He didn't dominate the conversation. Didn't try to impress her with war stories. He listened. Asked questions. Remembered the answers and built on them, circling back to things she'd mentioned an hour earlier like they mattered.
When she made a joke about a judge she'd clerked for, he laughed. A real laugh, surprised out of him, and she felt it like victory.
When she admitted she hadn't been to a bar for fun in longer than she could remember, he nodded, like he understood without her having to explain.
When she realized she was on her fourth margarita and hadn't checked her phone once, she didn't know what to do with that information.
She excused herself for the bathroom and found Claire waiting in the narrow hallway.
"Hi." Claire was beaming. Absolutely beaming, like someone had told her a secret she'd been waiting years to hear. "Having fun?"
"I'm having drinks with colleagues."
"You're having your fourth margarita with a man who hasn't looked away from you all night." Claire leaned against the wall, blocking her path. "Emily. I need you to hear this.”
"Can it wait?"
"No." Claire's smile softened, intensity underneath. "That man has opened a door you've had welded shut since I've known you. In one night. Three hours." She reached out, touched Emily's arm. "Don't screw this up."
Emily stared at her best friend. The woman who'd seen her through law school, through the clerkship, through the move to Tampa and every triumph and failure along the way.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're laughing. You're on your fourth drink and you haven't checked your phone. You made a joke about Judge Harrison that I've never heard before, which means you thought of it on the spot, which means you're not running your usual script." Claire's eyes were bright. "You're having fun. Real fun. When's the last time that happened?"
Emily didn't have an answer.
"That man sees you," Claire said. "The real you. Not the prosecutor, not the walls. And you're scared because you don't know what to do with someone who likes what he sees."
"I'm not scared."
"You're terrified. And that's okay." Claire stepped aside. "Don't run. Not from this one."
Emily went into the bathroom. Closed the door. Stood at the sink and looked at herself in the mirror.
Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright. She looked like someone she barely recognized.
She looked happy.
When she got back to the table, Jake had ordered her water alongside another margarita. She sat down beside him, closer than before, and didn't move away.
"You good?" he asked.
"I'm good."
"You don't look good. You look like someone told you what you didn't want to hear."
"Someone told me what I needed to hear. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
Emily picked up the water first. "In my experience? Not really."
Jake laughed, and she felt it again. That door rattling. That sense of feeling she'd kept locked away for years straining against hinges she'd thought were rusted shut.
She stayed until midnight.
She didn't remember deciding to.
