I hurry to tidy up my case files so that there’s room at the table. This work is rather boring and a paralegal could do it. I long to be back on the cases that Asher had assigned me.
Janice is local counsel for a large gas company. That means she’s lowest on the pecking order and has to do a lot of busywork, which she assigns to associates like Kim and me. But Asher’s clients pay big money for him to represent them, and he does the important things in all of their commercial litigation cases.
How could I have ruined such an exciting personal and professional opportunity to work with Asher? I wonder, as I stand up to get the door.
All I had to do was wear the fucking outfit.
And who knows what else after that.
But that’s the exciting part.
It feels strange to open the door to Jimmy, who used to live here and who would always just walk right in. We’d set up a time this evening to meet and talk, although I’m beginning to realize it wasn’t the best idea.
In fact, I’ve known that all along but I just started to feel bad. And bored. Very bored.
I’m aghast to see that he’s carrying flowers.
“Hi,” he says, awkwardly half hugging me while handing me the bouquet at the same time.
“Hi.”
He snaps a picture of me with his cell phone.
“What did you do that for?” I ask him, annoyed.
“So I can show my mom how much you like the flowers,” he says with a grin. “She helped me pick them out for you. She says to say hi.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Leave it to Jimmy to need to take a picture for Mommy Dearest. And to bring her up as a way to guilt trip me no doubt.
Sure, his parents were very helpful to me after my dad died. But I soon noticed he was way too much of a mama’s boy to do anything without consulting with her first. I also never appreciated her not-so-subtle hints about when Jimmy and I were going to get married or have kids. I don’t even think I want kids, which never went over well with her.
“Tell her I say hi too,” I respond, but just to be nice.
His hair looks blonder but when he catches me noticing it I make sure to shift my gaze away. I don’t want him to think I’m still into him.
“I’ve been outside, tanning a lot, getting back into shape,” he says, as if I had mentioned something about the way he looks, when I hadn’t. “Anything to kill the boredom. And loneliness. You know?”
I shrug, not wanting to acknowledge that I had just been thinking the same thing. I walk over to the kitchen and ask him if he wants anything to drink, just to avoid having to answer his question.
“Got any beer?” he asks, a mischievous grin spreading across his face.
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I reach towards the back of the fridge and pull out one of the Guinesses he’d left here when he moved out. I slide it across the kitchen counter at him but once he picks it up he heads over to the couch.
I had assumed we would sit at the kitchen table.
“What about you, what have you been up to?” he asks.
Showing my boss my panties and letting him play with my pussy before he demotes me anyway, I think, but I just say, “Oh you know, just work.”
“How’s it going?” he asks. “How do you like the new job?”
“It’s going pretty well,” I answer, vaguely.
I pour some water from my Brita filter pitcher into a glass.
“And what is the lady having?” Jimmy asks me, as I reach for some lemon to add to my drink.
“Water,” I announce.
As I squeeze the lemon into my glass of water, his face falls.
“I just want to have a nice relaxing evening…” he begins, and I know I have to cut this off before it goes any further.
“Jimmy,” I say, walking over to the living room.
He scooches over and motions for me to sit down next to him on the couch but I pretend not to notice this gesture and I sit down in the recliner instead.
As he looks at me, with a mixture of hope and disappointment in his eyes, I lose my nerve. I never should have agreed to talk to him, as I knew I would only end up hurting him more.
“Let’s just watch TV, then,” I say. “That’s relaxing.”
He shrugs, letting me know that TV-watching isn’t what he had had in mind.
I turn on the remote and flip through the channels, realizing there’s nothing on that both of us would enjoy watching. Jimmy always watches sports and plays sports video games. I’m not much of a fan of either one.
“Are any of our shows still on the DVR?” he asks.
I look at him. We had a few favorite shows we’d watch together each week, and they’ve been recording in his absence. I haven’t watched them because I’ve been too busy but I know he will assume it’s because they would make me miss him too much.
That used to be the case the last few times we’d broken up, but not this time. All I can think about this time is Asher Marks.
I’m not about to watch them with him now. I know what he’s trying to do. Lead me back into our old activities as if we’re still a couple and hope that by the time I notice what he’s doing I’ll be too far in and I’ll want to be back together.
I have no choice but to tell him what I should have told him when he first asked to meet and “talk.”
“I’m beginning to think this wasn’t a good idea,” I tell him. “I want to make sure you’re doing okay. I want us to be friends. I just…”
I’m just preoccupied with my older, rich, domineering boss.
“You just don’t feel that way about me anymore?” he guesses, his head hanging down.
And this is one of the reasons I never felt the right way about him, I realize. He’s pouty and compliant, whereas Asher— as arrogant as he may come across— is a take charge type of guy.
“Jimmy, I guess I don’t really have anything to talk to you about today,” I tell him. “What about you? What exactly did you want to talk about?”
He shrugs again. I know this meeting was never really about talking. We have already said all that there is to say.
