Chapter Eight
IT'S A THURSDAY MORNING, three days out of the hospital, one day off the discharge papers, and I'm at my stenotype station unspooling the cables I've unspooled every Thursday for twelve years.
Today shouldn't feel any different but it does.
That's what he always does. He turns my life upside-down, and then he walks away—
Stop thinking about him, Juniper!
I take a deep breath and start again. Dr. Jimenez signed me off to come back as long as I keep it light, and I'm keeping it light.
The morning docket's a continuance hearing and a guardianship review.
Easy work both of them, because it's what Mr. Bell asked on my behalf. He also wants me to keep things light.
I asked him this morning whether he'd called the assignment desk on my behalf, and he said no I did not in the voice of a man who very much had.
You can guess how that went.
Anyway.
“Anything I can help you with?” Linda asks, pausing at my station with her coffee in one hand and her granola bar in the other.
“I'm good, thanks.”
She gives me one of her looks (the kind Linda gives before nine, which is mostly her eyebrows doing the talking) and moves on.
Everyone's being so, so kind, it just makes me feel guiltier. I want to reassure them they have nothing to worry about without lying. But how can I when all I remember these days is him?
I'm sorry for pressuring you without meaning to.
Those were his first words to me that day, when it was just the two of us in the room, and Dr. Jimenez had left to give us privacy.
I remember looking at him then and thinking, it truly does suit him more.
His real name.
Nicolo.
Now that I know what it is, Nate just feels wrong on all levels.
Nicolo, though...
It's the perfect name to describe how perfect he looks, standing at the foot of the bed, perfectly poised in his perfectly fitting suit, and perfectly dangerous.
I'll give you a few days to recover, and then we'll talk again. But for now rest, and rest well.
My brain wants to cry out, wait.
So does my heart.
But my lips are fortunately smarter than both, and so no words come out. I simply bite said lip as someone knocks on the door, and another man comes in.
“This is Rollo, Juniper. He's with me.” His voice is the same voice it's been the whole visit, even and low and giving away nothing. “If you need anything he'll be around.”
And then he simply turns around and leaves, and all I can do is bite my lip hard until it bleeds.
Blood, I remember thinking back then, is cheaper than tears in this stage of my life. Wounds that bleed heal easily. But wounds that make you cry?
Witness states she is in full possession of her faculties.
No. Strike that.
The cables are unspooled. The machine hums. The cursor blinks. Mr. Bell's at the bench polishing the gavel block. Alan is nine seconds late. Linda's at the door with her coffee and her granola bar. The four of us. The same four of us. The shape of every Thursday for twelve years.
All of these should make me feel normal. But they don't. Why do I always have to lose my mind every time he shows up?
“Good morning, Junebug.”
Elliot comes into view, his brown hair freshly cut from what I know for certain is one of the city's most expensive salons, his blue suit pressed to within an inch of its life.
“Good morning, Counsel.”
“Counsel today, is it?” His elbow finds the rail like it's been there before, which it has, every Thursday for the better part of two years.
“It is.”
“The other time, I was Mr. Wheeler.”
“The other time, you were busy.”
“I'm busy every day, Junebug. You should see my calendar. There's literally nothing on it but you.”
He's grinning as he says this, but his eyes are full of concern, and his next words relay as much.
“How are you feeling? Are you sure it's safe for you to get back to work like this?”
“My doctor gave me the green light to work.”
“What about dating?”
Linda and Alan shake their heads when they hear this, and it almost has me smiling. Almost. But honestly, this is what makes Elliot so good at what he does. He never hesitates to strike when the iron's hot.
“The hotel I told you about, I can book us a table, we'll have the best time—”
“Okay.”
The word's out before my brain catches up to it, and I'm not sure who's more surprised: Elliot, myself, or any of our shameless eavesdroppers. Mr. Bell at the bench freezes mid-polish. Alan, three feet away, drops a pen.
“Okay,” I say again, quieter this time, mostly to myself.
I don't know why I'm saying yes to a date. All I know is that I did...and that ten hours later, I'm internally freaking out because I finally realized I was too impulsive this morning.
I was hoping he'd be late because that would give me an excuse to bail out. But instead he's ten minutes early.
