Her eyes are a little bloodshot and there’s a Cheeto dust smudge on her wrist she hasn’t noticed, but the corner of her mouth is quirked up like she just won a very private war. Naturally, the Cheetos were my suggestion, and I could tell she hated me for bringing them. And yet, she couldn’t resist munching on them anyway. Cute.
“Did you just finish witheverything?”
She stretches in her chair, joints popping, and gives me a look like, ‘you dare to doubt me?’
“If by everything you mean an entire litigation package for our hearing tomorrow, then yes. If you mean my will to live, then also yes.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. It just bubbles up. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her joke about herself that wasn’t sharpened at my expense. “I thought lawyers have no soul to begin with.”
“Common misconception,” she says. “We keep ours in a separate briefcase, so we don’t get attached.”
It’s late. Again. Like always. She’s working so hard on my case. I really should let her go home. I should say, ‘Good work, get some rest,’ and play the client, not the awkward caveman who stays longer than needed. But I can’t. Somehow, I don’t want this to end. Which is rather selfish because my mom’s with Livy at home and I bet she wants to sleep in her own bed tonight.
The case files are spread between us like a battlefield map, every contingency planned for. I’ve memorized my lines, know which suit to wear, which words to avoid on the stand. I guess we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. All in all, there’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t let her leave in peace. And yet, I find myself cataloging the way exhaustion softens her edges—how her wild red hair escapes its clip, how her freckles stand out against porcelain skin in the desk lamp’s glow. Something about her focus pulls at me. I can’t stop looking, can’t make myself walk away, even knowing how pathetic that must seem.
I lean back in the chair on the other side from her desk. “You always pull all-nighters like this for other clients?” I don’t know why I’m asking this.
“I do, yes. I know it’s hard to believe for you, but you’re not special, Colton. My record is forty-two hours. I had to use a standing desk the second day because my ass fell asleep permanently.”
“What was that case?”
She squints, thinking, then shrugs. “Celebrity divorce. Husband installed hidden cameras in every room. Wife responded with an eBay fire sale of his collectibles. You would’ve liked it. There were swords involved.”
“My ex threw a hunting knife at my head once,” I say. “Got stuck in the drywall. I left it there as art.”
Jenna’s mouth falls open. “What? God…That’s very on brand for you.”
Another laugh. That’s twice already.
What is she doing to me? I can’t afford to get more attached to this woman. We’re going to spend even more time together for all the upcoming hearings, and usually, I’m not scared of anything. But this—her—actually does scare me. The way I am around her scares me. I bet my friends wouldn’t even recognize me.
“Do you… ever wonder what would’ve happened if you never got drafted?” she suddenly asks out of the blue.
My brain runs diagnostics: Is this a trap? Some lawyer game? Or is she actually asking me something private?
“I’d probably be dead,” I say. “I got into enough fights to fill a stadium, and I think I would’ve been kicked out for good if Coach hadn’t sweet-talked Mrs. Hargrove every time I missed another English essay deadline.”
My English grades were total garbage but well… try mastering verb tenses when you’re still dreaming in Russian at night. Sometimes I wanted to see Hargrove stumble through Cyrillic just for a semester—see how she’d like conjugating verbs with a dictionary propped open. Instead, she acted like my accent was a personal insult, like I was deliberately mangling herpreciouslanguage. And even though I sucked at English, everyone called me a ‘natural athlete’ to my face and ‘that Russian freak of nature’ when they thought I couldn’t hear. Hockey was the only thing that made sense when English didn’t. By senior year I had scouts following me to gas stations just to hand me their cards. That’s why I was drafted into the NHL at eighteen during the early draft.
Jenna laughs into the rim of her tea mug. It reads:I’m billing you for this conversation. “Joke’s on her. You only flunked three essays, not the entire course.”
“Your memory is terrifying,” I say and mean it.
She sets down her mug. “I wasn’t popular, that means I had time. Got a full AP course load and no backup. My only friend transferred mid-year. After that, people acted like I was a contagion.”
I nod, slowly.
The memory slides into focus: Jenna, the outcast with the permanent frown and the purple spiral notebook. The one we called Blueface after the pen exploded on her in chemistry. I’d laughed. We all did…
“I was an asshole,” I say, flat.
There’s no apology big enough to fit the years of being a prick.
She waves it off. “We all were. High school is like a pressure cooker—everyone does something dumb before they grow a conscience.”
But I can’t let it go. “Still. I remember you crying in the hallway once. Behind the vending machine. I didn’t mean to upset you, you know? I wanted to not be the outlander and just be part of the group.”
I knew I had never actively bullied her, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t my place to decide whether she felt bullied or not. I was part of that group. I didn’t help her, didn’t speak up for her, I was part of the bullying. And it was her experiences, her feelings. And what I did know for sure was that I hadn’t done anything to make it better either.
