When she stood, they looked at each other in surprise. It was the surfer boy from Amy’s party. The sleazy surfer boy, Olivia reminded herself.
“Well, well,” he said, shaking her hand firmly. He smiled a broad white-toothed smile and showed her into his office.
“I was supposed to see Ellen,” Olivia said.
“She’s on vacation. Cancun, if you can believe it. It’s probably a hundred degrees in the shade.”
He bothered her—the crinkly laugh lines at his eyes and those shoulders that hardly seemed contained under his suit jacket.
“You’re frowning,” he said. “Maybe you like Cancun in July?”
“No. I don’t know. It’s not Cancun—”
He raised one eyebrow. “No?”
“It’s that I can’t believe you’re a lawyer,” Olivia said. He should be a construction worker on a television commercial, a glamorized version of a working-class guy, she thought.
“That’s because you think of me as some idiot who came up to you with a bad line at a party,” he said. “Or worse, you think of me as a guy who hits on women at parties when he’s actually with someone. But I can explain. I tried to find you and do that then, but it seems you had already left.”
“Actually,” Olivia told him, “I don’t think of you at all.”
She shifted her weight uncomfortably. The truth was, Olivia had thought of this surfer boy. Up in her hot, airless bedroom, trying to sleep, he’d popped into her mind, dressed in the ridiculous Jams he’d had on and the brightly colored T-shirt. After that night she’d heard Ruby and Ben, Olivia had ached for someone to moan with. She’d tried to conjure David, but somehow the sex with him felt distant and meager compared to how much more of him she missed. No. What she longed for at night was simply fucking. And she was embarrassed, confronted with him now, that this surfer boy had been the focus of her fantasies lately. Touching herself so frantically, so desperately, burying her face in her pillow so that Ruby wouldn’t hear. Then feeling guilty afterward, and unsatisfied.
She shifted again, watched him shuffle some papers, his head bent in such a way that his profile looked almost appealing. All right, Olivia admitted. From this angle, he did seem harmless, like a guy you could have a beer with. Then her brain darted past a simple beer and again she imagined it: fucking him. She let out a weird little noise, like a seal barking.
Even now, as he looked up from his papers, puzzled, the guy made her irritable.
“Do you need some water?” he asked.
“Why would I need water?” Olivia asked crossly.
“Well, you barked or something,” he said.
“I’m perfectly fine.” She held her purse in her lap, the way her grandmother used to, as if someone might rush in and try to take it from her. Awkwardly, she set it on the floor.
“Well,” Jake said. He used the word well too much—a verbal tic, like saying uh, or like. “You’ll be happy to know that I’m just helping Ellen out while she’s away. You don’t need my type of lawyering.”
Relieved, Olivia relaxed a bit.
“I’m sure you’re very good,” she said, reading the framed diplomas behind him. Did that say Yale? She leaned forward for a better look. It did. Yale.
“I am very good,” Jake said, following her gaze. “These really are mine.”
Olivia blushed. “Anyway, Ellen is the one I need to see. When is she coming back, exactly?”
“Well,” Jake said, and Olivia wondered how he got through Yale Law School saying well all the time. “Ellen’s getting back in two weeks and she can handle all of your estate issues. I do family law. Like Amy’s divorce.”
“You do family law? But I spoke with Ellen on the phone!”
Jake shrugged. “She might have been covering for me.”
“Shit,” Olivia muttered, “I need to see you.”
“Family law? You have kids?”
She shook her head. “I want to adopt a baby. A particular baby.”
“Whose?”
“The mother is fifteen. Alone. She wants me to adopt the baby.” Remembering Rachel’s attitude, how inept she had made Olivia feel, Olivia added, almost defensively, “Of course, I’ve already talked to someone at Social Services—”
“What about the father?” Jake said, taking notes.
“Gone,” Olivia told him.
“But he’ll sign away his paternal rights?”
Another obstacle, Olivia thought, imagining Ben refusing to do it. Hadn’t Ruby said their fight was over this very thing? She swallowed hard.
“Olivia?” Jake said.
“I think I need a parental consent form or something. Then I can go.” She half-rose from her chair, looking around as if there might be stacks of these forms lying around, the way the IRS kept piles of tax forms.
“Whoa,” Jake said. “Can you bring the mother in here? And the father?”
Olivia sank back into her chair and, from seemingly nowhere, began to cry.
“Don’t badger me,” she said, though he wasn’t badgering her, of course.
Now Jake was hovering around her, clearly uncomfortable with a crying woman in his office.