Chapter Four Coffee and No Meeting
He came back Monday with two coffees, and when she raised an eyebrow at him he just shrugged, unbothered, like showing up unannounced was the most normal thing in the world.
“I didn’t know how you take it, so I got you three sugars and I got a black one, and you can pick which one’s yours.”
“That’s not how coffee works.”
“It is today.”
She took the sweeter one, because of course she did, and he leaned against the desk drinking the black coffee like it was a personality trait, and for twenty minutes — twenty minutes she would later clock exactly, because she’d never had a man give her twenty uninterrupted minutes of his attention before — he asked her questions.
Not the kind Renee and Deja asked. He asked what made her want to be a lawyer.
He asked if she liked it. He asked, when she admitted she wanted to do housing law and work with families getting pushed out by landlords who smelled money in a changing neighborhood, whether that was because of something that happened to her.
She almost didn’t answer. Then she did.
“We got evicted when I was twelve. My mom couldn’t keep up after my dad left, and one day there was a notice on the door, and three weeks later there wasn’t.
I remember watching a man carry our couch to the curb like it was trash.
” She said it flat, the way you say things you’ve practiced not crying about.
“Nobody explained anything to us. Nobody told us we had rights. I want to be the person who tells the next family that.”
Amir didn’t say I’m sorry the way people usually did, a reflex that meant nothing. He just nodded slowly, like he was filing it away somewhere important. “I grew up two blocks from a courthouse and never once thought it was for people like me,” he said. “You gonna change that for somebody.”
Nobody had ever told her career choice was going to change something. They told her it was a good, safe, respectable path. He made it sound like a mission. A mission she was cabapble of.
She didn’t know what to do with the warmth that spread through her chest at that, so she busied herself stapling papers that didn’t need stapling.
“Can I ask you something?” she said, once her hands had settled. “You don’t seem nervous about anything except maybe standing at this desk. How do you not psych yourself out before a fight? Everybody in the world watching, somebody trying to knock your head off.”
“Oh, I psych myself out plenty. Every single time.” He laughed, low, like it cost him something to admit.
“Difference is I don’t let it stop my feet.
Fear’s gonna show up regardless. Only thing I get to decide is whether I let it drive.
” He looked at her a beat too long. “Same thing with you and this desk, probably. You scared of something too. I can tell. You just don’t let it drive neither. ”
She didn’t ask him to explain what he meant. She didn’t need to. He’d read her in four sentences better than Renee had managed to in fifteen years, and it unsettled her exactly as much as it steadied her.
“I gotta go,” he said finally, checking a phone that hadn’t buzzed once. “Fight in three weeks. Camp’s brutal right now.”
“Good luck,” she said, and meant it more than the words could hold.
“Come watch me.”
“I don’t really do crowds.”
“Then come sit with my people. They don’t bite. Well.” He grinned. “Nina might, but only if you deserve it.”
She said maybe. She meant it as a real maybe this time, not a polite no.