Page 63 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

“I looked like a complete asshat,” I say.

I wonder in which way I mean this: the situation with the client, or the uncontrollable sobbing while I wailed on a punching bag with my co-counsel.

At one point, before I fled the dirty sock smell to sit out here and catch my breath, Quentin pulled me into his arms and squeezed, but somehow it didn’t feel like a hug. It was something unto itself, like he saw my walls crumbling and was trying to fortify me. Our height difference was just enough that his mouth pressed against my forehead, but it wasn’t a kiss. It was… reassurance, maybe? He was only there for a breath, long enough to ensure I wasn’t going to collapse without him, and then he let go.

“I think I need some air,” I murmured. He nodded that he would meet me outside, and now here he is, sitting on this bench beside me like he never almost-hugged or almost-kissed me a few minutes earlier.

“You?” he scoffs now. “She’s the one who showed up looking like she thought our office was the goddamn racquet club.”

I rub my hands over my face again. “This has nothing to do with her clothes.”

He gives me a knowing look, settling back with a sigh. “Her kid?”

I drag my gaze further down the sidewalk, where a girl plays a harmonica on a street corner by a pay-to-park lot, occasionally coaxing passersby into giving her tips via Venmo. It’s a lonely, midnight train kind of sound that wrenches through my chest.

“She was just sitting there,” I say, “and the more her mom talked, the easier I could see her whole damn childhood lining up. And something in me just…” I shake my head. I can’t believe I’m telling him this. The truth of it burns across my face. “I saw her and suddenly I was seven years old.”

This admission stretches between us. He doesn’t attempt to fill the silence that follows. He doesn’t seem bothered by it either. I can feel his gaze trace the line of my profile, out of my periphery.

“Your parents had a bad divorce,” he guesses.

“My parents had the bad divorce. Seriously, I do this for a living and I’ve still never seen one quite like it. It dragged, and it was dirty. Both of them hatching petty, elaborate plots. Blaming the other for everything that ever went wrong: a dead car battery, a leaky dishwasher, the actual rain on my mom’s wedding day, when she remarried. It’s been almost twenty-five years, but you’d think it was yesterday, listening to the way they still snipe at each other. And I’ve always been right in the middle.”

“I’m sorry. That’s rough,” he says.

I sigh. I sound like a petulant kid. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I turned out fine. More than fine. But in the moment – all those years when you’re trapped there… At some point, somebody has to be willing to say something, ya know?”

He gives me a slow nod. “Yeah, I do. And I think, today, that somebody was you. But for some reason, you don’t seem happy about it.”

I sink against the back of the bench and squint into the sunlight.

“I’ve been rejected by a client before, but it’s never been so…”

“Loud? Personal? Public?”

“Yes. Thank you. I’d almost forgotten,” I deadpan, cutting him a look. “God, I wonder how long until this makes it to the partners? The board?” I groan. “You’re probably downright giddy about this, aren’t you?"

“Seriously?” he laughs. “I want the partnership, sure, but I don’t plan to win it on a technicality. Plus, if the board is worth half a shit, they’ll admire your audacity.”

I laugh in spite of myself. “My audacity?”

“I’m serious,” he says. “You take bold risks. You stand up for people. You’re not afraid to make a big embarrassing scene.” He nudges me with his shoulder. “Anyone would be lucky to have you on their side, Heidi.”

“Then why do I feel like I majorly fucked up?”

“As the Maxwell family’s reigning fuckup, I can assure you that this is definitely not major,” he says. “So you told someone that dragging her kid into the middle of a divorce was a dick move? Good! It’s when you can sit there and not say anything that you should probably start to worry.”

“Thanks,” I say weakly. Then, “You don’t seem like much of a fuckup.”

“I know a few people who could make some pretty compelling arguments.”

“You didn’t steal that car,” I point out.

“I didn’t,” he shrugs. “But honestly, that was just one thing in a long line of fuck-uppery.”

“Is this some sort of character flaw I should know about?”

“I dunno. I like to think I outgrew it, maybe,” he says, scrubbing a hand up the back of his hair. “When I was growing up, my older brother was the shining star, and I was… the other brother. The ‘why can’t you be more like your brother’ brother. That label was so hard to peel off eventually I tried to own it. After the incident with the car, I kind of spiraled. I spent a few years playing the party boy. Failed royally at my first go-round at college. Spent way more time funneling cheap beer than going to class.”

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