Page 42 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

He sinks into the armchair opposite my desk with a frustrated sigh. I wonder now if this is what Erving meant that first day, when he advised Quentin to put aside personal pursuits. I’d assumed maybe he’d been alluding to me, somehow, or to the fledgling relationship Quentin and I had flirted with. This makes more sense: a crusade for the common good. Some sort of savior complex.

“That’s got nothing to do with this,” he says.

“Good,” I nod, “because I need to know that your focus is on our client – even if, somehow, the things that Gigi is saying about him are true. You’ve got to have your head in the game, or trust me, Mike Murdock will eat you alive in front of the jury. He’ll enjoy it, too. He does it precisely, piece by piece, like he’s Hannibal fucking Lector.”

Quentin grimaces. “Thanks for that mental image.”

“I’m just saying.”

“You’re saying you don’t care if our client is the kind of person who takes pleasure in making someone else’s life a living hell,” he says. The casual accusation dripping from his tone slips under my skin, like the edge of a well-placed blade.

“I’m saying that I’ve heard couples accuse each other of much, much worse,” I say sharply, “and I refuse to believe that any of that is my fault. Marriage isn’t a fucking fairy tale. If you want to play the hero, go back to Texas.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to forget them. I’m losing control of this situation. I’m letting my emotions get in the way. I expect a counter strike, but it doesn’t come. Quentin’s gaze is intensely focused on me now, something akin to shock, similar to when he gasped to the surface after I pushed him in the pool.

Now is not the time to be thinking about him in the pool.

I swallow past the tightness in my chest and summon a sense of measured calm.

“What I mean to say,” I continue, “is that these things can bring out the worst in people. We’re dealing with people’s money, their insecurities, their broken hearts. Even the best-intentioned people can become unrecognizable in these situations. That’s life. I’m not condoning it. But I also can’t take responsibility for the fact that sometimes people screw each other over. That’s not my job. All I can do is attempt to conduct this case with integrity. It’s the only thing that’s within my control. And if you let them get the better of your emotions, we’re going to lose control of this case.”

I’m worried that my voice is shaking. I know my eyes have started stinging, which probably means I look like I’m about to cry. The last thing I plan to do is cry in front of Quentin Maxwell.

“You’re right,” he says. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry.”

He looks at me in a way that makes my heart hammer around in my ribcage. The danger of crying increases tenfold. I make it a point to look away, staring down at my notes, or really anywhere except at him. This is no place for heart-fluttering, fall-into-your-arms feelings because a guy let his gaze dance across my face like I’m some sort of mystifying, beautiful, broken ass puzzle he’d love to piece back together. I can hold my own pieces together. My will to hold everything together is like high-powered super glue. I could patent this shit.

“It’s fine,” I offer reflexively.

“It’s not fine,” he says. “That’s why I apologized.”

“Okay,” I say briskly. “I accept your apology.”

I busy myself with gathering notes for my next meeting. I hope it will hurry him out, but he lingers. He drags another beleaguered hand across his face.

“So, now that we have all this… new information, what are we going to do?”

As much as I’m ready to end this conversation, he has a point. I sink my head between my hands, threading my fingers into my hair to massage the tightness from my scalp. Eventually, I sigh, straightening up. As with most arduous journeys, the only way out is through.

“I think,” I tell him, “that it’s time to find the first Mrs. Glass.”

11.

With my shoes slapping the pavement to the rhythm of 90s hip hop in my headphones, it’s easier to let everything else fall away.

No mountain of work to be done on a dozen cases.

No pressing need to lock down my social media accounts or consider hiring someone to manage my online presence.

No precariously looming partnership decision.

On these early summer evenings, it feels like it’s just me, the sinking sun, and the balmy breeze coming off the Mississippi. I jog the sidewalks of downtown to the paved paths of the manicured riverside parks. I pass the slow-moving barges and the long-armed laurel oaks, the men who toast me with their paper-bag-wrapped twenty ounce cans and the couples who cruise by with strollers, past the bramble of blackberry bushes clinging to a forgotten chain link fence near the bridge, before eventually looping back again. In these moments I feel strong and self-sufficient, moving forward with nothing more than pumping blood and thumping bass humming in my ears, propelling me through the world like I could forge a path anywhere, all on my own.

Of course, I’m also an avid consumer of murder podcasts and forensic investigation TV shows, with a higher than average distrust of most people, so I’m not actually running alone. I don’t know the statistics about the likelihood of being assaulted when you’re a jogger versus a non-jogger, but I do know that the stories that include elements like “woman” and “jogging” and “alone” hit way too close to home, so maybe this is how I ended up as a member of Best Workout, Bar None. I’m a few paces behind the folks training for a half-marathon, a few ahead of the ones who drank too much the night before, and about to lap the ones that consider this less of a jogging group and more of a walk-and-talk. I’ll socialize later, when we’re all sweat-drenched and endorphin-buzzed, soaking up the AC of our group’s namesake dive bar and catching up on the week.

Is there really any other way to make friends as an adult, besides picking an arbitrary task, putting it on a twice-a-week schedule, and offering discounted drinks?

(Probably not.)

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