I smiled at his palm. He had featherlike creases at the start of his line. Passionate. And it stopped right before his index finger, which was good. It meant he could have a healthy love life.
I tipped his hand toward him. “You see how your heart line forks at the end? Turns down a little? That means you’re willing to sacrifice everything for love. You’re a romantic.”
When I looked up at him, he wasn’t looking at his hand. He was looking at me.
“And yours?” he asked, holding my eyes. He turned his hand over and flipped mine and held it between us. “What does yours say?”
The way we were leaning into each other, I could feel his breath just tickling my face. It was so close.
“Um…it’s a lot like yours, actually. Only my hand shape is a fire sign. I have a long palm and shorter fingers. It means—”
“Let me guess.” He gave me a small smile. “Energetic. Enthusiastic. Outgoing.”
I was having a hard time breathing normally while he was touching me like this. “Pretty much,” I managed. “Yours is air. It means you’re an intellect and logical. A good communicator.”
He ran a thumb along my palm. “Fire and air.” He looked back up at me. “And what about the rest of it? Will you have a long life?”
My smile fell and I pulled my hand away, pretending I needed to pick up my drink all of a sudden. I sat back into my corner of the sofa, putting the ocean back between us. “Lifelines show well-being,” I said. “Life changes. They don’t actually tell you how long you’re going to live.”
It was the numbness in my fingers that usually did that.
CHAPTER 12
THIS MAN CUT HIS WORK HOURS
IN HALF AND THE RESULTS
ARE STAGGERING!
ADRIAN
Becky and I sat in the conference room working. It was noon on Friday and we were waist deep in backlogged paperwork. The Bueller trial was amping up, and I wasn’t prepared.
I hadn’t looked at the bodycam footage or the toxicology report yet, and Marcus had been giving me side-eye because I missed a filing deadline last week after leaving early to take Grace to the pediatrician with Vanessa.
I hadn’t planned on going to the doctor with her. Vanessa didn’t even invite me. But I’d mentioned the baby’s appointment to Lenny and he said that his kids cried so hard when they got their shots they were inconsolable. Then he said Vanessa should have given Grace Tylenol before she got there, which I wasn’t sure she had. I’d texted her but she didn’t reply.
I’d sat there in a conference call, bouncing my foot and checking my phone, until finally I’d said fuck it and walked out and driven to the doctor’s office.
Vanessa couldn’t bring Grace back from that kind of upset like I could. Vanessa was right when she said Grace was calmer with me. She liked it when I held her when she was fussy—she actually preferred me over Vanessa when she was really worked up. It would be better if I held her while she got her shots—and anyway, I wanted to meet this doctor. Run a background check for malpractice and at the very least check his ratings on WebMD.
The nurses kept calling me “dad.” Vanessa giggled every time they did it.
I was gone only an hour, but the disruption had messed up my whole day. I’d spaced on the filing and was ten minutes late to a consultation. Lenny had taken notes for me for the rest of the conference call, but I’d missed my opportunity to ask questions while everyone was on the phone so I’d had to send emails to get up to speed.
In addition to this midday walkout, I hadn’t pulled more than an eight-hour shift in almost two weeks. The time I usually gave to my cases, I was now giving to Vanessa.
I’d started delegating.
I never handed off work. Ever. I always did everything myself. There were fewer mistakes that way. But I’d given Lenny the Garcia case because I knew if I didn’t, I’d either have to sacrifice the quality of my representation or I’d have to sacrifice Vanessa. And for the first time in my life, work wasn’t my priority. These days when 5:00 hit, I left. I didn’t like losing any time with her. It had gotten to the point where I even hated the end of the night because I knew she’d go home and take Grace with her and leave my apartment hollow and lifeless again.
I was behind on everything. Everything. I was trying to get caught up, so I was working through lunch. I had to, because today was a short day for everyone. We all were leaving early for the annual Children’s Hospital gala.
I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I liked the gala. The food and the entertainment were always good, and it was nice to spend time with the rest of the team outside of work. But I’d only bought one seat because Rachel hadn’t been planning on coming out this weekend. I tried to get another ticket for Vanessa last minute, but the event was sold-out.
She wouldn’t be there.
Suddenly an evening of eating steak and lobster and listening to a live band sounded like the last thing I wanted to do with my night.
I’d been hanging out with Vanessa every day for two weeks straight. We had dinner every night. Spent last weekend snowed in, wandering the first floor, googling names we found scrawled on the walls, watching The Office, and going back and forth between each other’s apartments.
Our lives had fused together without seams. I found baby socks in my sofa cushions, and there was a bottle warmer on the bar next to my decanter of Basil Hayden’s bourbon. I’d bought my own playpen and swing so we didn’t have to keep lugging them back and forth.
Vanessa gave me a spare key, and I didn’t even lock my door anymore when I was home. She came and went as she felt like it. Didn’t even knock. Came right in talking like we were always in some ongoing conversation, did laundry, used my espresso maker, took Harry Puppins home with her when I was at work and left Grace with me while she took showers or ran errands. Yesterday she sat on my weight bench in her pajamas, talking to me and eating a frittata I made her while I ran six miles on my treadmill. They were always there. She was always there. I liked it. I liked her.
A lot.
I was having a hard time knowing how that made me feel because there wasn’t much I could do about it.
A core part of our relationship was us not hitting on each other. She flirted with me, yes. But that was just who she was. There’d been times she’d told me how hot I was and reiterated that she didn’t date in the same sentence. It didn’t mean anything. She had been very clear that she was uninterested in dating. That’s probably why she felt so comfortable spending so much time with me—because I wasn’t trying to sleep with her.
I was painfully aware that if I brought it up, tried to talk to her about the way I was feeling, I’d run the risk of losing the friendship. Even the conversation about crossing the line was crossing a line. Afterward there would always be the knowledge that I wanted more, even if we never acted on it. It would change things—and I was terrified of changing things. I couldn’t lose this.
Becky moved her stack of papers into a neat pile and leaned forward on her elbows. “So what’s it like hanging out with Vanessa?” She grinned. “Do you guys get VIP treatment? Is it the coolest thing ever? Does she get mobbed when you go places and you have to be her bodyguard and peel strange men off her?”