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3
I’d waited.For a few days I’d pretended to the entire office I hadn’t noticed Drake’s case come in.
Of course I had, and in an unusual moment of total haste, I’d already texted Drake. I wished I hadn’t. Not because I didn’t think Drake deserved to know I had his back and sympathy for the situation, but because after weeks and weeks of not speaking, after breaking up with him when we were still in love, after regretting every word that had come out of my mouth the last day we’d seen each other, I’d written this in my text:
I’m so sorry to see this case with Jay in the office. RI will watch that fucker burn.
Seriously?
I should have written something more empathetic, more eloquent, but for one of the first times in my life, I’d had a rage burning inside so hot these words panted from my tongue to cool me off. I’d fumed seeing Jason Fry’s audacity.
But perhaps worse than sending that ridiculous message was finding out I didn’t have the brawn to back it up. Hunter flippin’ Rodrigues was on Drake’s case. Hunter was the nephew of a board member and got his job via the bloodline. He wasn’t the only one, I knew that privilege well, and there were others, too.
The way this worked, in a dog-eat-dog environment like RI, was that people would cover your ass until it didn’t need covering anymore. Or, when you’d been given enough chances and shown you didn’t have what it took, your fellow lawyers waited until something small enough to allow a fuck-up through came up, and everyone would let you bury yourself.
We blood rite lawyers could last awhile but not forever.
I’d heard people talking. Many were just waiting for the small fuck-up opportunity to arise with Hunter. He wasn’t good. Lest anyone around me think Drake’s case was that slip to allow, I took it upon myself to cover Hunter’s butt.
This wasn’t small to me. It wasn’t small to Drake.
After I’d sent my juvenile promise over to Drake a few days ago, I’d dreaded the reply. But in true Drake fashion, he made me smile:
DRAKE: Burning people is kind of gross.
ME: I know! Sorry. Just wanted you to know the company has your back.
DRAKE: I appreciate that.
I’d left it there.
I shouldn’t have texted him at all. I shouldn’t have made a promise I couldn’t keep and I shouldn’t have opened the door to a friendship I didn’t feel. My feelings were still well on the other side of the spectrum. I still loved Drake and yearned to reclaim every minute of the time we hadn’t spent together. But I wasn’t going to jerk him around. I had my big girl pants on now. I was the head of the family. I had shit to do.
But after a few days of watching Hunter do fuck all for Drake’s case, I approached him. I walked right up to his desk because I didn’t have time for nuance.
“Hey, Hunter.”
He looked up from his cell which appeared to be playing a TikTok video. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“Maeve. To what do I owe this pleasure?” His smile was a bit like the Joker without lipstick. Pointy and slightly evil. I didn’t think Hunter was a bad guy, but he looked like one.
“You owe this pleasure to nothing. Just wanted to help with the Graphic Temple case.”
The thing about lazy freeloaders with privilege was that they didn’t even care why you were doing something for them. They stopped questioning things like that long ago, if they ever did. They were used to it.
He lifted a manila folder and gestured it in my direction. “Knock yourself out. Feel free to make copies. Reconvene over lunch sometime?”
Like I had time for my caseload, his, and lunch with this clown.
“Sure. Maybe. Or I can just leave notes on the files. Whatever happens first.”
“You work too hard.”
He peered at me as if over invisible spectacles, a knowing glance that I read as meaning we were both on the inside regardless of merit. Maybe I’d overreacted to what was just a flippant look, he could have still been thinking about his TikTok, but so proved my opinion of Hunter Rodrigues.
“Maybe.” I took the folder. “But my bad habits are your good fortune.”
“Touché.”
