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I winced at the last statement, knowing it would hurt. I had to wait several seconds with my face buried in my pillow, listening to his uneven breathing over the phone. Just when I was about to ask if he was still there, he spoke, the timbre of his normal baritone shaky and uneven.
“Is that really how you feel?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “It is.”
“You’re not even going to give me a chance to defend myself?”
“I already did,” I said more strongly than I felt. “It’s done. It’s over, Brandon. Please don’t chase me anymore. You deserve to move on with your life…just not with me.”
My heart ached at the thought of him doing just that. I wiped a tear rolling down my cheek and shook my head hard to will away the others. Several more seconds passed. I flipped over to my back and stared up at my ceiling, counting the open rafters. My cell phone was warm against my ear, but that wasn’t the reason I was starting to sweat.
“Brandon?” I asked after counting at least fifteen more rafters than actually existed. “Are you there?”
A few more beats of silence passed.
Then: “Yeah.”
“It’s over,” I repeated, hoping he would get the message and leave me to try to repair the giant rent in my heart.
He paused again before speaking, and I continued to wipe away the tears that kept streaming down my face. I choked down a big sob and started to count down from ten. When I reached one, it occurred to me he might not actually be there anymore. He was finally gone. The thought utterly and completely broke my heart.
“Brandon?” I asked, my voice small in the unlit room.
“We’ll see,” he said and hung up.
Forty-Two
Some people wallow when they have a broken heart. They turn into Bella Swan and self-implode for several months until they forget the color of the guy’s eyes or the exact tone of the girl’s voice. Then they meet someone else who helps them forget a little more, and eventually, they return to the land of the living.
Others, like me, drown themselves in work instead. In fact, the degree to which my heart was broken tended to directly correlate to the amount of effort I invested into other aspects of my life. There’s nothing like a breakup to jumpstart personal ambition.
Considering I’d never had a broken heart like this before, it figured that I finished the semester third in my graduating class. I had also been putting in extra time at FLS, so when Kieran asked me to wait a few minutes on my last day, I figured it would be good news.
“So, I wanted to talk to you about where you’re planning to work after graduation,” Kieran said in her characteristically blunt manner. I had come to understand her abrasive manner was really just a way of cutting through the bullshit, and I appreciated it instead of being intimidated by it. “Have you decided where you’ll be?” she asked.
I sat back in my chair after straightening the files I was leaving for the summer interns, due to start on Monday. “Well, I’ve been offered a position with the Brooklyn D.A.’s office,” I said. “I have until Monday to decide.”
Kieran nodded. “Good, good. Well, you’ll have one more offer to consider along with that. I’ve been authorized to offer you a position at my firm as well. Junior associate, full benefits, with full pay while you study for the bar.”
I gaped. Kiefer Knightly was the other big full-service firm in Boston. It devoted fifteen percent of its practice to pro-bono cases—much more than the typical five percent offered by most firms—and recruited heavily from the Ivy League. Usually, it made offers to its second-year interns. The fact that Kieran had gone out of her way to procure me a position meant a lot. I’d be able to do the kind of advocacy work I liked while making about twice the salary the D.A. could offer. On top of that, I’d be able to work with someone I truly considered a mentor.
But. There was Dad, who was slowly recovering, but obviously looked forward to having me close again. There was Bubbe, who needed help keeping my dad in line. And there were, of course, other reasons to get out of Boston. Tall reasons. Blue-eyed reasons. Reasons that still crept into my thoughts after more than five weeks and woke me up in the middle of the night with dreams I could swear were real.
“Can I think about it?” I asked.
Kieran raised a thin eyebrow. “Really? I assumed you’d jump at the opportunity. There’s no firm like us, you know.”
I nodded in agreement. “I know. It’s just…well, I was planning on moving back to New York. My family is there, and I think they miss me.”
It was a feeble excuse, but I couldn’t tell her the real reason I was thinking of leaving Boston. Kieran was the last woman who would run away from any man, I was sure of it. She was friends with Brandon, but also his attorney. I had no idea what she thought personally of our situation, and I couldn’t risk her thinking I was anything but professional.
She nodded sympathetically. “I hear you. But, Skylar? Promise me you’ll think about it, all right? New York’s only a few hours away. You’ll still be able to visit your family.”
Hesitantly, I agreed. After all, Boston was a big city. A few more months, and maybe one of these days I’d finally forget the man who seemed to be woven into every brick building, every sidewalk. I bent my head down to finish organizing the last few files, ignoring the fact that I could still picture a pair of sky-blue eyes with perfect clarity, and the deep tenor of his voice echoed through my dreams almost every night.
* * *
I wasthe second to last student in my Family Law seminar to finish the final exam. With one click, I uploaded my test and closed my laptop with both elation and a twinge of sorrow. This was my last exam, my last act as a student. Graduation was on Monday, and between now and then I had to choose a job, pack up my apartment, and find a new place to live.
