"I like Anna," Claire said. "I need to meet Anna."
"You will. She'd love you."
"I already love her." Claire took a bite of her toast. "The shoulder squeeze alone."
"Oh," Claire said, reaching for her water. "I forgot. Katherine Winters called my office last week asking for your direct number. I gave her your email instead. She wanted to congratulate you on the Prescott motion." Claire's tone was casual, the way it got when she was delivering information she considered significant and wanted Emily to under react to. "Katherine Winters, Emily. Criminal Division. That's not a courtesy call."
Emily shrugged. "She emailed me a few weeks ago. Coffee-if-you're- in-DC kind of thing."
"And you didn't mention this."
"There was nothing to mention."
Claire's fork paused mid-air. "The head of DOJ Criminal Division recruitment reaches out to you twice in a month and there's nothing to mention."
"I've been busy."
"You've been in love. Those are different states." Claire pointed the fork at her. "File it, Callahan. Don't forget it."
Emily watched Claire eat, watched the familiar gestures, the way she held her fork, the way she tilted her head when she was thinking. "You know what's strange? All of Jake's people. Tommy, Gator, everyone at The Anchor. They're becoming mine too. This whole world I didn't know existed two weeks ago, and it feels like I've been missing from it."
Claire put her fork down. Looked at Emily with an expression that held ten years of friendship and every late night and every early morning and every time she'd watched Emily choose safety over joy.
"That's the thing that gets me," Claire said. "Not the love. Not the sex — though the two-for-one is going in the vault forever and I will be referencing it at your wedding. It's that you said 'mine.' You said his family is becoming yours. Emily Callahan, who has spent her entire adult life making sure she didn't need anyone's family, including her own."
Emily didn't answer right away. She watched a couple walk past on the sidewalk, the woman's hand in the man's back pocket, grinning at nothing, and she thought about Jake's hand on the small of her back in the elevator, the circles his thumb drew, the language they were building one touch at a time.
"He didn't ask me to change," Emily said. "He didn't ask me to be different or softer or less of what I am. He made room. And I walked into it."
"That's love, Emily."
Emily looked at her best friend. "Yeah. It is."
Claire raised her mimosa again. "To room."
"To room."
They sat on the patio for another hour. The sun climbed. The umbrellas shifted. The waiter brought more coffee and cleared plates and left them alone because some tables you don't rush. Emily watched the Saturday foot traffic and felt the phone in her pocket like a promise, knowing Jake would call when Ranger was fed and walked, knowing she'd answer on the first ring.
Claire paid the check because Claire always paid when she got there first, and they hugged on the sidewalk outside, longer than usual, tighter than usual, and Claire held her shoulders and looked at her one more time.
"Be happy," Claire said. "I know that sounds simple. But you've never let yourself do it before. So I'm telling you. Be happy. You've earned it."
Emily walked to her apartment in the sun. Six blocks. She didn't hurry. The phone buzzed in her pocket halfway there.
Ranger ate a pillow. Not the couch. I consider this a win.
She typed back:Tell him his mom is disappointed in his behavior.
Three dots. Then:His mom. You realize he's never going to let me leave the house again.
Emily laughed on a sidewalk in South Tampa with the sun on her face and the taste of champagne on her lips and a man she loved texting her about a dog she was falling for, and she thought that this was what it felt like to have a life instead of a schedule.
She didn't rush home. She didn't need to. Everything she wanted was waiting for her, and none of it was going anywhere.
CHAPTER 18
The weekend ended the way good things do. Too soon. Monday was status reports and witness coordination and the rhythm of the office operating at capacity. Jake checked in with Ray, reviewed the surveillance product Emily's team had gathered, spent two hours on the phone with contacts he'd built during his first week. Costa was a ghost. Every lead ended at a wall, every wall had Vance's fingerprints on the other side, and every day the trial date moved closer like a tide that didn't care who was ready for it.
