“I’ve asked this young lady to join us for a drink,” Gary said, his eyes still glued to me.
“Fun!” The woman’s eyes lit up mischievously as she looked me up and down in the mirror. I smoothed my blouse, my stomach churning. Though the encounter was completely unlike any I had ever had, their intentions were obvious.
“Oh. No thank you. I’m here with my family,” I stammered.
Their faces fell. “Not fun,” the woman said with a pout.
“Enjoy your night,” I said with an awkward wave, exiting without drying my hands. Back at the table, I plopped down and found myself in a trance, looking at my silverware, playing the scene over in my mind as my father discussed his and my mother’s February travel plans to Brazil.
“You okay?” Sam leaned in to me quietly, touching my hand under the table as his annoyance seemed to yield to concern.
“Yup! All good.” I smiled broadly at him and my parents, trying desperately to stop my skin from crawling. Gary Kaplan was a man who cheated on his wife, propositioned young women, infiltrated the wrong side of same-sex restrooms, and generally chilled my spine upon every interaction. But he was unarguably the firm’s best client. How could I build a career on representing such morally reprehensible characters? I supposed Stag River was the client, though. Not Gary. It wasn’t as bad as . . .
“So, did you win the trial? Is it over?” my mother asked.
“She does deals, not trials,” my father corrected her, probably not understanding the difference either but knowing enough to distinguish the two.
“Okay, okay. Did you win your deal?” she asked. I was too tired to explain that everybody wins a deal when we do our jobs correctly, so I just smiled and nodded.
“So how late have you had to stay at work? Seriously,” my father said.
“She didn’t come home two nights in a row,” Sam answered flatly before I could. We all looked at him.
“One night,” I said, rolling my eyes to indicate he was being dramatic.
He looked at me fiercely for a moment, and then I saw something that looked like worry cross his face again. “Two,” he insisted.
Six eyes turned to me.
“Oh my gosh. Two. You’re right.” My mother’s shoulders relaxed. I sipped my wine, trying to uncover memories of the lost night. It was Friday. I slept in the office last night. I remembered the accounting call, late Wednesday. Didn’t I go home after that? I remembered sending emails from the apartment. Or was that Tuesday? I guess I can pull an all-nighter, I thought. Just not two in a row. That’s good!
I felt a smile on my lips but wiped it away. Something had shifted in the energy at the table; the silence was pregnant with expectation.
“What?”
“Do you sleep at all when you stay in the office?” my father asked, for what I assumed was the second time.
“Yeah. Yeah. Yes,” I said, shaking my head though stating the affirmative.
“No,” Sam said angrily. “A couple hours, tops, in what they call the ‘restoration room,’ which is just a place people catch a few hours when they’re working too much.”
I looked over at him. “My Sammy baby misses me,” I teased. He tried to stay flat, but he cracked a smile.
“It’s like your ER shifts back in med school,” my mom said, looking at my dad, who nodded.
“But you’re happy, right?” my father asked, so hopeful that I had to avert my eyes.
“Loving it,” I assured him.
“It’s an actual crime for them to charge this much for chicken,” my mother said as she looked over the menu, clearly searching for a new topic.
“It’s chicken for two,” I pointed out. Shit. This place was really expensive. It had been inconsiderate of me to make a reservation here. I hadn’t been out with nonwork people in so long, I’d forgotten to consider the prices.
“I know!” my mother said. “Still!”
“It has foie gras under the skin.” I defended the dish as though I’d made it myself as I scanned the room for Gary, who I hadn’t seen come out of the bathroom yet.
“I’ll split it with you!” my dad offered.
“Tell us about work, Sam. How is it? We don’t totally understand what it is,” my mother said, ignoring my dad’s suggestion.
“It’s hard. Harder than I thought. And I have yet to pay myself, which is really hard.” I saw my mother straighten her spine, and my father looked slightly nervous.
“Tell them again what it is,” I said as I leaned into him encouragingly. “It’s a brilliant concept.” Sam squeezed my knee gratefully under the table.
“It’s basically a service—a website and an app—for sharing the cost and use of big-price-tag items. Like a time share, but for cars, parking spots, condos, bikes, and so on. We match customers based on location and do the credit checks, background checks, personality profiles. And our company is actually the one buying the item and leasing it indefinitely to both parties for a profit, but they’re splitting the cost of the lease with a stranger, so it works for everybody. Like, if you travel a lot for work, you share your car with a neighbor when you’re gone. Think, Rent the Runway, but . . . own the runway, and not for clothes.”
“Wow!” my mother said, her voice rising with feigned enthusiasm. I knew she was skeptical about the idea, probably for the exact reasons I was—that people don’t like to share big items with strangers, and they’re okay with spending more not to. I took a long, thirsty sip of wine to drown out that voice in my head.
“Yeah,” Sam said, and took my hand tenderly. “I think it’s going to be really great. And I couldn’t have done it without Alex. She was such a trooper while I was building the company in Cambridge. All while she was in law school.” I thought back to our cramped second-floor studio and found it hard to believe I had lived in it so happily. Sam had had no money to take me on dates or go on vacation, and so I learned to cook and pretended I had learned to love Boston in the dead of winter. I wondered if I could ever handle living like that again. I plastered a smile on my face and gently pulled my hand from his.
“So, we hear you’re running the marathon,” my father’s voice piped in through my thoughts, and I took a long drink. The wine was so light, I could barely taste it.
I swatted at the tickling feeling on my nose and hit Sam’s hand. I opened my eyes to see Sam sitting next to me on the bed, holding one of my makeup compacts in his hand.
“What are you doing?” I asked groggily.
Sam snapped the compact shut. “I was holding the mirror under your nose to see if you were breathing,” he said. I smiled. He didn’t.
“I’m alive,” I sang, holding up my hands and wiggling my fingers, but he didn’t look amused.
“It’s three in the afternoon,” he said, getting up. He was fully dressed. I peeked under the sheets to see that I was wearing my bra and underwear from the night before.
“What happened?” I managed.
Sam shrugged. “You got really fucking drunk.”
I put my palm to my head. I didn’t feel hungover. Just groggy. “Did I?”
“Yup!” Sam said, his voice dripping with derision. “Off of two and a half fucking glasses of wine. Your father guessed it was a mixture of alcohol, exhaustion, and Advil that did it.”