Page 69 of Letters From A Stalker

“You definitely made too many bagels.”

“I thought you could take some to work if you don’t want all of them.”

Considering the smell, eating all of them suddenly feels like an entirely achievable personal goal given I didn’t have time for breakfast.

Instead, I smile and take the basket when she offers it. “Thank you. Seriously. My entire office is going to worship you before nine-thirty.”

“Then tell them worship is unnecessary, but I wouldn’t object to getting the basket back eventually.”

“I’ll protect it with my life.”

She steps away from the door while I shift the basket against my hip and rearrange my bag. Behind me, something makes a soft scrape against the hallway floor, but I barely register the sound among everything else I am carrying and the running calculation in my head about how late I am already going to be.

“Have a good day, Julia.”

“You too, Mrs. Pritchard. And thank you again.”

She starts down the walkway while I pull the door shut behind me and lock it awkwardly around the basket. Whatever moved inside the hallway disappears from my mind before I reach the car.

I walk into the law firm, twelve minutes later than I normally would and carrying enough baked goods to suggest I have recently undergone a career change. Monday is already in full swing. Daniel sees me from across the floor. More importantly, I see what he is holding. A cardboard coffee cup. I stop beside my desk and lift one hand toward him like a dehydrated traveler spotting water after three days in the desert.

“You’re a god.”

Daniel walks over and places the cup directly into my waiting hand. “I know, bitch.”

The first sip is hot enough to make me wince and strong enough to restore several missing personality traits.

I close my eyes for a second. “Oh my God.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I could kiss you.”

“You say that every Monday and yet somehow I remain tragically unkissed.”

“That’s because we don’t play for the same team.” I wink at him and he snorts.

“Fair.”

His attention finally shifts to the basket I have set beside my monitor. “Did you rob a bakery on the way here?”

“Mrs Pritchard apparently spent Sunday preparing carbohydrates for the entire legal profession.”

Daniel lifts one corner of the cloth and immediately steals an everything bagel.

“Oh my God, I love Mrs. Pritchard..”

I take another long drink of coffee and gesture toward the kitchen. “Help me carry these in before I decide stress-eating thirteen bagels is a medically acceptable response to Monday.”

We leave the basket on the long counter beside the office coffee machine, along with a handwritten note telling everyone to help themselves. By nine-fifteen, somebody has produced three kinds of cream cheese, one of the paralegals is cutting the cinnamon bagels into halves because apparently this makes eating two of them morally different from eating one whole one, and Mrs. Pritchard has become the most popular woman in a building she has never entered. Just as I promised her but I barely have time to appreciate her success before the day starts demanding things from me.

Mondays at the firm always feel as though every problem people have avoided over the weekend has spent forty-eight hours gathering strength and arrives at eight-thirty determined to be acknowledged. Two clients want updates before I have time to open their files, a deposition has been moved without anyone informing the attorney who actually needs to attend it, and somebody has uploaded three versions of the same agreement into the shared system without labeling any of them final. An hour later, and I have solved the deposition issue, located the correct agreement and talked an irritated client out of sending an email that would have given opposing counsel something to frame and hang above their desk.

Daniel passes me twice wearing the particular expression he gets when he knows he has forgotten something but is hoping the universe might remember it for him. I let him suffer for several minutes before calling after him.

“Daniel?” He stops and turns.

I glance pointedly at the clock on my monitor. “Your eleven o’clock with Patterson.”