Follow Me(14)

The dinners were so formulaic that I could predict the menu, conversation, and how much my mother would drink down to the smallest margin of error. So when Simon’s wife, Leigh, turned to me and asked whether I was seeing anyone, I wasn’t surprised and had my standard answer about focusing on my career ready to go.

Before I could open my mouth, Leigh’s seven-year-old daughter, Esther, interjected, “Why do you always ask this? You know he just drives everyone away.”

Leigh had the decency to look mildly embarrassed—after all, they were almost certainly her words that Esther was parroting—while everyone else simply nodded in agreement.

“Actually,” I said, slicing my steak and dreaming of instead slicing off one of Esther’s fat fingers, “I’m sort of seeing someone.”

Silence descended. I put the steak in my mouth and chewed.

“That’s great,” Leigh finally said, her tone a little too earnest.

Beside her, Tag’s wife, Arielle, smirked, her expression calling me a liar.

She was wrong. I was, technically, seeing Audrey. Maybe I wasn’t seeing her in the precise sense that Leigh meant, but it wouldn’t be long until things changed.

“Oh yeah?” Tag said, cutting his eyes at Arielle.

“Yeah,” Simon echoed. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

I shook my head resolutely. I couldn’t trust my family with so much as a crumb of information. I knew they’d find a way to ruin things.

“Come on, Peanut,” Arielle taunted, using the infantile nickname I had repeatedly requested they retire. “What’s the big deal?”

Underneath the table, I balled up my fists and squeezed, nails digging into my palms. The pain steadied me and made me less inclined to grab Arielle by her yellow hair extensions and smash her face into the good china.

“Yeah,” Tag agreed. “You can tell us.”

“Come on now, everyone,” Leigh said. “Let’s leave poor Peanut alone. Look how embarrassed he is. His cheeks are so red!”

She smiled at me sympathetically, and I hated her. I hated all of them, my smug brothers with their sycophantic wives and horrible children and my disinterested, image-obsessed parents. I dug my nails deeper into my palm and blinked back dark, rage-filled thoughts.

“We’re just having fun,” Tag said. “Peanut can take a little fun. Can’t you, Peanut?”

I couldn’t open my mouth or a primal scream would come out. My nails bit through my flesh and I smiled tightly at my brother as blood trickled from the wounds.

At the head of the table, my mother rose. “Can I get anyone another drink?”

? ? ?

AS USUAL, THE family retired to the back porch for after-dinner cordials and dessert. Also as usual, Leigh and Arielle declined dessert and disappeared to watch the children, while my mother fell asleep in her drink and my father and brothers dissected something they read in the Wall Street Journal. As they debated financial terms I had no familiarity with, I excused myself to the restroom. No one even looked up.

Passing the open door to the family room, I heard Arielle’s nasally voice say, “It’s just so obvious that he’s making it up.”

I halted, veins alighting with anger.

“Oh, come on,” Leigh said. “That’s not fair. Why shouldn’t he see someone? He’s a good-looking guy. I really thought things were going to work out with—”

“Yeah, but they didn’t,” Arielle interrupted. “And his looks will only fool a girl for so long. You know as well as I do that there’s something off about him. You remember what happened when—”

Blood roared in my ears and I clenched my fists, briefly indulging in the fantasy of putting my hands around Arielle’s spray-tanned throat and squeezing until there was nothing left in her. I imagined her face turning red, and then blue, as she gasped and choked, pleading with me. Maybe she wouldn’t dismiss me so easily when I held her life in my hands.

But I wouldn’t do that, of course. It was just another totally normal, inappropriate thought, the kind born of healthy resentment. With my head held high, I walked past the family room, past the bathroom, and out the front door.





CHAPTER ELEVEN





CAT


I had been eyeing the partnership ever since I first walked through the polished mahogany doors of Barker & Liu, LLP, four years ago. I knew reaching its pinnacle would be no cake walk—across all offices internationally, the law firm made fewer than twenty partners annually, and only one or two were women. The road to the top was steep and packed with obstacles, but as my father always said, nothing worth having was easy.

“Not easy” was putting it lightly. Being named partner would require an almost inhuman dedication to the job. The hours were long—I ate most of my meals at my desk and worked through the night a few times per year—and unrelenting. Most people couldn’t handle it. They burned out; a lucky few escaped to cushy corporate jobs while the majority moved to government work or smaller firms, taking the substantial pay cut in exchange for a good night’s sleep and time with their families.

That wouldn’t be me. I could sleep when I was dead, and I had no family clamoring for my presence. I had exactly one social obligation: I joined my friends for bar trivia on Thursday nights. We’d been going to the same cheesy sports bar since the summer I graduated law school, when my friend Priya suggested its trivia night as a much-needed sanity break from studying for the bar exam. The idea of drinking pitchers of domestic beer and thinking about trivialities when I should be studying the rules of evidence made me break out in hives, and so I planned to skip it . . . until Connor asked if he would see me there.