Unconditionally

by Erin Lyon

  “Fuck no. We’re pretty sure I can’t have kids.” After she said that, she pushed her red painted lips together in a way that made me feel sorry for her … for the one second before she followed it up with, “Probably a good thing, since I really can’t stand kids.” There it is. The process of natural selection, hard at work.

  I nodded noncommittally.

  There was a knock at the door a couple minutes later and I opened up to see Doug standing there with the signed paper in his hands. “Ready to head back in?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  We walked back in to the courtroom and I saw Judge Warner register our return, so I knew he’d call us when he had a break between cases.

  He finished up another case and then reached behind him to grab a folder. “Recalling the matter of Blutofsky v. Cadavetti and related matters.”

  We stood at the table once again.

  “Ms. Shaw, were you able to reach an agreement?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Simpson has the agreement, signed by both parties.”

  “Mr. Simpson, please hand that to the bailiff.”

  Doug handed it to the tall, lean man with gray hair who walked stiffly up to the judge’s bench to hand him the agreement.

  We were quiet for a couple of minutes while Judge Warner read over the agreement.

  “Very well. Ms. Blutofsky, have you had time to review this with Ms. Shaw?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And is this your signature here at the bottom?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He repeated the same question to Rhett and confirmed his signature as well.

  “Okay. Do either of you have any questions of the Court before I sign this?”

  I looked at Scarlett and she shook her head. Rhett did the same.

  “Okay. I’ve signed the agreement. The clerk will get you both copies. I want to reiterate to you both that this agreement is enforceable by this Court. Failure to follow its terms will be grounds for contempt of court.”

  Scarlett and Rhett both nodded once again.

  The bailiff took two copies of the fully executed agreement from the court clerk and walked them over to us.

  “Thank you, Mr. Simpson. Thank you, Ms. Shaw.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Doug and I echoed together.

  Once we’d cleared the courtroom, I turned to Doug and held out my hand. He shook it. “I hope not to talk to you soon,” I said, smiling.

  Doug chuckled. “Wanna bet?”

  “No. I said ‘hope.’ I’m not an idiot.”

  That earned me another chuckle before he and Rhett walked away.

  “Okay, Scarlett. Let me know how it goes. And let me know if you have anyone in mind to do the surveying so that I can run it by Doug Simpson. Since you guys are splitting the cost, we need to be sure they agree on the person to do the work.”

  “Okay. I’ll look into it and let you know.”

  “Remember, don’t let him goad you into violating the stipulated order. He knows how to push your buttons to get a reaction from you.”

  A wistful look came over her face. Ew. Poor choice of words, Kate.

  “Seriously, Scarlett, don’t let him piss you off and make you do something stupid.”

  “I know. I know. Believe me—he’ll do something stupid first.”

  “That’s the spirit. Okay, I’ll talk to you soon,” I said to her with a pat on her shoulder, and began walking toward my car.

  By the time I got back to the office, most of the afternoon was gone. I gave Mags a wide-eyed look as I passed her desk.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Awesome. Pretty sure Scarlett is my new BFF.”

  “Super. Speaking of your new BFF, she called for you.”

  “What? When? I just left her fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Right before you walked in. She says Rhett flipped off her camera.”

  “I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but maybe you should shoot me. Because I’m thinking, after a couple weeks of playing peacekeeper between these two, it’ll be a mercy killing.”

  Mags nodded. “Well, let’s table that idea for now.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I got home that evening, drained. After I’d changed out of my suit, my phone buzzed. Dave. And all the angst of our unresolved argument flooded back into me.

  Kate we need to talk.

  I’m not sure what else there is to say.

  Really? We have one argument and you’re just going to end things?

  It’s not just one thing. It’s everything.

  I looked at my phone, waiting for a response, and jumped a little when there was a knock at my front door. I looked through the peephole. Dave.

  I opened the door, frowning.

  “Dave … I’m tired. I had a long day and I don’t have the energy to do this right now.”

  He wasn’t smiling. He was in slacks and a button-down shirt, like he was in between newscasts. “Well, I don’t have the energy to wait. We need to work this out and get back on track.”

  I waved a hand through the air. “Fine. But if this is happening, I’m going to need wine.”

  “Sounds good to me.” He followed me into the kitchen.

  I pointed to the opened bottle on the counter and he carried it to the table along with the two glasses I handed to him. He poured the wine and I sat down at the table.

  He picked up his wineglass and held it out to me. “To us,” he said.

  I feel like I’m gonna be sick. I gave him a halfhearted smile and took a sip of wine (that may have been more an indelicate gulp).

  It was clear that Dave was expecting our talk to be quick and easy and that we would get back into … whatever the hell we were into before the fight. He turned his chair so that he was facing me.

  “Okay,” he said, taking a sip from his glass before setting it back on the table. “Let’s get the unpleasantness over with.”

  “The unpleasantness?” I frowned and focused on my glass. “Dave, I do my best to always be honest with people. Even when it’s difficult. So I’m really not accustomed to having people accuse me of being deliberately manipulative and calling me a liar. I wouldn’t expect that from an acquaintance, let alone someone who claims to care about me.”

