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“Feels like it the past few weeks.” She looked around the conference room, her gaze landing back on CC. “Not that the view’s been tough to look at.”
CC kicked a foot against Al’s in the chair. “Behave.” Truthfully, it was the last thing CC wanted Al to do at this point. In the ten days since First Night dinner at Al’s place, Al had kept her distance while keeping CC on the edge with her teasing. Close proximity, soft, tactile touches, little snippets of their lives and likes shared over coffee and lunch, but nothing further. She was giving them space for trust to grow. And it had, though perhaps the thing that had won Al the most trust was the way she carefully handled the transaction, Brynn, and the MRM firm staff.
CC leaned the rest of the way back in the chair. “You’re a good teacher.”
“I actually convinced Ezra to be a teacher for six months before he moved to Sonoma.” She drew her phone out of her pocket, glanced at the screen, then laid it facedown on the table next to her discarded glasses. “I think maybe both of us would have gone into academia if we hadn’t needed to make a living ASAP. We had Ty when I was twenty and Ezra was twenty-three. It took Ezra having heart issues in his midfifties for us both to realize we needed to slow down.”
CC started upright in her chair. The man she’d met at Al’s place had seemed in perfect health. “Is he okay?”
“Better than,” Al said with a smile. “The sabbatical was good for him.”
“That whole new husband thing.”
“Yeah, that,” Al said with an even bigger grin. “Also gave me the courage to accept the secondment here. I had been climbing for so long that dedicating this much time to one client was impossible. It’s a nice change to dig in with one sole client as my focus.”
“To build that trust.”
“Exactly.” Al gestured out the window on the other side of the table, the Superdome lit black and gold for game night. “And not a bad place to do it, especially with Greg, Tony, and Amos here. But I do miss the teaching aspect of being in a firm.”
“Well, thank you for working with Brynn while you’re here.” Today hadn’t been the only day CC had eavesdropped on lessons with Al. “You don’t have to as opposing counsel, but it’s appreciated. And I think she likes the nasal lilt of home.”
“Hey now.” A slightly harder kick against her foot, and CC parried back. Neither moved to untangle their feet as Al’s gaze drifted back out the window. “I can’t imagine. I stayed in New York for school.”
“I didn’t go far either. Stanford Law after graduating from Berkeley, and with my girlfriend too.” Al’s gaze snapped back to hers, and CC immediately diverted hers the direction Al’s had been, out the window, hiding the truth in her eyes, if not her words. “On second thought, maybe a fresh start is good.”
She was surprised Al didn’t immediately step into the opening. Instead, she withdrew her feet, stood, and ambled over to the drink cart in the far corner. “This is the great thing about firms here. You always have booze.”
It took her less than two minutes for Al to return with tumblers for each of them. CC figured she knew the drink by color and smell, but one sip and there was a familiar twist. “You put the extra spoonful of cherry juice in your Manhattans like Tony does.”
“Believe it or not, we learned it from the same bartender in Manhattan.” She leaned close and lowered her voice. “Tony doesn’t know it, but that bartender is one of the kinkiest fuckers in New York City.”
Laughter bubbled out of CC, and with it, some of her caution. “Have you gotten into the scene here?” she asked Al. They’d talked around it before, but never directly.
“I went to several parties in the spring, but haven’t had—or rather, made time since work picked back up. Ezra keeps giving me lists of folks to contact.” She smiled around a sip of her drink. “I’ll scene with his vineyard manager when I’m in town there, he’s an old friend of ours, but it’s also hard to start over at fifty-six in a new town.”
CC took a long sip of her Manhattan, remembering the first time she’d had her favorite cocktail. It was her twentieth birthday; her first sex party too. “Quinn, that was my girlfriend,” she said, sharing some of the memory with Al, “we met in the prelaw fraternity at Berkeley. She was from San Francisco and knew the scene. I’d always known I liked women, and I’d always gotten a thrill out of public displays of affection. It wasn’t until I met Quinn that I realized it was more than that.”
“Quinn was a Domme too?” Al slid her feet back onto the chair next to CC’s. Maybe that was what made answering her question easier.
“Yes, though not a particularly good one when I think about the others we met or watched at parties. But I was twenty and in love.”
“And you made it all through law school together too?”
“She popped the question on graduation day.” It was hard not to smile at that memory, at the joy she could remember like it was yesterday. “I’d never been happier. Let her tie me to a St. Andrews cross that night.”
“I didn’t peg you for a masochist.”
“I’m not. It was about the exhibition, and she minded my pain tolerance that night. Few years later, we ended up on opposite sides of a deal, and my client walked away with the better end of it.” She drained the rest of her Manhattan. “Quinn let the professional bleed into the personal. There wasn’t room for us both there.”
“I’m sorry. Losing that trust can be devastating.”
CC ran her nail along the rim of her empty glass, remembering jagged ones from her past. “It wouldn’t have been as bad at the end if she hadn’t let it bleed the other way too. After I called off the engagement, word got around professionally in circles that didn’t understand.”
“That’s why you left San Francisco?”
“Colby saw me spiraling. She announced she was going to New Orleans to learn to make beignets and asked if I wanted to come with her.” It really wasn’t an ask so much as an I-will-make-you-biscuits-every-day-if-that’s-what-I-have-to-do-to-save-you bribery. CC had seen it for what it was—Colby taking care of her, making room, creating an escape hatch—and she loved her all the more for it.
“You’ve done well here,” Al said, bringing them back to the present. “I looked you up too. Your peers admire you, and you do good work.”
