Page 5 of Apparently, I’m A B!tch

Chapter3

Nikki

Wednesday, after lunch

My firm,L&K Criminal Law, was less than a five-minute walk from Extra Shot, and when I was first offered an associate position, I couldn’t believe my luck. I could still go to Henry’s, eat my pastry and see Tristan during my breaks. What could’ve been better than that?

Years ago, while looking for a summer job to help keep me going through college, I discovered the coffee shop when it was still Henry’s and fell in love with it the moment I stumbled inside.

When Uncle Henry gave me a job, I thought things couldn’t get any better. I loved working for him, and I adored his niece, Lilly. But when he started serving my favorite baklava, that was when Lower Manhattan finally started to feel like home. The flaky treat was under a different name, but it was unmistakably the Greek pastry that Mama used to make for me until I moved to New York.

Every day, Uncle Henry pushed a sweet into my hands, grumbling as he told me to sit in one of his cozy benches and relax. It meant a lot that I didn’t have to give that up.

When I graduated and started working at L&K, it became my ritual to sit in one of those crimson benches with Tristan, and we’d eat and drink and swap stories until my break was over. With so much change happening so fast, those breaks were a huge comfort, and now they were gone.

Back at Henry’s, everything was different. I was a different Nikki. The kind of Nikki people didn’t mind being around. And Tristan, Uncle Henry and Lilly; they became my family. Until four months ago, my lunch breaks with them were a small but much needed time away from the veneer of stress and determination I had to put on for every other hour of the day.

Because at L&K, almost everyone was overwhelmed and tired.

Today, my lonely one-hour break ended, and I walked back outside, swept into the rush of New Yorkers as they hurried to their next destination. I angled to the right, careful to make sure I wasn’t cutting anyone off when it came time to enter my building. The foot-traffic here was a lot like regular car traffic. You didn’t cut anyone off if you could help it.

I made it inside the mammoth building that housed my firm, and, luckily, the elevator was open. I clacked my way toward it, careful not to spill my takeout coffee, and hit the already lit button that would take me to the twelfth floor, not paying attention to the tensing and shuffling going on behind me. Planning to step further in myself, I looked up.

Oh.

It took a moment for me to register that Kelly, Jake and Harvey were in here too. Kelly’s brown eyes were downcast, her flamingo-pink stained lips pressed into a tight line, while Jake looked up at the ceiling, his jaw tense and tight. Harvey was the only one who looked directly at me, daring a white smile that was brilliant against his sunbaked brown skin. His hands were clasped in front of him as he clutched his briefcase, the black of it matching with his straight tie and suit.

“Hi, Nik.”

I didn’t bother plastering on a fake smile. Harvey and I were past that.

“Hi.”

“Ready to get back into it?”

I nodded and pulled out my phone. Hopefully Harvey would take the hint and stop trying to drag me into a chat. Instead, he leaned over and guffawed at my home screen.

“Who’s that chubby little guy?” he asked, pointing at my nephew’s rounded thighs.

That gorgeous little bubba was my older sister’s tiny baby. Andrea named him Nicholas, after our dad, not even trying to be original. The thing was, he wasn’t the only Nicholas in the family. My eldest sister, Elena, also had a son she called Nicholas. But oh, Andrea wasn’t about to hear any of Elena’s complaints. Her son was going to have that name whether Elena liked it or not. It ended up being quite a fight, with Elena going so far as to crank up the heat on Andrea’s Sunday roast so it was burnt before the timer went off.

But once Elena saw that beautiful baby boy, with bright blue eyes and so much dark hair, she softened and agreed. He deserved to be named Nicholas too.

So, Chubby Nicholas was his unofficial name now, a great solution to the too-many-Nicholas’s problem, and I kept a screensaver of him dressed as an elf. I hadn’t been home since Christmas, and I missed my family. This picture was my way of remembering our newest addition exactly as he was when I left.

But all of that was none of Harvey’s business. So I simply said, “My nephew,” and added nothing else.

Instead of shutting Harvey up, though, it seemed to urge him into talking about starting his own family one day. Kelly brightened and turned a shining face to him as he said he’d need to take a wife who understood just how demanding the profession was, and I rolled my eyes and counted the seconds until we finally reached the twelfth floor.

I waited until both Jake and Kelly rushed out before meandering my way with Harvey by my side, chattering constantly.

I tuned him out as I rounded the corner, following our paralegals as they hurried past the glass doors and went to their own desks.

Our office was T-shaped, and a mixture of onyx and mahogany. The desks that the administrative clerks, paralegals and receptionists used were a mahogany inset with leather, and were set up to create an alleyway along the base of our T until we came to an intersection, where the frosted glass walls cut a clear separation between the lawyers and the administrative employees. The dark gray carpet, black bookshelves and filing cabinets were only broken up by the rainbow of law-based books and color-coded manila folders.

Our desks, the lawyer and partner desks, were no different. They were just in different places. Harvey and I had identical offices in the middle of the T. We’d reach the end of the alleyway and wouldn’t have to turn left or right. Our glass doors unlocked and opened into our side-by-side rooms.

I’d been in Harvey’s office before. It was strewn with trophies and ribbons from his younger days, pictures framed of him and his dad, smiling on his graduation day, or the day he passed the bar exam. He decorated his office with flowers on a tidy round table, between two comfortable looking black overstuffed sofa chairs. In the other corner, he arranged for a small desk adjacent to his own for Kelly, so she could take notes as he dictated.