My mother and I exchange gifts and spend Christmas Day watching Hallmark movies I don’t pay much attention to. I used to love them as much as she does, and now…I don’t know. It’s all well and good, throwing a Christmas dance in a haunted mansion with the ghost you’re in love with, but I think I sort of prefer wandering the aisles of Target with Ben, arguing about Nerf guns.
The next morning, I hug my mom goodbye and take an Uber into the city, back to the house where I grew up. The car pulls into my father’s driveway, and resentment for Stephani flares anew. She’s torn out my mother’s willow trees in front. There are cheap planters there now, a showy mailbox. As I walk to the door, I consider subtle ways to let her know her taste sucks, but they’re all some version of you can’t teach an old whore new tricks, and that’s probably not in the spirit of what my mother is asking me to do here.
I ring the doorbell, and my father answers with Stephani lurking a few feet behind him, her smile strained and wary. As it should be—the only thing I hate more than a homewrecker is the husband who cheats in the first place. I’ve never been especially nice to her.
“Gemma!” he shouts. “Come in, come in.” He ushers me toward the family room, as if I didn’t spend the first fifteen years of my life here. “Steph was just whipping up some mimosas.”
I nod reluctantly, and Stephani goes to the bar my father installed across the room. The cabinet is full of new glassware while my mother is still using the same shit she left with over a decade ago. I’m irritated all over again.
Stephani sets the drinks in front of us. “I’ll let you two talk,” she says.
My father barely notices her, as if she’s a servant quietly ushering herself out. And that’s why you don’t sleep with your married boss, Steph. Because eventually you’ll be the wife he’s bored by too.
“So how are things at FMG?” he asks.
“Great. Busy.”
“I saw you’re taking on Fiducia.”
I stiffen. He always wants something. It’s entirely possible Fiducia or their counsel has asked him to lean on me a little.
“I am.” My voice hardens. “But I’m not discussing the case with you.”
He sighs. “I wasn’t trying to get you to divulge secrets. For Christ’s sake…can I not even ask you a simple question about work? What’s it going to take for you to forgive me?”
“Well, you could stop asking me for things that will hurt Mom, for starters. You could stop making everything you offer contingent on something else.”
“Is that what I was doing?” he demands. “Because I thought I was just asking my daughter about her job, in the hopes she’d finally realize that working for me would be far better than working for FMG.”
I set my glass down on the table, intentionally ignoring the coaster. Let Stephani go buy a brand-new table for ten grand because this one now has a water ring. Maybe it’ll help make up for the fact that her husband no longer notices her. “Is that what this is about?” I ask. “Convincing me to join your firm?”
“No,” he says heavily, and for a moment he looks his age. I can see who he’ll become over the next decade or two and it almost makes me sad for him. Except my mother will age, too, and she won’t get to do it here, with a full set of plates, an extra cabinet of glasses, and the man who promised to cherish her for as long as they both lived. “I’m asking what it will take to make you forgive me. If you don’t want to join my firm, fine, though God knows why you’re so hell bent on remaining in LA. Tell me what it will take for me to ask you a simple question without you jumping down my throat.”
Time travel. Go back in time and don’t screw my mother over.
It’s the petty answer of an angry teenage girl, though, and pragmatism wins out: if he’s willing to strike a bargain, there’s definitely something I want.
“Give Mom the money you should have given her in the first place.”
“The court—”
“Are you seriously going to try to convince me that it was a completely impartial decision?” I explode. “That she had a chance against the fleet of sharks you hired to crush her? I do this for a fucking living. It’s insulting you’d even try to pretend otherwise with me.”
He’s completely unperturbed by my outburst. As an attorney, I admire it. As his offspring, it makes me want to kick him in the face.
“Then tell me, Gemma,” he says, leaning back in his chair, “what you think she was owed.”
“Five million.” His mouth opens to object and I keep going. “She’d have walked away with more if she’d had your team in place, and that money would have doubled by now. More than doubled, and I’m sure it has, only it’s done so in your accounts.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he begins.
I stand up. “You asked, I answered. Thanks for the drink.”
“You want your mother to get that money?” he asks from behind me. “Come to my firm.”
I still. A part of me can’t believe he’s doing this. Can’t believe he’s asking me to give up everything I’ve built in LA before he’ll do what he should have done in the first place.
“Mom would never accept that.”
He shrugs. “She’d never have to know. I’ll tell her I realized I was wrong. You’ll forgive me and come to the firm. It makes absolute sense.”
My mother won’t take a penny from me, but she’d take that money. And he’s right. She’d never even have to know. All I’d be giving up is nearly everything I care about. And God I hate him for asking it of me.
“You’re doing it again,” I tell him, opening the door. “You’re incapable of giving without getting something in return.”
I walk out. But I’m already wondering if not considering it makes me every bit as selfish as him.
35
I text Ben the minute I land. I’ve spent the past six hours thinking about what my father said and how that money would change my mother’s life. I’ve never wanted to turn down an offer more, and I’m not sure how I can, especially if I don’t make partner.
Weirdly, it’s the idea of leaving Ben that bothers me most.
He’s waiting outside my apartment when I arrive, wearing jeans and deeply in need of a shave. And here I thought he couldn’t get better looking.
I pull him inside the door. He grabs the suitcase I’ve forgotten in the hallway.
“I get the feeling you missed me,” he says as I slide to my knees.
“You wish.” I slip the belt loose. His lids lower and he runs a hand through my hair.
He’s hard as steel as I pull him free from his boxers, groaning when I take him in my mouth. “You don’t have to admit it,” he says. “But I will. I missed you.”
I pretend I haven’t heard him. One part of me wants him to stop talking and one part wants him to say it all again.
“Fuck,” Ben groans. He arches against me, his fingers pressing to my hair, that subtle pressure begging for more. I don’t give it to him. Instead, I savor him, like he’s ice cream in a time of famine. Using my hands, my tongue, and the back of my throat on occasion, I don’t stop until his inhales grow sharp, and come fast.