I was hoping some kind of emergency would take place at work, but nope. That didn't happen either, and so here I am, half-zipped into the green silk dress in front of my closet, trying to find something, anything, else to wear.
There isn't anything else.
Not really. Nothing nice enough for the kind of restaurant Elliot would book.
Nothing that says I am trying without saying I am trying too hard.
Just the green silk, and a black cardigan that's seen better decades, and the navy thing from my cousin's wedding three years ago that has a stain on the hem I've never quite gotten out.
So.
The green silk.
It's a pretty dress. That's the only reason I'm wearing it.
Because it's pretty, and tonight is the kind of night where a woman ought to wear something pretty, and it has nothing, nothing, to do with who bought it for me eighteen years ago in the window of a boutique on Michigan Avenue when I'd stopped on the sidewalk and looked at it three seconds longer than I'd meant to.
That's not why.
I'm not petty.
I just look good in green.
I zip myself the rest of the way in, lock the door behind me, two turns of the key, and accept the tulips Elliot hands me at the curb.
I feel guiltier than ever because...
Tulips.
In the summer.
In Chicago.
That's not an accident. That's effort someone like me doesn't deserve, and so I take a deep breath and promise myself that I won't waste another second of Elliot's time. I just need to bide my timing, and then I'll tell him the truth.
That was the plan, but...we've already made it to the restaurant, he's handed his keys to the valet, and I still haven't found the perfect moment to tell him the truth.
Aargh!
The host walks us to a table near the window, and the bread comes out before we ask for it, and the waiter calls me miss even though I'm forty-two and we both know it.
We sit in front of each other, and I feel like I'm fourteen again rather than forty-two.
Not because he makes me feel shy and embarrassed or giddy, but I just feel so, so bad and awkward. Elliot Wheeler's the nicest man, and—
“So...” Elliot says, leaning his elbows on the table.
He smiles at me, and for one moment I actually wait, and I'm even begging myself—
Please, please, please.
But there's just nothing. Or it's like my heart's permanently dysfunctional, with how it only races for the wrong person.
“The ground rules.”
What ground rules?
“I've waited for two years for this, and I don't know if this will happen again. So, Rule #1—you're not allowed to use your official-record voice on me.”
“Um—”
“That's a great start. You don't say um in court. I'll take it.”
He's being ridiculous, but it's also the kind of ridiculous that almost has my lips twitching.
“Rule #2—if at any point you want to bail, you say bail and I drive you home and we never talk about this again.”
I open my mouth, but of course he doesn't let me get away with saying bail this early.
“Rule #3—I get to ask you one question that nobody at the courthouse knows the answer to. And I'll go first to make it fair.”
Okay, I really have to smile now. His idea of fair is obviously the kind that lawyers like him appreciate: it's advantageous to him, not to me—
“What's your ideal guy?”
Elliot asks it so suddenly that the answer just comes flying out.
“Not you.”
Elliot winces. “Ouch.”
I'm wincing at the same time, my hand already at my mouth. “I'm so sorry.”
“Your turn,” he says, and the wince has become a smaller version of his courtroom grin, brave and barely banged-up.
Oh, finally.
It's the very moment I'm waiting for—
“Ask me whatever you want.”
I forget what I was planning to say the moment I hear him ask that.
Ask me whatever you want.
“Sir, madam.”
The server is by our table, setting down the appetizers, and I'm so thankful for the distraction because right now, I can already feel myself fading and fading from the present...as the past draws me in.
Five months of dating Nate, and I'm at the treadmill in the private gym in his home, trying to catch my breath while also trying but failing to remember one important thing.
“Please remind me why I'm doing this again?”
These past five months have been the best time of my life.
Nate makes me feel happy and cherished in a way I've never felt before.
But at the same time, those five months have been the most exhausting.
I've quit my job and said yes to being his wife when I found out that he's migrating, and I believed him when he said it's easier to take care of the paperwork if I'm his wife.
Those things, I easily got. But what I didn't understand was this.
Weekly classes of karate and twice-a-week lessons at the shooting range. A crash course on driving every type of vehicle there is. And then there's this: two hours daily of working out in his gym, and while I love how the last five months have made me look incredible in a bikini...