have the couch and rug cleaned. Pick out a coffee table so I can replace it.
- J.
P.S. Iced coffee in your fridge. And why don’t you own any magnets?
I take the note off my fridge and press it to my chest. It feels like…
Honestly, it feels like lying in bed this morning, preparing to come out to face my destroyed living room: warm and cozy, but simultaneously aware that there’s been a seismic and somewhat destructive shift.
One you know you can stay under the covers to avoid dealing with for just a few more minutes.
I pull open my fridge to grab the iced coffee Jack bought me, and my thoughts about poor Lucas have me cringing to myself.
I send him another text and then get ready for work, slowly, scrolling through my phone as I brush my teeth.
Dozens of emails from the overseas folks working on the global project.
And—yikes—five missed calls from Margie and three from my mother.
Mom’s were from about an hour ago, but Margie’s spanned the entire night.
I tuck Jack’s note in my shoulder bag for some unknown reason and pull out my phone to dial Margie. The sight of Mrs. Russo taping something to Jack’s door brings me up short. I approach her, spying the handwritten invitation to her prayer circle.
“Oh hello, Penny.”
Bursting with goodwill for Jack, I commit to clearing the name of the wrongly accused.
“Hey, Mrs. Russo… I’ve been meaning to tell you, it turns out I was wrong about Jack and the whole killing chickens thing.
He was just—” I think fast, searching for something believable.
“Singing. In the shower. He’s a terrible singer. Sorry for getting it so wrong.”
More assurances follow before Mrs. Russo is confident she doesn’t need to save Jack’s soul. And then I’m off to work, calling Margie as I walk to the office. She picks up before I even register a ring on my end.
“What. The. Fuck. Happened?” Her tone is no more excitable than her usual monotone, except that it’s a bit more clipped.
“God, Margie. Mess. Jack heard me reading from the script and—”
“Why are you talking about Jack? What does he have to do with Lucas ending up in the ER?”
“He’s the reason Lucas is in the ER.”
A pause, then: “Start at the beginning.”
I fill Margie in on everything, from my taunting Jack about needing the wall fixed so I could bring someone home (and him not caring) to Jack cleaning my apartment at some point between the time he climbed back through The Hole and me waking up this morning.
“He thought Lucas was attacking you and forcing you to—” Margie repeats it slowly, as if not quite believing what she’s hearing. “And then he decided to just…fucking Kool-Aid Man his way through the wall?”
“Margie. No joke. Exactly that.”
“Well, they’ve cancelled today’s shoot because of Lucas. No one—besides me, now—knows exactly what happened to him, except that he spent the better part of the night in the ER. I hope he’s not out of commission. The show can’t really keep going without the titular character.”
“Oh God. Margie, I’m so sorry…” The horror in my tone does nothing to capture what I feel. If I killed Margie’s big break through my own stupidity, I’ll never forgive myself.
“Let me call you back. I need to call… I need to call a shit ton of people. Bye.”
The sunshine and the brilliant sky somehow make me feel worse about everything. Yesterday’s rain would’ve suited today’s mood perfectly. I’m almost grateful when I get past my work building’s bright lobby and up to the mahogany confines of the Evadon offices.
I make myself some terrible coffee, needing the additional caffeine, and wind my way past the cubicle maze, throwing my headset on and resigning myself to hours of conference calls and sedentary blah-ness.
We make some progress on the global project, mainly because Anthony is on “holiday” for three weeks. But even that isn’t enough to lift my spirits.
I text Margie and ask if she has an address for Lucas.
She texts back:
Why? Want to finish the job? Make sure to hold the pillow down over his face way past the point when he stops moving. He might be faking. He’s a good actor.
Funny. Can you help or not?
She texts back an address, and I order some flowers and a get-well balloon. At the last moment, I splurge and add a corny teddy bear holding a sign that reads “I feel crappy when you ain’t happy.”
I sit back, gnawing at my lip, and then pick up my cell, dialing Lucas’s number.
