“Fucking?”
“Gemma! Jesus, the mouth on you. Dating. But anyway, he says I should take my time and decide what I really want to do with my life, so I’m just sitting tight for now.” That’s actually really sensible advice from Ed, if that’s really his name. But that doesn’t mean I trust him.
“I’m going to need to meet this guy,” I warn.
“You act like he’s a stranger, Gemma,” she says. “I’ve known him for a year. He was just too shy to ask.”
“Or too much of a sociopath,” I suggest. “Too busy trying to get rid of the teenage girls he trapped in his basement.”
She frowns at me. “I’ve been to his house. He doesn’t have a basement.”
“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “Maybe he’s shy.”
Perhaps my mom is getting her Hallmark movie ending after all. I’m going to need to make a radical change to get my own, however.
I look out the window: the morning light is still gray and sunless, the trees are bare, and less than a mile away the traffic on 66 is at a standstill, crowded with angry, stressed-out commuters.
I didn’t especially like growing up in DC, and there’s nothing about it I like now, but I need a new playing field entirely, and I suppose the logical one is here. My father did the right thing, at last, and would it be so bad, working at his firm? I’d enter as a partner, I’m sure, and I’d be an equity partner soon enough.
It’s not the work I want to do, but I’m not sure helping the Sophia Waterhouses of the world lie to get custody is much better. I might as well do whatever it takes to get ahead, just like Ben did.
“Would you be mad if I took the job Dad offered me?” I ask, studying her face as she studies mine.
“Of course not,” she finally says. “But why? You love living in LA.”
“Not so much anymore,” I reply.
She hugs me for a long time and tells me it will all be better after I’ve had a nap, as if I’m a toddler. And I suppose things can’t get much worse.
When she goes to work, I climb into bed, staring at the bare ceiling of her guest room, wondering what's next. Yesterday seems almost too terrible to have occurred the way I remember. I keep wanting to make excuses for Ben, the same way I did for Kyle six years prior.
I snuggle deeper into the pillow and pick up my phone. I’ve ignored every sound it’s made since leaving the office, not ready to deal with what Ben has to say, and apparently there’s a lot: notifications from him cover my home screen. Taking a deep breath, I open the message app and scan the last few texts he’s sent.
Ben: Please answer the goddamn phone.
Ben: Gemma, this is fucking ridiculous. We need to talk. NOW.
He sounds more irritated than conciliatory, just like Kyle did. I throw down the phone and pick it up again.
Me: Tell me something. Did you know this was going to happen all along? Did you sleep with me for months, knowing they’d promote you and Craig but not me, knowing you were MOVING? Don’t bother replying because the answer no longer matters. I know everything I need to know. Tell Fields once he’s done celebrating my victory that he’ll be very lucky if I don’t bring a similar suit against FMG.
I hit send and immediately regret it. I don’t know if I’ll really bring a suit against the firm, but I haven’t done myself any favors by telegraphing the possibility.
I turn off my phone and lapse into an exhausted sleep. When I wake, the dim afternoon sun is coming through the windows. I slept for at least six hours, but I don't feel any better for it.
I shower and get an Uber to drive me downtown, to my father’s firm. The Law Offices of Adam Charles now occupy two entire floors of a massive building on K Street, but it otherwise feels a lot like FMG did. Soulless and corporate.
My father greets me enthusiastically, congratulating me on the Lawson case as we walk down the hall. “Let me show you the office you’ll have if you come aboard,” he says, opening a door. It’s as big as Fields’ office back in LA. In the distance, I can make out the Washington Monument and the top of the White House.
He tells me the salary, and it’s double what I make now. In two years, I’ll be an equity partner and get a share of the firm’s net.
“I’m not sure how soon you can get started,” he says, “but I have the perfect case for you. A legislative aide has accused one of our clients of sexual misconduct.”
Something inside me deflates. “I assume your client is a congressman?”
He nods with a gleam in his eyes. “It’s going to get a ton of press.”
That’s all he sees right now—the attention this case will bring the firm—while all I see is that I’m about to become someone like Aronson. I’ll be the person defending Fiducia. It will be me sitting in a deposition implying Lauren is a slut to cast doubt on her testimony. But how much worse is that than taking custody away from Dennis Roberts or telling Sophia Waterhouse how to make sure her ex loses the kids?
I ask my father for the weekend to think about it and he agrees, as if he already knows I’ll say yes. I suppose I already know this too.
“You’re welcome to stay with us, by the way,” he says as I’m leaving. “I’m sure you’ll want your own place eventually, but in the meantime…that commute from Manassas will kill you.”
And so it begins. He’s already finding ways to make this more than a job. I wonder if giving my mom that money was simply another of his tactics, if he gambled on me coming to the firm in response to his show of goodwill.
The air outside is bitingly cold as I walk to the parking garage, the sky solid gray and unyielding. DC goes from one extreme to the next: six months from now it’ll be so humid I won’t be able to walk down the street without my clothes sticking to me. I’ll miss the weather in LA. I’ll miss other things even more.
It takes an hour and a half in traffic to get back to my mother’s apartment complex. I groan quietly when I hear voices on the other side of the door. I suppose Ed is here. I’m not likely to make the best impression today.
I force myself toward the living room…and freeze. Ben is sitting on my mother’s couch—jacket off, collar unbuttoned, hair boyishly rumpled.
The sight of him breaks my heart all over again. I loved him so much. I still love him even now, despite what he did. But I’m not the same person I was before—he made sure of that.
“Why the fuck are you here?” I demand.
“Oh, Gemma, be nice,” my mother chides. “He flew all the way out to talk to you.”
I ignore her. My mother’s insistence on being nice to everyone has gotten her nowhere. “You flew all this way for nothing, then,” I tell him. “Get out.”
My mother slides from the room as he rises, his face as angry as mine. “If you’d just answered your goddamned phone, this would have been over last night.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Ben! You had your opportunity to talk to me before that fucking announcement and you chose not to.” My voice cracks and I dig my nails into my palms to hold myself together. “You’re a liar. There were a thousand signs this was wrong—the way you never invited me over or introduced me to anyone—and I ignored them all, but I’m done ignoring them, so go back where you came from.”