“Look, if you want to catch up sometime, hang out as friends, that’s cool,” I tell him. “We could go have dinner somewhere.”
He looks up at me, too hopeful.
“Like at Applebees,” I rush to clarify.
No romantic candlelit dinners for us. Not that there ever were many.
“I just think it’s not a good idea to be back in our…”
He stands to leave and I’m grateful I don’t have to finish my thought. Our house we used to live in together. Our familiar patterns. Our TV shows. Our non-existent sex life.
“Well next time just tell me you don’t want to talk then,” he says, like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
“Fair enough.”
This time I’m the one who shrugs. He takes another chug of his beer and then sets the half empty bottle down rather harshly, beside the flowers that he’d brought me.
“You can finish that if you want,” he says. “I know you’ve never been much of a beer drinker. But there are a lot of things about you that have changed. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
As he walks out, I know I should feel offended— he clearly meant to offend me— but I only feel relief.
And urgency. And crazy, reckless, passionate desire.
I suddenly feel overwhelmed with the need to be with Asher. He has what I’ve been looking for, even if I don’t know exactly what that is. I have a feeling that he’ll know exactly what it is that I need though, and also that he’ll know exactly how to give it to me.
Even though I’m pretty certain it’s not the best career move, I just can’t live with myself if I don’t find out what Asher Marks has in store for me.
I just hope there’s still an opportunity for me to do that.
Chapter 26 – Madilyn
The next day at work, I ride up to the senior partners’ floor, my stomach rising along with the elevator.
This is it.
This will make or break everything.
I’d resolved to talk to Janice first, to go over the deposition summaries I’d done and get my responsibilities out of the way before I threw caution to the wind and went to see Asher.
But she isn’t in her office. So I leave the summaries on her desk and walk down the hall to face my fate.
I step right into Asher’s office, not wanting to lose my nerve. I plan to shut the door, lock it per his earlier instructions, and say, “I’m sorry, Boss. I want to wear the outfit. I want to do whatever you want me to do.”
But I walk smack into Mandy Calderon, who is sitting on Asher’s desk in broad daylight with one of her legs kicked out flirtatiously. To make matters worse, she’s in the middle of saying,
“…and I knew you’d come to your senses. I just knew you couldn’t really be a chubby chaser, or at least not for long.”
I freeze, but then I remember to pick up my jaw. Apparently it had dropped open without my realizing it.
I turn around, to leave Asher’s office with what little dignity I have left.
“Madilyn,” he calls out, and then he’s in the hallway, saying, “Step back into my office.”
I keep walking.
Probably because he realizes that his normal gruff tone isn’t working on me, Asher’s voice becomes softer— desperate, even.
“Madilyn. Please come back.”
But I keep walking. Past his assistant who is looking at me in curiosity and concern. Past all the partners’ offices. I’m thinking that I’ve probably made it so that I can kiss this job and my plans to climb the partnership ladder goodbye.
Asher can have this firm. It’s his, and there are probably better ones elsewhere. Firms that aren’t run by rich men who think they own everything, including the new associate of their pleasing.
Asher can have Mandy Calderon, too.
And she can have him.
I head back to my cubicle, determined to grab my briefcase and leave the building. Maybe for the last time ever.
But Janice is there, bent over my desk and in the process of writing me a note on my sticky pad.
“Oh! Madilyn, there you are,” she says, nearly jumping up in the air. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Hi Janice,” I tell her, so used to her eccentric ways that I only momentarily think of pointing out to her the illogical fallacy that even though she’s at my cubicle she’s somehow surprised that I showed up.
“We must have just missed each other,” she says. “I got back from getting coffee and saw your summaries on my desk. So I headed right down here to talk to you.”
I’m glad that she wasn’t around to witness my embarrassing departure from Asher’s office. I’m not sure if she’d be happy about it, knowing he and I are finished before we had even really started, or if she’d gloat about it, telling me she had tried to warn me.
“But then you weren’t here,” she continues. “But now, here you are.”
“Yes.”
I smile at her much the same way I would smile at a preschooler.
“Here I am, Janice. What did you want to talk about?”
“Oh yes. Well. I was glad you were able to complete the summaries so quickly and I have a few more here for you to do,” she says, patting a large stack of deposition transcripts she had left on my desk, beside my computer monitor.
I wish I could roll my eyes but I refrain. More busywork. More work that a paralegal could do, but yet she gives it to me.
At least it’s billable hours.
But I can see the writing on the wall. My time at this firm will be spent stuck not only in Cubicle Hell but also in busywork hell.
But what other option do I have?
I stare at Janice, knowing I should be glad that at least I have her.
“Yes, of course,” I tell her. “I’ll get started on these right away.”
“Thanks, Madilyn,” she says, and walks away.
I sit down and pick up a deposition transcript and a highlighter. As I skim the meaningless beginning of the deposition— which almost all deposition beginnings are— I try to formulate my new plan.