“Hello?” His voice sounds garbled through the phone.
“Lucas, it’s Penelope. I am so sorry. I can’t believe this happened. How are you? What have the doctors said?”
“Who— Oh. Penny.”
“Yes, I— I wanted to see how you’re feeling.”
“Broken jaw. Wired shut. Sprained wrist.” He says it through gritted teeth, and it comes out mumbled and stunted and barely intelligible. “That. Fucking. Asshole.”
“He thought he was protecting me, and…” I trail off, thinking that maybe reminding Lucas that he fell through The Hole himself isn’t the best thing to do when apologizing.
“Why was there a hole in your wall?”
“It’s a long and wild story…” And then I amplify my crazy by wobbling my head like I’m in an old talkie film and affecting a Bette Davis kind of voice. “Maybe I can…tell it to you over a smoothie, handsome?” I smile weakly, cursing my babble. “A smoothie… Because the jaw…”
I clear my throat. “Anyway, he jumped through and… I just feel awful about this, Lucas. Truly. I know Margie’s upset, too. What can I do? Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Stay. Away.”
I swallow, blinking back tears.
“Ah. Okay, then. I— I’m sorry.”
“Wait,” he grits out, but I end the call. He doesn’t try me back.
I’m sweating, and my breathing is rough. I’m having a hard time keeping the waterworks at bay.
This reaction, the tears, all of it, is not only because I hurt another person with my thoughtlessness.
And it isn’t because the guy I am going to be living next door to—if I can find a way to afford my place in time—maybe deep down did want to warn another man away from me, because milk really does keep longer than my relationships.
No. I’ve had a visceral reaction to rocking the boat since I was a kid. In fact, I have an almost pathological need to do the opposite. It’s the reason I don’t demand the raise I deserve or tell Anthony what a roadblock douche he is. It’s only ever not been that way with Margie and Avery…
And Jack.
With my friends, I’ve developed a level of trust over a long period of time. With Jack… Well, I didn’t give a shit what he thought of me, and trying to capsize his boat has always been top priority over keeping mine on an even keel.
But now I’m clinging to a dinghy, smack in the middle of a hurricane, all because I wanted to make Jack jealous despite knowing I’m not emotionally healthy enough to be involved with him romantically. I feel exposed and embarrassed in a way I can’t quite understand.
I don’t feel like walking home, so I hail a cab. Mom calls as I’m sitting in the dark confines of the car, listening to the loud advertisements on the screen in front of me. Throat tight, chest heavy, I send her to voicemail, preferring the ads to whatever demands she’s been marinating.
Back at my apartment, I spend a good hour with my plants on the fire escape, the clipping and pruning restoring some of my sanity. Enough that when Jack gets home, I can face him.
I’m dressed like someone from a workout video from the eighties—some of Jack’s music must’ve inspired me—but he returns before I can fully rethink my wall-demo ensemble. I lean through The Hole as he closes his front door. “Hi…”
He looks like he’s sucked down buckets of coffee today, to no avail, but even an exhausted Jack in a suit is sinful. He gives me a strange look as he sets his bag down before tossing his mail on the counter. I check my expression, hoping my Pirate Duke thoughts weren’t that transparent.
“Um. Are we still working on the wall?” I ask.
“Sure. Let me get changed.”
I climb through The Hole, and Jack is changed in less than a minute.
He waves me over to his kitchen and wordlessly hands me a beer from his fridge.
I accept with a nod and then await his command, pretending I don’t want to squeeze his biceps.
Him playing the swashbuckling hero is the worst thing that could’ve ever happened to me.
I’m not ready for a relationship, no matter what I feel about him.
“How’s the actor?” he asks finally.
“Not great.” I list Lucas’s ailments and then mention that Margie’s show has been put on hold until the showrunner can decide what to do.
“That why you were crying? Your eyes are all red.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I grab a mask and some gloves from the counter and put them on.
