Immaterial Defense: Once and Forever #4 Read online

  “Well…your mood can’t possibly be worse than that accent, so at least there’s that.”

  I was just about to apologize for my rancid bitchiness and badly timed joke when a smile slowly developed on her face. “And my stink is a personalized blend of organic lavender, cypress, and grapefruit essential oils that the homeopath said would open up my fifth chakra.”

  “Which one is fifth? Is that the moodiness one? I don’t think mine has been opened in years.”

  “The fifth one is the mouth. When it’s not open”—she opened her mouth as widely as she could, so everything she said afterwards was nearly impossible to understand—“we have a hard time communicating. I also have it in tea form, too, and yours could use some serious balancing. Want some?”

  Hint understood and rejected. “Not unless it tastes like strong coffee with fat-free creamer.”

  “I wish.” She laughed.

  We each fixed up our own beverages side by side, dramatically shoving each other to grab a stir stick or one of the mini muffins she’d brought in yesterday. They tasted like sugary chalk, had enough preservatives in them to outlast a cockroach, and were addictive enough for her to keep buying them and for both of us to keep eating them.

  “How’s school?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Okay. How’s Andi?” Unfortunately, the girls and I hadn’t hung out very often over the last year, and I hadn’t seen Andi since her and Hayden’s wedding in the Maldives. The pressure of them caring about me had just gotten to be too much. I could bitterly laugh at the stupidity of it all I wanted, but it didn’t change the feeling. They needed me to talk about something I couldn’t talk about, and they confused my lack of conversation with a lack of trust. So, it was just easier to keep my distance instead of rubbing their noses in their misunderstanding. Since then, our text conversations had been shallow, and when Emilia and I were both in the office, I deliberately kept our talk small.

  “Good. But get this—the other day, Hayden brought up having a baby.”

  “Wow, that’s big.” And yet another sign my friends were moving forward with their lives. I doubted I’d ever be able to catch up, even if I wanted to get married or have kids. “How’d she react?”

  “Just like you’d imagine she would,” she said, smiling. “I wish I’d been there to see her face.”

  I laughed at the image that popped into my mind. “She’d be a great mom, though. And if they ever ran out of money, they could make serious bank by selling pictures of Hayden holding the baby. You should mention it to her.”

  “Why don’t you? We’re way overdue for a get-together.”

  “That would be fun.” I’d been coming up with excuses not to see them for so long, I didn’t even have to pause to think of one. “But between school and work, I’m swamped.”

  “Sure.” She nodded slowly, seeing my excuse for exactly what it was. “Maybe once school is over.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed too quickly. “How’s Rob?”

  “He’s tired of house shopping, but good.” Usually, any mention of her husband was enough to distract her. They adored each other so much she couldn’t say his name without beaming. Since she wasn’t smiling as much as normal, I could tell that she had something serious on her mind.

  I wasn’t the type to ask because I wasn’t the type to answer, but Emilia and I had been friends way too long enough for any silence to be awkward. Besides, Emilia had never been shy—when she was ready to tell me, she would.

  * * *

  For the next two hours, I did my nails, answered a few calls, opened the mail, and did some filing. The kind of vital work this company couldn’t legally hire a monkey to do. I’m not stupid or inept. I just have underdeveloped good-decision-making skills. Thus the reason Emilia had taken away all my clients and decided I was better off where she could see me. Or at least hear me from the next room.

  I peeked into her office. She was squinting at her computer monitor and frowning. I wondered how long it had been since she’d moved.

  “That look usually means it’s break time,” I said, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “I can’t.” Her eyes never moved from the screen. “I’m trying to understand this new contract Rob drew up for me.”

  “Can’t you just ask him to explain the legalese to you?”

  She shook her head and blinked. “Do you know how much it sucks to be married to a lawyer?”

  “I’d imagine it sucks as much as being married to anyone else.” Seriously, there had to be a reason they called it the institution of marriage. If I ever ended up institutionalized, it wouldn’t be in marriage.

  She let out a long sigh. “I’m all for trading free legal work for blowjobs—”

  “Didn’t need to know that.”

  “—but no matter how hard Rob tries, when he explains it to me, he sounds so condescending. Honestly, it’s his fault he married me instead of someone who could understand this shit. It’s just better if I keep my mouth shut—after I finish the blowjob, of course—”

  “Did you not hear me when I said I didn’t need to know about that?”

  “—and pretend I know what the hell it means. It’s my way of keeping our marriage intact.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and sat back.

  “Very admirable,” I mumbled. “Want me to take a look?”

  “Would you?” Her face lit up as I walked around her desk to squint at her monitor.

  “As long as you promise not to mention any other methods of payment your husband takes.”

  “It’s on a sliding scale, Sara.” She burst out laughing at her unpleasantly visual joke, even without the open-mouthed sliding she pantomimed.

  I stuck out my hip and crossed my arms. “Are you trying to get me to throw up or help?”

  “Help! I want your help! Please!” She pushed her chair back a little, giving me room to get closer to the monitor. “No more payment jokes. Promise.”

