Page 4 of The Suit

The door didn’t close behind her because the man himself arrived, his wide grin telling me he’d received a scowl from Joan, as was her way. We’d made it our mission to get a smile, and it would happen one of these days. Murray said he saw it once, although we weren’t sure whether to believe him because it seemed wholly unlikely.

“Well, if this doesn’t look like the start of a group therapy session, I don’t know what does.” He sat down in the chair next to Murray, placing a large bag on the floor. “You’d better not have got to the good stuff without me.”

I rolled my eyes. “We haven’t.”

“Good. Joan’s bringing me a coffee, then we can begin,” he said just as she walked through the door and placed it on the table in front of him.

“Thanks, Joanie, you’re the best.” He grinned up at her only to be ignored as she walked out and closed the door behind her.

He gave a quiet chuckle into his coffee as he sipped, then placed it down again, sat back and pinned me with the same look Murray had fifteen minutes earlier. “Start then…”

I groaned. “Where exactly? She’s still the same nightmare she’s always been. Nothing has changed.”

“Remind me how you got yourself into this mess again.”

“Come on, Pennington, do keep up…” Murray scolded.

“What?!” he huffed. “I know the gist but there’s been a lot going on this month, what with you and your dating life, which I take is now sorted given that impossibly smug expression on your face. Only one of us can have an existential crisis at a time. Now yours is done, it’s Raferty’s turn.”

Penn had a point.

I took a deep breath, halting the infuriation from further spiking my blood stream as it did every time I thought about this goddamn situation. “I got myself into this mess through alcohol and the ability to hold out against my mother for only a finite amount of time.” I sat back up again with a groan and faced Penn. “Remember she cornered us at the Picasso gala a month ago?”

He should remember seeing as it had coincided with the exact moment he was about to make a move on Sienna Arden, some model-socialite-heiress he’d had his eye on for a while. Except my mother had swooped in, requested her favor one more time, then left having got exactly what she’d come for, and taken Sienna with her... something Penn had held me personally responsible for, for the entirety of the following week until he’d finally finished what he’d started, and managed to hook up with her.

“Yeah…” He scratched his beard as his lip twitched, “that reminds me, I should probably give Sienna a call. See if she’s up for another go round.”

“Penn, focus…” I waited until he’d stopped reminiscing. “Anyway, one of her friends is getting divorced, and I’d kept saying no because I don’t do divorces, and someone at the firm could quite easily do it. But then at the gala she’d told me this friend was divorcing Johnson Maynard.”

“Whoa. Johnson Maynard? How the fuck did I miss this?” Murray pinned Penn with a look that told him he knew exactly how he’d missed it. “Yeah, okay.”

“When I went into work the next day I got my team digging into it, and they found out she was the opposing counsel.”

“Least you only have to do it over video conference. You can always cut her off and blame it on sketchy internet.”

I wish I could blame it on sketchy internet. I wonder if sketchy internet would have quelled my rage following this morning’s match. My lips twitched at the thought of cutting her off mid-rant. Sadly, of the three of us, luck seemed to favor Penn.

“No, I can’t! It’s here! In my fucking city! She got transferred from Chicago!”

His eyes were in danger of falling out of his head with how wide they’d shot open. “Holy fuck! You actually saw her in person?”

“Yep.” The pop of the p would have echoed impressively around a room that wasn’t quite as cushioned as this one.

Penn leaned forward in his chair, his face filled with an unparalleled level of delight; one I hadn’t seen in him since the Yankees last won the World Series. “Today was the first time you’ve seen her since college?”

“Yep…” I nodded slowly as he burst into laughter, his head thrown back with a loud guffaw.

“Fucking hell.”

“I know.”

“Did she know you were going up against her?”

I shrugged and picked up my coffee which I’d been too distracted to drink only to find it had cooled to below tepid, so put it down again. “All the files were sent over for disclosure last week so she must have seen my name on top, but I don’t know if she knew before then. I’ve had a month to prep and pray my worst nightmare wasn’t about to come true.”

“What did she look like? Had she changed?” Murray asked.

“She was always hot,” Penn added unhelpfully before I could think about it, let alone answer.

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