The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(2)

Nicole, the generically pretty blond associate sitting to his left, watches him run a hand through his thick hair, which is somehow always perfect and a little fucked-up at once, as if it was professionally done but then mussed when he banged the hairdresser afterward. Beneath the table, my foot taps with impatience.

“Ben,” Nicole says, after clearing her throat, “I was at Adney’s Tavern this weekend. I thought you might pop in.” The words sound practiced, as if she rehearsed them in the mirror all morning. She’s so fucking infatuated that she probably did.

Behave, Gemma. I pick up my phone and start looking at shoes online.

Ben’s distractedly flipping through a file. “I went home for the weekend.”

“Home?” I murmur, glancing at him. “I didn’t know humans were allowed to jaunt back and forth over the River Styx like that.”

His eyes raise to mine. His mouth twitches. “There’s a small toll. It’s really quite civilized.”

Don’t laugh, Gemma. Do not laugh. I look down at my phone, ignoring the box of donuts someone’s shoved in front of me.

“Live a little, Gemma,” says Caroline Radner, who isn’t well-placed to provide advice, given she passed fifty a while ago and is never going to make partner. I’d planned to get some of the strawberries they always have at these meetings, and now I want to refuse even that on principle.

“Gemma can’t have sugar,” Ben says, his eyes alight. “She likes to keep her teeth sharp.”

“I imagine everyone familiar with dental hygiene hopes to keep their teeth sharp, Ben,” I retort.

“Ah, but you’ve got more than average, right?” he asks.

I narrow my eyes. The running joke, among pretty much everyone here, is that my vagina has teeth. The Castrator, they call me. In theory because I often represent women in custody disputes, and in truth because I won’t play the game—I don’t bake cupcakes and make cooing noises over pictures of everyone’s kids. If a man doesn’t bake cupcakes and make cooing noises, you know what they call him? Senior Partner. Ben hasn’t made cupcakes once. But men expect you to be more thoughtful than they are—softer, more accommodating. And when you are paid less than your peers, or assaulted on a date, or lose a promotion, they’ll tell you it was your fault—you were too soft, too accommodating.

They think it’s a slur when they refer to me as a castrating bitch, but all it says to me is that they’ve finally realized I’m not someone to fuck with. I was someone who was fucked with a lot, once upon a time. It won’t happen again.

Fields’ assistant, Debbie, steps to the front of the room and beside me, Terri discretely sets a timer. We have a running bet about how long Debbie will speak, because even the simplest statement can take thirty minutes in her capable hands.

I text Terri.

Me: Three minutes, thirty seconds.

Terri: Three minutes, forty seconds.

“So, I shouldn’t have to say this again,” says Debbie, “but I really need everyone to label food in the break room.”

It’s going to be a long one—I can already tell. I go ahead and slide Terri a five-dollar bill.

“So many containers look the same,” she continues. “I don’t want to accidentally eat your escargot when I brought in a tuna sandwich.”

I consider pointing out that you would have to be a fucking idiot to confuse escargot with a sandwich of any kind, but it would just give Debbie something more to talk about, which is the opposite of what I want.

“Anyway,” Debbie says, “you really need to label and it’s not hard to do. I like to use a piece of masking tape, and then I just write my name on there with a Sharpie.”

Debbie continues to explain, to a group of grown humans, how food is labeled. I sigh quietly, and Ben’s eyes flicker to mine, as if he finds my irritation amusing.

One day I’m going to light him on fire—we’ll see how much laughing he does then.

When she says labeling is really important for the third time—repetition is Debbie’s favorite conversational gambit—I have to tune her out and go to my happy place…Shoes. Shoes I will buy. Shoes I wish someone would make. Right now, I’m thinking about green suede heels I saw at Nordstrom. Some people might argue that a kelly-green suede shoe has limited usefulness, particularly when it costs five hundred dollars, but with enough rationalization, I can make the math work in my favor.

“You’re thinking about shoes again, aren’t you?” whispers Terri.

I give her a sidelong glance. “What else would I think about?”

“You’re young and gorgeous. You should be thinking about a hot guy walking out of your shower.”

“What hot guy? There certainly aren’t any here.”

Her eyes flicker toward Ben, but she knows better than to suggest him to me.

“Chris Hemsworth,” she replies, and I laugh quietly.

The statistical probability of Chris Hemsworth walking out of my shower is almost zero, and if it were to happen, I know exactly how it would end, because every attempt at a relationship since Kyle has ended in the exact same way: with him accusing me of being ‘dead inside’ or obsessed with work, which is what men say if you work harder than they do. Unlike shoes, which just exist to cradle you in their green suede bosom.