  “If I can figure this out and explain it in a way that doesn’t make you feel inferior, you owe me lunch.”

  “And a raise,” she said, nodding. “I completely forgot you studied this crap.”

  Sometimes, so did I. My goal of being an attorney had evaporated faster than nail polish remover, but all that preparation hadn’t gone away. All throughout high school and my first two years of college, I’d studied torts and laws, determined to enter law school way ahead of everybody else. My plan was to intern every summer at one of the top three firms in the city—I couldn’t decide which, but having it be the same firm every year would be preferable—graduate summa cum laude, become an associate, and work my way to partner before I was thirty.

  Of course, I’d also thought that somewhere in there I would find time to fall in love, get married, take a three-month honeymoon to see the world, and end up in Africa, where we’d start the process of adopting a few orphans. Shockingly, not a single thing in that meticulously planned-out timeline had actually happened.

  Equally shocking was that my perfect life track had started to derail the day I found out that, before she’d married Timothy, my mother had burned through every cent my dad had left me—including the college fund that would’ve paid for my last two years as an undergrad and all of law school.

  After that, the goal started to seem more like a dream. A dream filled with images of me working myself to death to repay student loans instead of traveling the world, adopting orphans, and taking cases pro bono for causes I believed in.

  Now, even that depressing dream had faded away. It was all I could do to get through each day, one misstep at a time.

  “Which part is confusing?” I asked after I’d skimmed the section on the screen.

  “From here”—she pointed to a blank area between the company’s letterhead and where the contract actually started—“to”—she used the mouse to scroll through the rest of the nine-page document and then pointed to the period after the last clause—“about here.”

  Oh, boy. “Well, at least you understood the
signature lines.”

  “Those are signature lines?”

  I stopped breathing until I heard her half-hearted chuckle. All was not lost.

  Emilia sighed loudly and then cursed even more loudly. “Why does this stuff have to be incomprehensible to anyone but lawyers?”

  “Job security. Would you really pay someone a couple hundred dollars an hour to come up with a contract that anyone could just jot down on a napkin and have notarized?”

  “Wow. And to think Rob did it for a blowjob.” She leaned back in her chair and slipped her hands behind her head. “I’ve never felt like an expensive hooker before.” She smirked. “I kind of like it.”

  “Go with your strengths, not your weaknesses, right?” Speaking of… I straightened up, stretched out my neck a little, and then snuck the mouse out from under her hand so I could print the whole doc out. “I’m going to need a highlighter, a blue pen, a cup of coffee, and a fifty-cent-an-hour raise.”

  “Done, done, done, and absolutely.” She happily scrambled to get the pens out of her desk drawer and then got up to get me another cup of coffee.

  I cleared some random stuff off a chair and pulled it up to the desk. While I grabbed the contract from the printer, Emilia set down two cups of coffee and wheeled her chair around to my side so we could both look at the document right-side up.

  It took us about thirty minutes to go through each section. Emilia was a smart woman, so it wasn’t the actual content that was giving her trouble, but how each provision could directly affect her business and employees. So, my job was less translation and more turning the words into tangible potential issues.

  After I’d answered the last of her four thousand what-if questions, I held my pen over the pages like a microphone and dropped it. “Boom.”

  Emilia leaned back in her chair. “You are amazing, Sara. Truly. I can’t thank you enough.”

  I shrugged. “You’re paying me, remember?” Working with a friend always made things more complicated. If I did something to help, was I doing a friend a favor or just doing my job?

  “True. And as of an hour ago, I’m paying you more.”

  “I was just kidding about that.” But I could sure use the money.

  “I wasn’t. You deserve it. Almost as much as you deserve a long lunch.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh shit! I completely forgot.” She stood, grabbed her bag, and started fishing around in it. “I’m so sorry. I would totally take you out for a thank-you lunch, but I’m supposed to meet Rob and our realtor to check out a few houses.” She looked at me guiltily.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just think how impressed he’ll be when you slip due diligence into your house hunting conversation.”

  She laughed as she pulled her wallet out of her bag. She took out two twenties and handed them to me.

  “You don’t have to do that.” It took all my willpower not to snatch the cash out of the air and call it precious. Being poor seriously sucked.

  “I know I don’t have to. I want to. And that means you have to take it.” She shoved the bills toward me again, and my pride slipped.

  “Thank you.” Hopefully, she wouldn’t change her mind because there was no chance she’d be able to get them out of my hand now.

  Emilia shook her head. “Thank you. You’re a fantastic coach. I didn’t feel stupid or patronized once. And my jaw isn’t even sore.”

  “Eww. You need to leave now.”

  “Seriously, Sara. Thanks. I don’t know why you’re wasting that big brain of yours working here.”

  I opened my mouth before I remembered that I didn’t have a good answer. Explaining how guilty I felt about almost ruining her business would just make her scoff and make light of the whole depressing episode. So, I went with the same lie I’d been telling her all year.

  “I like working here. My boss gives me free coffee and disgusting muffins. Plus, she doesn’t care if I do my homework whenever I don’t have any actual work to do.”