I had turned down my prior firm’s offer in order to work here. But maybe they will have an opening and want me back. Otherwise, I don’t think I’ll be able to apply for new jobs with a straight face until I’ve worked here for at least a year.
I’ll sit here every day then, I decide, doing Janice’s busywork, so that I will have a year- long job on my resume, and maybe she’ll give me a recommendation when I apply to new jobs. I’ll have to suffer through it, but it’s my only choice.
As I delve into the meatier parts of the deposition, I furiously highlight anything relevant, hoping I look intense and focused instead of upset and pathetic.
And then, someone clears their throat behind me.
I turn around to see the nervous sway of one of the firm’s runners. He’s holding an intra-office lawyer-only delivery envelope and he is obviously not used to delivering it to a lawyer in the paralegal’s domain.
“Ms. St. Clair?” he asks, double checking the name on the package.
“Yes?”
“The lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“I have an intra-office delivery for you from Mr. Marks,” he says.
He hands me the package, and I stare at it in shock. Clearing his throat again, the runner says, “Please sign this log indicating that you’ve received this delivery, and note the time next to it.”
“Um. Okay.”
It’s standard practice— purportedly to make sure the runners do their jobs and to record when mail or other items make their way from partner desk to associate desk within the firm. And I suspect its real sole or at least additional purpose is to ensure that no associate can claim they never received an assignment as an easy way out of excusing a missed deadline.
But I feel guilty, as if I’m signing for the acknowledgment of receipt of a bomb. Or hush money. Or something else that is dangerous and taboo.
He pushes the pen into my hand, urging me to sign so that he can go about his next task. I’m shocked but I know it isn’t his fault.
I sign my name and add the time next to it. I even remember to thank him.
And then I peek into the envelope, even though I already know what’s inside of it.
It’s that damn lingerie.
It’s my redemption. The second chance I so desperately wanted just a few minutes ago. But now I’m not so sure I want it.
Chapter 27 – Asher
I watch Madilyn via the firm’s security monitoring system as she taps her foot and scribbles furiously on a notepad. I watched her receive my package. I know she has it but I don’t know what she plans to do about it.
I’d like to think she’s waiting for my command but I can’t be too certain. She was understandably mad when she stormed out of my office. I can’t blame her.
In fact, I blame myself for allowing it to happen.
At soon as she’d left, I’d kicked Mandy Calderon out of my office.
“But you told me to come be your mentee…” she’d pouted, resisting my attempts to make her leave.
“Temporarily,” I’d told her. “I told you this was just temporary.”
“You can’t seriously want Madilyn instead of me,” she’d insisted. “She’s so…”
Temperamental, I’d thought. Stubborn.
And so fucking irresistible.
But all I’d said was, “Be quiet. Not another word. How dare you insult your fellow associate?”
“Well, it’s not like I knew she’d hear me,” she’d protested, batting her eyes at me.
But she looked pleased with herself.
I hate myself for even having thought that Mandy might be a suitable replacement. She’s not even a challenge. She just throws herself at me. Like the way she’d just hopped up onto my desk and started flirting. I certainly hadn’t told her to do that.
And I hadn�
��t even fucking enjoyed it. Clearly my mind is still focused on Madilyn because Mandy’s an attractive woman but none of this is working for me. I can’t seem to think of anything besides Madilyn’s curves and how badly I want to fuck her.
I knew it was time to get rid of Mandy. She’s clearly too needy. I had already been married to someone like that, and certainly didn’t need to repeat the past.
There are reasons I only proceed after a lot of research and calculation. I just wasn’t expecting my current project to throw me such curve balls.
“There is no more mentor/ mentee relationship re-assignment, temporary or otherwise,” I’d told Mandy. “I have no interest in working with someone so cruel about other people. For the last time, please leave my office.”
“You’ll be sorry,” she’d sputtered, picking up her designer purse and leaving my office in a huff.
She’d stopped short of the doorway, as if struck by a good idea.
“What if I tell everyone you sexually harassed me?” she asked.
“I’d tell them it was quite the opposite,” I spat back.
She turned away again, shaking her head, and left my office. I’m reminded of why I always think carefully before choosing— and thus having to reject— any potential pet. They have the tendency to become irrational and unpredictable. Usually I make certain all the rules are in place before making any moves.
But I’d let Madilyn throw me off my game, without doing enough to make sure the game had even gotten started in the first place.
It dawned on me that I may have lost the chance to work with the one associate who was enough of a challenge for me. And, even though it goes against my rules— not to mention my better instincts— I decided to do something out of the ordinary.
I sent the lingerie she’d left here back to her.
After all, what are rules if they’re not meant to be broken?
And what’s the use of finding my perfect pet if it doesn’t involve putting up a little bit of a fight for her?
But now it’s just a matter of seeing whether Madilyn wants to accept my invitation to join the game again. As I watch her working intently, I start to doubt that she’ll be a willing player.
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