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“He needs me. He always has. They all do.” I could feel myself sinking back into the old routine of blame and anger. It was what I knew. How I functioned.
“Your parents can take care of your brother. You need to be here, moving ahead with your own life. You have one of the most prestigious law residencies in the country, with the chance to teach at American. Do you know how fucking awesome that is?”
Her eyes lit up. She would have made a great cheerleader.
I smiled. “I do. And I’m glad you pushed me in this direction. I am.” I didn’t want to turn this night into a counseling session about my family, or my career. I wanted Greer’s enthusiasm to be contagious. I wanted to catch it. I needed it to be part of my new start.
Our waitress reappeared. “Sorry, to bother you two but the guys at the bar sent these drinks over.” She lowered two more Cosmos in front of us.
I looked at Greer as her head whipped over her shoulder. “Wow, they’re cute.”
The guys were hunched over a couple pints of beer. Their ties were loosened at the neck and their sleeves rolled up. I couldn’t tell one from the other.
“Greer!”
She shrugged. “What? They are. They don’t need to know I’m taken, and you aren’t in the market.”
I shot her a puzzled look. Her words irked me. I never said I wasn’t in the market. Of course there wasn’t a worse time to meet someone. My family was back at home in shambles. I still had unpacked boxes in my bedroom. I didn’t know my way around the city. I had no idea where the grocery store was. I hadn’t worked one full day at the clinic yet. I wasn’t in a great position to date anyone.
But I was used to this. Whenever we went out in college, guys always bought Greer drinks. It was standard. It wasn’t that I wasn’t pretty. I knew I was attractive, but next to her I faded into the background. She was stunning. She had a way of looking up from the corner of her eyes that men found irresistible.
She brushed her dark bangs to the side. “Tell them we said thank you,” she reported to the waitress.
“And what do you tell Preston when he shows up?” I hadn’t forgotten he would be here any second.
“He will be glad he doesn’t have to pay forty dollars to buy us drinks.” She giggled.
I held up my glass and we clinked the rims. “Cheers to that.”
“Enough about my shitty day. How was yours?” I asked. I didn’t want the conversation to drift back to my family. “What big bad stuff is happening with the senate committee?”
She rolled her eyes. “It might seem like being a research analyst for the Armed Services Committee is glamorous, but it’s not. Completely not.” She rested her Cosmo on a cocktail napkin. “Today consisted of taking notes while the senators bickered about who was going make the next decision. There was no decision. Just bickering.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“A complete waste of a day. Meanwhile, all the things I am supposed to be working on are piling up in my office because they can’t decide on a to-do list.” She gulped down the last of the drink and moved on to the one sent over from the guys at the bar.
“And you still like it there? This is what you want—politics?”
She nodded. “I do bitch and complain about it, but yes. I’m an analyst now, but I could quickly move into one of the senator’s offices. I’m less than a year away from being an advisor. Can you imagine that? It would be huge.” She traced the rim of her glass. “Preston loves his
job. He’s a senate aide. He wants this for me.”
I ignored her last comment. “And to think we started out wanting to be pro-bono attorneys.” I winked at her.
That was a million years ago. Greer and I had been pre-law at Carolina. We both thought we could fight social injustice and join causes that we were passionate about. I ended up joining a law firm close to home and Greer moved to D.C. to work as a senate page.
“At least at American you’re doing that. The clinic helps people,” she reminded me. “So does teaching.”
“It does.” The liquor started to warm my limbs, and if I didn’t think about my feet I couldn’t feel how badly they ached. “I just never thought I’d be a teacher. I’m going to be one of our stuffy law professors.”
Greer almost spit her drink across the table. “Please, God. If you do, you have to wear little pins on your suit jacket—you know the ones you can change out for each holiday. Oh, and maybe try to make a theme with each case you cover. And you definitely need to wear glasses.”
“I have an entire year before I get to that process, but maybe I’ll start collecting pins now so I’m fully stocked.” I laughed. I had an image of a shoebox filled with Santas, shamrocks, and Easter eggs.
She looked over my shoulder. “Oh, Pres is here.” Greer jumped from her seat and ran to greet him.
Preston towered over her. He looked like every other guy in the city. He had brown hair, cut short. He wore a button-up blue shirt with a dark blue tie. He could sit with those other two at the bar and I’d never be able to pick him out of a lineup.