  “I understand that now. I was wrong. I admit it.”

  “But why would you want to be in a relationship with someone that you can’t trust?”

  “I do trust you.”

  “Really? That’s why you assumed I was lying to you?”

  “Fuck, Kate,” he said, throwing his hands up in a frustrated gesture. As his hand went out, he clipped his wineglass, tipping it over. I watched as it fell, seemingly in slow motion, landed on the table, and broke into several pieces.

  “Dammit, Dave!” I said, jumping up and reaching for the pieces of glass. I felt my eyes well with tears.

  “Seriously, Kate? You’re crying over a wineglass? I’ll buy you another one.”

  A single tear rolled down my cheek as I turned on him, my hand full of the broken pieces. “That’s not the point! They were a gift! They’re important to me.”

  He put his hands up in front of him, defensively. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

  We were quiet for a couple minutes as we cleaned up the broken glass and spilled wine. I stepped on the pedal of the trash can to open it and dropped in the pieces of the tiger print glass. After washing my hands and drying them, I stood quietly with my hands on the kitchen counter.

  “Kate,” Dave said softly. He reached out and grasped my hand. “Let’s go talk in the other room.”

  Yep. Time to rip off the Band-Aid. I nodded and he held my hand and led me into the living room, where we sat down on the sofa.

  “I really will buy you another wineglass.”

  I shook my head. “I overreacted. It was an accident.”

  He put his hand on my chin and turned my face so that I was looking at him. “You’ve made your point on the honesty thing, babe. I’ve learne
d my lesson. I won’t doubt you again.”

  I sighed. “I’m not trying to teach you a lesson.”

  “I think you are. Even now.”

  “I’m not upset with you to punish you. I’m upset because you hurt my feelings. A lot.”

  “I understand that. But we should be able to move past this.”

  I shook my head.

  “Kate,” he said, gripping both my hands in his. “I’m in love with you.”

  Excuse me. What now?

  I pulled my hands back. “No, Dave. You aren’t.”

  “How can you possibly tell me how I feel?”

  “I don’t know how I know. I just know.”

  “How could I not fall for you? It’s like we were made for each other.”

  “Why, Dave? If you really believe you do, then tell me why you love me.”

  He frowned, confused. “Because you’re beautiful, you’re smart.”

  I shook my head at him.

  He frowned and looked more somber. “Because I can be myself around you. Because I feel more comfortable around you than anyone. Because you make me happy. You make me laugh.”

  Now I nodded. “Everything you just said, do you know what was missing from all that?”

  He shrugged, looking perturbed.

  “Me. Every reason you just gave for loving me had nothing to do with me and everything to do with you. You like the way I make you feel. When you love someone, you love who that person is—not what they do for you.”

  “I do love you for you. It’s not just for the way you make me feel.”

  I looked at his earnest blue eyes, his chiseled features, and I knew I would never love him. “I don’t feel that way. I’m sorry.”

  He stood up and paced the room, with his hands on his hips. “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why don’t you love me?”

  “Really? Love is complex and difficult to understand. I can’t answer that.”

  “Are you attracted to me?”

  I threw my hands up a little. “Of course. You’re a beautiful man.”

  “And I have a good job. Own my own home. Educated.”

  “Dave, you don’t fall in love with someone because of their résumé.”

  “And I make you laugh. And I’m crazy about you.”

  “And you hurt me. And you are moody. And you’re demanding.”

  He raised his eyebrows, looking surprised. “You aren’t perfect, either, but that didn’t stop me from falling for you.”

  I stood up from the sofa and walked around the coffee table. “I’m sorry, Dave. I don’t know what to tell you. I guess I shouldn’t have let this thing with us get this far—not that I thought it had. When we met, I was going through a lot. You know that. You even said you would be a good ‘distraction’ for me. I just didn’t see us hanging out casually somehow getting out of hand.” His face was expressionless as I talked. “But apparently it has. I’m sorry for that. But this wasn’t what I wanted.”

  He stopped pacing and squared off toward me, grabbing my upper arms and pulling me close to him. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough. “You don’t know what you want.”

  I put my hand against his chest and stepped away from him. “Maybe. But I know what I don’t want.”

  “You don’t want me?” He said it quietly, with a slight break in his voice. Holy crap. Is he really getting choked up? My frustration and anger fizzled and I suddenly felt bad for him. Shit. I can’t do this, though. This is how he’s kept me around this long. These confusing personality shifts, where he goes from bossy to sweet and from sweet to spoiled. Not enough good to outweigh the bad.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

  He took a deep breath. “I could’ve made you happy.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said gently. “We just seem like oil and water, Dave. A relationship isn’t supposed to be this much work. Especially not this early on.”

  He put his hands back on his hips and stared at the floor. I took a step toward him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  Moving so fast, I hardly realized it was happening, Dave wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against him. Putting a hand on each side of my face, he kissed me hard on the mouth. His intensity cleared away the cobwebs in my brain and I tried to step away from him, but he was holding my face firmly between his hands. I turned my face away and he put his lips to my cheek and put his arms around me once more. A moment later he let go and stepped back from me.