  “And a lot less money than you’d be making if you let me give you your old virtual assistant job back.”

  With the potential of screwing up again? Maybe even worse next time? Nah, I still had to figure out a way to pay her back for all that she’d had to put up with from me.

  I shook my head and grimaced. “It would be too stressful to do that and get my homework done. Maybe once I graduate.”

  “You know, I haven’t given up on the idea that you’ll find something you love doing in the next five months.”

  “What happens in five months?”

  She stopped and stared at me, confused.

  “Expressions like that will give you wrinkles, Em.” Her exaggerated-anger face was even worse, but I didn’t say anything.

  “You graduate in five months, you idiot.”

  “That can’t be right. I mean, I would know.” I started counting on my fingers. After I’d found out about my mom using up my college fund, I’d stopped packing as many classes into my schedule as I possibly could. Since then, I’d taken one class per semester, maybe two if I was feeling ambitious. Then last year, I’d gone back to taking three at a time, so I could live at Timothy’s place. So...

  “Oh shit.”

  “Who’s going to get wrinkles now?” she asked, laughing.

  “Me! Because I’m graduating from college in only five fucking months!”

  “Told you.” As she ran out of the office, she said, “Take however long a lunch you want. Lock up for me?”

  At exactly that moment, my stomach growled, and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything but a mini muffin all day. So, damn it, I was going to have to spend some of my newly earned cash to buy lunch. Easy come, easier go.

  6

  Declan

  At a quarter to noon sharp, Kitty and I took the elevator down to the second floor and waited for Trevor outside his door. Luckily, we’d found the only place in the city that had two one-bedroom apartments open for sublet at the same time and weren’t obscenely expensive. Pete and Sam, the guys who made up the rest of Self Defense, shared an over-priced, tiny flat closer to downtown. Trev had wanted us to share a place, too, but that had been the easiest ‘fuck no’ ever. If I didn’t have somewhere to hide out in—just me, my guitar, and my dog—I would lose what was left of my sanity.

  The hotels our manager had booked for Self Defense’s first big West Coast tour didn’t allow eighty-pound dogs, and saying ‘fuck no’ to leaving Kitty behind in a kennel for two months was even easier than saying it to Trevor. So, she and I had been sharing a thin, lumpy mattress in a converted bus every night until the tour had ended two weeks ago. As uncomfortable as it had been, the bus was still a step up from sharing a room with a bandmate who rarely came home before dawn. And I knew that if Kitty ever got drunk and brought a woman home to hump her leg, she’d have been subtler about it than Trevor would be.

  Once Trev came out of his apartment, still wiping sleep from his eyes but already smiling, we took the stairs down to the lobby and then walked the ten blocks to the public basketball courts.

  As the band’s bassist, Trev had decided that basketball would increase our endurance for shows. As my best friend since before puberty, he’d decided playing at a public court might get us women. Not surprisingly, he ignored me when I pointed out that women who hung out at a park in the middle of the day were either moms pushing strollers or addicts waiting for their drug pusher.

  Trev didn’t care who they were, as long as they had breasts and recognized us from a gig or the band’s YouTube channel.

  Me? I cared. I cared a lot. Especially when, every once in a while, a woman I didn’t know, and who definitely didn’t know me, would follow me on the street or show up at my door. Trevor thought it was something to envy, no matter how many times I told him it freaked me the fuck out. I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if the band ever got really big.

  Even though Trevor joked that the occasional stares we got while walking down the street were directed at me and not us,
he loved it. If it were up to me, we’d never have posted anything on the internet, strangers wouldn’t know who the hell I was, and life would be about the music, not the fame.

  But it wasn’t up to me anymore. Thinking I was doing the right thing, I’d gone along with all of it, never imagining any of this actually happening. And who the fuck knew what the future might look like? All I knew was that there was no going back to the beginning when things were simple. When fame was so intangible I had no idea how much I would hate it.

  But Trevor wouldn’t have understood, even if I’d laid it all out for him. The band and the attention it brought him were all he wanted in life, everything he could’ve wished for.

  Unfortunately, I fucking loved the guy—when he wasn’t drinking. Since, at least lately, he started drinking immediately after our daily endurance training, I tried to stretch out our games for as long as possible. I swear it had nothing to do with me actually enjoying myself or even that Trevor’s current endurance needs consisted of standing absolutely still and plucking strings while I jumped, sang, and ran around the stage to get the crowd going.

  * * *

  We scored an open court at the back of the park, far away from the groups of guys who really knew what they were doing. I tied Kitty’s leash to a pole so she could wander around a ten-foot radius while we played. When she finished exploring, she usually watched us make fools of ourselves, scratched the occasional itch, and napped.

  As soon as Trevor got winded and needed a break, he stopped to admire the other, better players. “Think we’ll ever be that good?”

  “No. But if you really want to try, we’ll have to give up on music and devote all our time to the game.”

  “That’s never going to happen. The only reason I get laid occasionally is because of the band. Self Defense is my golden ticket. Someday, I’ll write a tell-all autobiography and call it Trevor Finley and the Pussy Factory.”