“Recently, I’ve had some knocking at the outer recesses of my brain. They just don’t seem to want to leave those dark corners just yet. It’s like they’re there, but they’re hanging on inside with all their might.”
“You said it has to do with the lawsuit?” I remembered her talking about it before.
She nodded. “I can’t quite seem to get into that creative headspace the way I used to. Every time it starts happening, my anxiety over what will happen once my work gets out into the world creeps up on me.”
“Hopefully, once we get the case over and done with, that will change again,” I said. “They’re not going to get away with it.”
“Even if they don’t, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the anxiety. It’s paralyzing. I feel so stuck, but at the same time, I know I have to write something new because my royalties from the older books are drying up.”
“Which causes more anxiety,” I concluded, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. “I’ve been stuck like that before. Maybe not in exactly the same way, but a catch-22 is a catch-22 and a rut is a rut. Something will give eventually.”
“Something has to.” She turned her hand over to take mine, her thumb moving up and down on the inside of my palm. “How did you get out of your rut?”
“I took a case I shouldn’t have. It was a field I’d never worked in before, and it was basically unwinnable, but I also couldn’t lose it. There was too much at stake.”
“What did you do?” she asked, leaning forward with her eyes wide on mine.
“I won.” I gave her the same smirk I knew she used to hate so much, but this time, it made her laugh. “Sometimes, the only thing we need is just that one win.”
And hopefully, we would get hers on Monday.
Chapter 29
Laurie
Jacob’s plan didn’t actually sound half bad, but it was the way he said it that made me laugh. I wouldn’t have pegged him as someone who would be able to make me laugh about something that felt like such a big mountain I still had to overcome, but it was just yet another thing I was wrong about with him.
He told me more about his case while we kept eating. I was in stitches at some points of his story, trying to imagine the Jacob I knew in the situations he’d ended up in.
“I know you said you got into law to help people,” I said once he’d finished, “but why law? There are plenty of other professions that help people.”
“Most do in one way or another,” he said. “For me, it was because of my grandmother. My grandfather died when my dad and his siblings were all still in diapers. His death was an accident, and she should have been compensated, but she wasn’t. No one would help her because she couldn’t afford to pay.”
“That’s terrible.” I thought back to Thanksgiving when I’d met his dad. “I can’t even imagine what that must be like. If I think of how powerless I feel now, I just don’t know how she did it. Especially with young children to raise.”
“That’s exactly it.” He rubbed the back of his neck before a smile spread on his handsome face. “I couldn’t imagine it either, so I decided to do something about it. I might not have been able to help her, but I can help others like her.”
“It’s great that your boss lets you do it. I can’t see a firm like Eric’s taking on cases like that.”
“If I had tried to work for someone like Eric, I’d be in jail for doing something shocking to him by now. Like vandalizing his car or letting homeless people make themselves comfortable in his home. At least that way, he’d be useful to society.”
“He probably has a very nice house. I’m sure he could’ve taken on quite a few long-term guests.”
Jacob grinned. “My point exactly. Needless to say, it’s for the best I didn’t end up working for him. We would never have seen eye to eye, and I’m not the kind of person who can just stand by and watch injustices being carried out. I definitely would’ve done something drastic in an attempt to make him see the error in his ways.”
“Well, I can be pretty creative when the mood strikes. I’d be happy to help you think of a few ideas, as long as we don’t end up becoming criminals.”
“He’s definitely not worth becoming a criminal for,” Jacob said. “We should talk about him sometime, though. Not tonight but sometime. In fact, let’s agree not to talk any business tonight. Deal?”
“Deal.” I didn’t even need to think about it. “Have I ever told you about the time I accidentally told airport security that my bag might explode?”
He burst out laughing. “No. You most definitely have not. I can’t wait to hear this story, though.”
“It was just one of those moments when my brain and my mouth weren’t on the same page. I went to this fantasy-book convention. I was there to do signings of my own, but I’m also a really big fan of some of the authors who were there. I ended up buying so many books and so much merchandise that I only just managed to fit it all in.”
“I think I know where this is going,” he said, his eyes looking like spun gold in the candlelight, as lit up with amusement as they were.
I nodded, even though I was at serious risk of just staring at him looking so relaxed and carefree. “I had to get a friend to sit on my suitcase to zip it up. When I got pulled over after my flight landed, I just knew a heavy book was going to fall on his foot or something. Before I thought about how to say it, the words just came flying out.”
“And you told him it might explode?” His brows went up and his chest shook with repressed laughter. “What did he do?”
“He looked at me, all horrified for a moment. Then he must’ve seen how red I got and realized I’d misspoken. Luckily, the guy had a sense of humor. He just said, ‘don’t worry, ma’am. I’ve been trained for that.’ He did take a few steps back before making me unpack my entire bag, though.”
“I can picture it so well it’s like I was there,” he said when his laughter had subsided to chuckles. “People have been arrested for much less than that. You can thank your lucky stars you got that guy.”
“I know. I was so mortified at the time that I only realized later how serious it could’ve gotten. I promised myself from that day forward that I’d never just speak again.”
“Yeah? How’s that going for you?”
I shook my head. “I’m still working on it.”
As the night wore on, I tried to find those things in Jacob that used to annoy me so much, but I just couldn’t see any of them anymore. He was honest, charming, and really funny. We laughed constantly, right up until the restaurant closed.
It felt so good to let my hair down again—literally and metaphorically—and to feel like a normal person, like myself, again. I’d been buried under so much grief and pain for so long that I’d completely lost sight of the bigger picture.
Something about Jacob was like he was reaching his hands into the dark hole I’d crawled into and was slowly pulling me back out into the world. With a firm but gentle touch, he was dragging me to the surface and making me see that I didn’t just have to survive. I could live. Thrive even.