  “I think you’re making a mistake,” he said, looking me in the eye again.

  “I know you do.”

  “I’m not just going to wait around for you to come to your senses, Kate.”

  “I don’t expect you to.”

  He paused, with a frown on his face. I think he still expected this to go his way. Because, let’s be real, this must be new territory for him.

  I walked toward the front door a few steps. “Take care of yourself, Dave.”

  Emotionally Vulnerable Dave was gone, and instead he just looked annoyed and slightly smug.

  “You, too, Kate,” he said, heading toward the door. “Call me when you realize you can’t live without me. Who knows? Maybe I’ll still be interested.”

  I opened my eyes wide. “And the player is back,” I said with a smirk.

  The smug faded for a second, when he looked at me with a slight smile. “Hm. Maybe I do love you for you.”

  I had no response to that and just watched him walk out to his truck. He climbed in and drove away without a wave or a backward glance.

  I closed the door and leaned against it. I had the strangest combination of butterflies from what he said mixed with a profound sense of relief. I did it. I let him go. I didn’t get reeled back in. I walked over and flopped down onto the sofa, replaying the bizarre evening in my head. It ended the way it needed to. But, in true Dave form, he left me with the tiniest twinge of doubt that he was right and I was making a mistake. The guy was good. I’ll give him that.

  * * *

  The next night, after work, I was sitting on Logek’s couch with my feet tucked under me. She set a bowl of popcorn on the sofa next to me and handed me a glass of wine before taking up a similar spot on the other end on the couch.

  I took a sip of wine. “So, I finally ended things with Dave last night.”

  She nodded. “Well, good. That needed to happen.”

  “You thought so?”

  “Of course. It was obvious that was never going to work. You don’t put up with controlling people for very long.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You know, you could have mentioned that to me.”

  “I knew you’d figure it out on your own,” she said, smiling and putting a piece of popcorn in her mouth. “So what happened?”

  I shrugged. “He broke one of my new wineglasses, told me he was in love with me.” I shook my head at this point to show that I wholeheartedly doubted the truth of the statement. “And told me I making a big mistake.”

  She nodded. “That’s about how I would expect it to go down. An egocentric like him? He is probably still in shock that anyone could pass up the chance to be with him.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And you are having terrible luck in the wineglass department lately.”

  “Right? Anyway, I do wish I’d figured out a little sooner that it was a dead-end street. Would have saved both of us some time and energy.”

  Logek patted my knee. “Live and learn.”

  I nodded. “So, anything new on the Derek front?”

  “He’s been texting. I haven’t responded. I guess his good-bye at my apartment Monday wasn’t as final as I thought.”

  “Well, you are pretty tough to get over.”

  “Damn straight,” she said, although it was lacking in her usual confidence and sounded more like she was trying to convince herself.

  “What’s he been saying?”

  “That he wants to find a way to make it work. Asking me what it
would take.”

  “Ouch. So, what do you think?”

  “That I’d be sleeping with a live grenade.”

  “Colorful.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No desire to respond?”

  “Of course the desire is there. I just … somewhere, inside, I just know he couldn’t stay on the straight and narrow.”

  “You are a pretty hot ‘straight and narrow’ though.”

  “Thank you. But, for now, I’m going to protect myself from myself as long as I’ll let me.”

  “Somehow, that makes perfect sense.”

  Logek looked at the TV and turned up the volume. “Okay. My show is on.”

  “I can’t believe you still watch this,” I said, focusing on the sappy legal drama she’d put on.

  She shot me a wry look. “Oh, please. Pre-lawyer, you were just as hooked as I was. The only reason you stopped watching it was because you went to law school and never had time to watch television.”

  “Okay. Fair enough. Well, can you at least give me a quick refresher on the last four seasons that I missed?”

  “Yes,” Logek said, putting some more popcorn in her mouth.

  By the time the intro was over, I was all up to speed on who was sleeping with who, who’d been disbarred, and who had been both charged and eventually acquitted of murder (in one season, no less). Unfortunately, I think I also shed a few IQ points.

  “Oh,” Logek said, holding up a finger, “and last week, Katrina’s client rejected her partner’s settlement offer, so she’s in trial.”

  “I thought Katrina was a criminal defense attorney.”

  “She is, but she does signing law, too.”

  I smiled and chuckled.

  “What?”

  “Criminal attorneys usually just practice in that single field. Signing attorneys are the same.”

  After giving me a quick, dirty look (which I probably deserved), Logek refocused on the television.

  I watched the Katrina character, who looked more like a Victoria’s Secret model, prance into the courtroom in four-inch heels, which may have been longer than the skirt of her snug suit. After a little chitchat with her client, and the judge telling them to proceed, Katrina began making her opening arguments to the jury.

  I took another drink of my wine and leaned over toward Logek. “You realize people don’t have the right to a jury trial in signing law cases, right? I mean, it’s like they didn’t even try for accuracy. And it’s California state law, and the show is set in California.”