Page 2 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

“What about you? Is there anyone special in your life? Do you think there’s a happily ever after in the cards for you?”

“I think it’s important, especially for women, to remember that there’s more than one kind of happy ending. Even when it comes to relationships, sometimes the happy ending is… well… the ending.”

Another message buzzes against my wrist, and this time I check it. It’s from my firm’s best and most criminally underrated P.I., Angela. She’s my favorite because – irony of ironies – I'm the only one who has seemed to notice how easily women of a certain age tend to stop being noticed. All her message says is, 911.

I miss Jeanine’s next question as another message swoops in, this time with an address. As cryptic as this is, I don’t need anything more. I’m already wiping my mouth with a napkin, gathering my bag, and forcing myself away from the promise of warm, savory, cheese-smothered pollo adobe. My stomach groans in protest. Jeanine is watching me, dumbfounded.

“I hate to do this,” I tell her, taking a final sip of my citrusy-sweet water, “but something’s come up. You can call my office to reschedule?”

At this point, she just laughs. “Would it do any good?”

“Hey, we all do what we’ve gotta do, right?”

***

I push my sunglasses into my hair as I step into the dim ambiance of Maestoso, with my heels clicking purposefully along the black and white art deco tile. It’s barely seven o’clock, but a collection of suits is holding down the bar for happy hour, the tables are full with dinner reservations, and a big movie screen near the back plays one of those old films with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Later, people will crowd the palm-ringed dance floor and laugh as they stumble through choreographed moves from another decade. This early though, only a few couples sway in time to the jazzy tune.

The hostess greets me with an expectant smile. I spot my mark at a corner booth before she can ask if I’m dining in.

“I’m meeting someone,” I tell her without slowing down.

After the past couple of weeks, I’d recognize that glossy black hair skimming those slumped, T-shirt clad shoulders anywhere. From across the room, you’d almost think he was right around thirty instead of over fifty. You also might assume he drinks too much whiskey, works part-time at a record store, and resides in his mother’s basement like a cardboard box of discarded adolescent dreams.

You’d be right about the whiskey.

Within moments, I’m sliding into the vinyl horseshoe bench seat beside him.

“Teddy,” I sigh. “We talked about this.”

Music mogul Theodore Glass smiles at me as though I’m a delightful surprise who definitely isn’t here to call him on his bullshit. He raises his martini to me in toast, though it only contains a few drunken olives, sloshing about in a thimble-full of booze.

“Heidi!” he says, in his signature husky baritone, grinning like we’re old friends. “You want a drink?”

I smile evenly. “I want to know what you’re doing here.”

Of course, I already know the answer to this. Anyone in this restaurant could easily follow his gaze – the one that keeps darting to a table across the room that is hosting a large family dinner, where everyone’s favorite influencer Gigi Russo is holding hands with a clean-cut guy in golf slacks and a polo. The stack of gifts near the end of the table makes this gathering feel like a birthday celebration. There’s a white-haired woman sitting at the head who looks like someone’s grandmother. For all I know, it’s her birthday celebration.

I can already imagine the clickbait headlines: Teddy Glass crashes woman’s ninetieth birthday dinner in a drunken rage!

Thankfully, none of them seem to notice us – yet – but something about the way that Gigi is laughing like she’s on camera gives the distinct impression she knows she’s got an audience, and the way her hand smooths across the golf pro’s thigh means that – even though her socials have over a million followers – the only audience this is intended for is Teddy.

When the divorce filing came across my desk, I could’ve said no. Maybe, given the precarious swarm of memes and hashtags already surrounding the case, I should’ve said no. I already have a full caseload, a new team of summer interns I'm trying to bring up to speed, and a commitment to teach my twelve-year-old Girls Going Places mentee Kamille how to swim by August. But then my boss sidled into my modern office and threw out the one word he knew I wouldn’t ignore: partnership.

Everyone has that thing that makes them tick, and it is no secret this is mine. I’ve been working towards this ever since I joined the firm as a tenacious twenty-five-year-old, and seven years later, I still haven’t taken my foot off the gas. It’s a popular opinion that I don’t care who I have to run over to get there; I think most of those people wouldn’t care so much if it weren’t for the fact there is a woman driving the car.

“Okay, I know this looks bad,” Teddy defends. “And I know you’re disappointed –”

“I’m not disappointed.”

“-- but god. It’s just not fair, ya know? She gets him. She gets my studio. Gets the whole damn city, it feels like. And I get nothing.”

I peg this mood as sulky. I can do sulky. I settle my designer purse that only contains a laptop and a collection of fancy pens onto the seat beside me and do my best to soften.

“Hey,” I soothe. “You don’t get nothing. I’m on your side, remember? You’re literally getting everything: the house, the cat, that badass business you’ve spent every waking hour of the past thirty-some-odd years building up. It’s all yours. Assuming that you don’t commit felony assault in front of all these people.”

“Honestly, assault sounds like the better choice right about now,” he says, fingering the stem of his empty martini glass in a way that makes me acutely nervous. I slide it away from him under the guise that I’m going to the bar to grab a refill. I’m not. I’ve already got plans for procuring the world’s largest bottle of water, closing his tab, and threatening the bartender with a lawsuit if he serves him anything else. Where is his damn publicist?

“C’mon, don’t be like that,” I tell him. “You’ve got your whole amazing life ahead of you. She’s got genital herpes and a truckload of debt from a sordid affair that will probably haunt her for the rest of her days.”

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