Chapter 10 – Age 27
“Jesus Christ, I miss who I was ten minutes ago when I hadn’t heard this bullshit.” Jule rubbed his palms over his eyes.
“Umm.” His client tipped his chair from side to side, making it squeak.
Everyone who sat in that chair did that.
The next time Jule was working late, he’d switch it with one in someone else’s office, because if he heard that fucking squeak one more time, he’d be the person sitting on the other side of this desk getting legal assistance for a murder charge. “What does that mean?”
Taking a deep breath, Jule opened his eyes and immediately rolled them. “It means, Lenny, that you should absolutely not take the stand.”
“Why not?” The man scrunched his eyebrows.
“Because you’re lying, which wouldn’t be an issue if you weren’t so fucking bad at it but you’re as terrible at lying as you are at stealing.”
“I wasn’t lying!” he insisted but his expression and tone weren’t believable that time either.
Jule glared at him.
“Fine, I may have been bending the truth a tiny bit.” He held his hand up, pointer and thumb an inch apart.
“A tiny…” Jule shook his head. “Man, if you bend that truth any further it’ll be able to suck its own dick.”
His client’s jaw dropped and he gaped at Jule. That happened to him a lot at work.
Jule clicked through the images on his laptop. “Seriously, this is what you took?” He turned the screen around to face his client. “They should have applied an aggravator for horrible style.”
“My girlfriend liked them.”
“In that case, she has shit taste in clothes and you have shit taste in women. Also, despite how ugly these are, they’re expensive. So now you have multiple priors and a charge for shoplifting goods valued at over five-K, for some fucking reason.”
“You aren’t like the other lawyers I’ve had.”
“You’ve already done two stints for what should have been misdemeanors, so I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Those weren’t my fault.” Lenny crossed his arms over his chest.
“Did you testify?” Jule asked, arching his eyebrows.
“Yes.”
“Then they were your fucking fault. Let’s not make that mistake again.”
Lenny opened his mouth and then closed it and nodded.
“Glad we agree.”
Sometimes other lawyers overheard his conversations with clients and mentioned his unorthodox communication style, but he had the lowest conviction rate in the office and his clients liked him, so his bosses left him alone.
Having a deceased father who had been the state attorney general, a mother who was the managing partner of the most prestigious law firm in town, a stepfather who was a sitting federal judge, a set of grandparents who owned one of the largest privately held companies in the county, and another grandfather who was a former governor didn’t hurt either.
“What’s the plan?” Lenny asked.
Jule closed his laptop and rested his elbows on it.
“The plan is that I’ll talk to the prosecutor assigned to your case and try to work out a plea where you cop to a misdemeanor and don’t do jail time.
Failing that, we’ll take it to trial, and you’ll sit next to me and keep your mouth shut the entire time.
” He narrowed his eyes and stared at his client.
“Fine.” Lenny uncrossed his arms.
“Also, lose the girlfriend.”
“What?”
“I meant at trial. I don’t want her and her loud, almost certainly stolen clothing anywhere near the courthouse.”
“Fine,” Lenny said again, smiling that time. “We should get a beer when this is all over.”
“If you want to keep having access to beer, you may want to cut the girlfriend loose entirely. Seems like every time you hit Fashion Square with her you break out in handcuffs. Is she really worth it?”
“She gives great head,” Lenny said, like that explained the entire basis of his relationship, which maybe it did.
“Right.” He leaned back in his chair and considered the appearance of the man in front of him.
“How about you hit the gym instead of the mall, trim that”—he circled his hand over his own head and face—“and keep yourself clean. Then you can probably find someone else to suck your dick. Maybe someone with less expensive clothing preferences.”
“I keep myself clean,” he said affronted.
“We’ve already established that you’re a terrible liar, Lenny. I can smell you from this side of the desk, and it’s not a sexy clean sweat smell. If I was on my knees and you dropped trou, I’d probably be knocked out by the stench. Nobody wants to put their mouth on a cheese dick. Use soap.”
Lenny threw his head back, cackled, and clapped his hands.