Jack sighs. “All right, I got the plaster down on this side and bagged it. We’ll finish with the plaster on your side and then take down the beams.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” I say. Which just brings Pirate Duke back to the forefront of my mind with a vengeance.
Later, after we’ve cleaned up, I spy Jack on his sofa through The Hole, surrounded by folders and documents, laptop open on the coffee table in front of him.
“What are you doing?” I angle over my sofa to peer over his shoulder.
“Work. Summary judgment response due tomorrow.” He taps away at his laptop. “Need to fight to avoid having the case dismissed.”
“What’s the case about?”
“Woman suing her ex for emotional distress and adverse possession. That last one is like theft.”
His piney scent must be his soap or aftershave, since it’s been amplified by his shower. I spy a fleck of glitter on the back of his ear and bite back a smile. “Theft of what?”
“Her ‘best years’—”
I am over his sofa, sitting cross-legged next to him with one of his files open on my lap before he can finish his sentence.
I read, “‘Client says ex strung her along for years with ‘just-the-tip’ emotional connection, enough to keep her hanging and hoping. He thought her decision to leave was sudden. But he lost her in pieces, every time he played his push-pull game.’ Wait, she left him and then sued him?”
“Yes. He ghosted her, blocked her on everything, then came back to try and reestablish the relationship. She allowed it but got angry and resentful over the next few months. She dumped him, then sued.”
“Holy shit, she said she wants to sue for lost hotness?” I read. “I am dead. Why do you look so stressed?”
He sets down his laptop and runs both hands through his hair. “There are lots of cases of women suing for wasted or lost time in other states—and here we have intentional infliction of emotional distress…”
“Yes, we do.” My face clearly says he’s the source of my emotional distress.
He ignores me. “We have IIED cases in this state. But none where the woman broke up with the fiancé first. I need to figure out an angle to help her claim.”
I flip through some of his other papers, reading snippets here and there. “I thought you did employment law. Or wait, you said something about trying to keep someone out of prison too?”
“I do it all. Criminal law, I mainly do for free. Other cases like this and the Evadon one pay the bills.”
“Ahhh, so that’s why you took this lady’s case.”
“No.” Jack’s voice is surprisingly firm.
“Oh. I can help you. If you want?” I have so much of my own work, but this feels a bit like peeking through the keyhole of who someone is—who Jack is. I can’t help myself.
He hands me a file. “Flip through her statements and texts and emails, look for anything we can use to suggest her ex was cruel, manipulative, that sort of thing.”
I page through the file, taking in all the printouts, adding sticky notes to items I think might make sense for Jack’s filing. An hour into my hunt, a scrap of paper wedged in between two documents becomes visible.
Thank you, Jack. You’re the only one who didn’t laugh.
-Sophie
I hold up the note, a question in my eyes.
“She went to tons of lawyers and got laughed out of offices across the city. She deserved to have her pain treated with dignity.” He shrugs.
“You think you can win?”
“No. This case is virtually unwinnable. IIED is hard to prove. It’s a four-prong test. Even if we can meet the criteria for all four prongs—the severity of the treatment, the intent or reckless disregard for her feelings that caused the distress, the direct link between that conduct and her harm, and all the verifiable harm including physical symptoms—New York’s threshold of evidence for this stuff is super high. ”
“Why would you file if you can’t win?” I cross my legs more fully and pull his blanket over my shoulders.
“Just because you can’t win doesn’t mean the case shouldn’t be filed. Sometimes people sue just to be heard. I want to get past summary judgment so that the case isn’t tossed and she can force people to listen.”
He wants her to feel heard. I stare at him, slack-jawed, warmth I can’t explain spreading through me.
“What?” he asks, staring back at me. It feels like a strange spell has been cast.
“You have glitter on your ear.”
His lip twitches, and he shakes his head.
We work through the night, side by side in a strange little apartment cocoon. And in some small way, helping him with his work—helping Sophie be heard—feels like a balm for the guilt I’ve been carrying today.