“Whatever you decide about the girlfriend, do the haircut, shave, and shower thing, because if you take her shopping at Neiman Marcus again looking and smelling like that, you’ll attract the wrong attention and be back in my office next week.
And if we end up going to trial, I need you to play the part of an upstanding citizen.
” Jule had a lifetime perfecting that role, so he was great at giving his clients pointers.
***
“Is your office having a holiday party?” Lydia asked.
“I think so.” Jule turned onto her street. The party was later that week.
“I can go with you if they do.”
“I don’t plan to make an appearance.” And even if he did, he wouldn’t bring a date. That was only necessary for the ever-expanding list of charity events that his mother and both sets of grandparents wanted him to attend.
“Well, let me know if you change your mind. Tonight was fun, right?”
“Uh-huh.” These social obligations were never fun, but having Lydia with him made them bearable.
She was smart, nice, and outgoing. Her parents ran in the same circles as his, so they had attended the same family-friendly events growing up.
She was only a few years older, which meant that they were almost always placed in the same groups or sat at the same tables.
Jule hadn’t engaged with people back then, but he had remembered Lydia Sinclair, so when she called him before the Heart Ball in November and said her mother was on the committee and she would be attending, he was happy to have her join him.
It saved him the hassle of finding a date.
After that, they’d fallen into a routine of being one another’s plus ones for social obligations throughout the holiday season.
“Doctor humor is much better than lawyer humor.”
“Was that a joke?”
He pulled up next to her house and put the car in park. “Not a very funny one if you have to ask. Looks like your partners rubbed off on me.”
She laughed. “You’re still funnier than a bunch of primary care docs but the nurses give you a run for your money.”
“They’re the most entertaining people to talk to at your shindigs.”
“True.” Lydia smiled at him. “So, uh, what do you have going on the rest of the weekend?”
“Work.” And he’d go to the Dunworthy house to see everyone, but that wasn’t information he shared.
“Really? You’re working the entire weekend? Even on Saturday night?”
“I have a huge caseload. But I’m not going into the office. Working from home practically counts as time off.”
“I’m not sure it does. You really need to take more personal days.”
When Jule graduated and moved back home, he had lost any interest in dating.
While he was living in California, it had seemed like a way to connect with people, so he made half-hearted efforts.
But in reality, he hadn’t formed connections with the men he had dated, and the generous-to-describe-it-as-mediocre sex had never come close to making up for the boring-to-the-point-of-painful conversations.
In Phoenix, he had the familiarity of his hometown and regular contact with Tor’s brothers and the rest of the family.
That was exponentially more fulfilling than anything he could get from some random guy, so he had stopped pretending that he could actually enjoy being with anyone other than Tor.
“I guess I better go inside,” Lydia said after several long seconds of silence. Instead of opening her door, she stared at him.
He dipped his chin. “Have a good night, Lydia.”
“Right.” She sighed. “Thanks. You too.”
He watched her walk into her house, and once her door was shut, he pulled away from the curb.
He hadn’t yet reached the end of the street when his phone dinged with the tone he had set for his smart doorbell.
Thankfully, nobody was behind him because he slammed on his brakes without checking and scrambled for his phone.
His mother would never come to his apartment unannounced, or at all really, solicitors weren’t usually working on Thursday nights, and his only friend was Tor.
That gave him hope about who could be at his place.
Ten years after their lives imploded, he still never knew when he’d see Tor or for how long.
He didn’t have a phone number he was willing to share.
He refused to tell Jule where he was or what he was doing, though Jule was able to surmise a small bit of that by looking at publicly accessible criminal conviction information.
Tor would just show up whenever it suited him and stay for whatever time period he wanted.
Sometimes it was one night, sometimes a week.
Sometimes he looked mostly healthy, sometimes he was worn to the bone.
Almost always he had a new scar or a healing bruise.
It had gotten to the point where Jule was as frustrated and resentful of him as he was of Chief Montez and his entire farce of a supposedly multi-agency task force.
But no amount of anger toward Tor tamped down Jule’s need for him, so when he saw his face on his screen, his heart soared and he hurried home.