Love Proof (Laws of Attraction)

Twenty-five

At the deposition in Billings, Montana that afternoon, Chapman rattled off his questions so quickly, Marcela looked like she was having a hard time keeping up.

“Where were you born—what is your work history—where did you go to school—did you graduate—who are your parents . . . ?”

At one point Joe finally had to say, “Off the record. Paul, you have to give her time to answer.”

“I thought we all wanted to speed it up,” he answered. “Isn’t that what you said, Sarah?”

“Asking only relevant questions would be a big help,” she said, “yes.”

“You do your job,” Chapman said, “I’ll do mine. Back on,” he told Marcela, then continued reciting questions from his notes.

Sarah resisted exchanging any kind of look with Burke, even if this one was justified by their work. Instead she resorted to writing the word ASS on her legal pad and then decorating the letters with dramatic shading and smoke rising out of the A and long tails growing from the Ss. She looped the tails into swirls and circles that then became sinister-looking eyeballs and grinning demons. Yes, she was really going to miss Chapman when he went.

“Hi, Ms. Harowitz,” she said when it was her turn. She read somewhere that people in the service industry were familiar with the “post-a*shole” customer experience. If someone has witnessed a store clerk or a barista being abused by the customer ahead, by the time the next person steps up, he or she bends over backward to be nice. “Sure! No problem. Whatever you can do.”

Sarah felt a little of that impulse now. Joe’s client had been very tolerant of what was truly a bad example of lawyering.

“Thank you for coming in today,” Sarah said. “I know you had to take time off of work, and we all really appreciate it.”

Chapman grunted.

“We won’t keep you much longer,” Sarah said. “I’m interested in just a few things. You said you received the hair iron for Christmas. How soon after that did you use it?”

“The next day, I think,” Joe’s client said. She still seemed tense from Chapman’s questioning, but Sarah hoped to see her relax soon. Being courteous and professional with a witness often seemed to have that effect. Sarah wondered if Chapman had ever tried it.

“How often do you have to straighten your hair?” She asked. “I do mine about every three days—more often if I’ve just worked out or I’ve gotten it wet.”

“Oh, this is relevant,” Chapman sneered. “Thanks for showing me how it’s done.”

Sarah ignored him. “So how often would you say you straighten yours?”

Now that it was simply a conversation—and about a topic both women had in common—Joe’s client opened up. Sarah wasn’t pretending: she genuinely wanted to know what steps Ms. Harowitz went through to wash, condition, dry, then iron her hair. It was just woman-to-woman for a while, both of them comparing stories about how difficult their hair had been all their lives, and what they’d gone through to try to tame it.

Chapman made no effort to hide his annoyance. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and kept shaking his head and smirking at Burke, as if the two of them agreed Sarah was wasting their time. Finally Chapman asked, “Are you two girls going over makeup tips next? Because Joe and I might as well grab a beer.”

He was too stupid to listen, Sarah thought. All the better for her and her case.

“You said the product caught on fire February thirteenth, right?” she asked.

Joe’s client nodded. “I wanted to do an extra good job on my hair that night. You know, for Valentine’s the next day.”

Sarah winced. “I’m so sorry.”

The woman seemed to appreciate a genuine human reaction, as opposed to Chapman’s robotic, “And then what happened . . . and then what happened . . . ”

Sarah consulted her notes. “So, assuming you first used the product on December twenty-sixth, and used it approximately every two days after that, it sounds like you used it about twenty-five times, total. Does that sound right?”

Ms. Harowitz shrugged and looked apologetic. “I never really counted it.”

Sarah accidentally glanced at Joe just then and saw him looking back at her with a curious expression. She had never gone this in-depth before, putting a specific number out there, on the record. So far she’d just been keeping that information in her notes.

“Thank you, Ms. Harowitz. That’s all I have. We appreciate your time and patience today.”

***

She had already sweated through two miles on the hotel treadmill that evening when her music cut out to alert her to a text:

The name of a different hotel. And a room number.

Sarah deleted it and kept on running.

This was the problem with reality, she thought. Once it started creeping back in, it tended to crowd out the fantasies altogether. And reality had been intruding on her thoughts more and more as the day progressed.

. . . an intimate personal relationship with the member . . .

What she and Joe had done was unethical. There was no other way to look at it. No exceptions, no gray area, none. No, “Oh, but we had a little wine,” or “It was my birthday,” or “I’m sorry, I was lonely, and opposing counsel was right there—have you seen him? That man is hot.” There wasn’t even an exception for taking up with former lovers rather than starting something new with someone else.

And that was just the legal side of it. What about the personal? Joe Burke was no friend of hers. Yes, he was outstanding in bed. Congratulations, here’s your medal. But it didn’t change the fact that he’d once stuck a blade in her heart and left it there. The scar tissue may have grown around it, but Sarah had felt the knife every time she even considered getting in too deep with another man. And now if that man was Joe Burke again, run far and run fast.

Sarah increased the speed on the treadmill. It was a start.

They would be back on an easier schedule the following week—easier for Sarah, anyway. There were more flights between places like Portland and Seattle, which meant they could fly every night after the depositions, instead of early in the mornings.

Which meant Sarah would never have a night free.

She picked up the pace and ran flat out for a mile. The sweat poured off her as her heart and lungs pumped. She would feel better in no time, she thought—exercise was always a great release.

Kind of like sex with Joe, her lascivious mind answered.

STOP. It was just one night of weakness, she reminded herself. She could live with that. She had made mistakes before—plenty of them, including falling for Burke in the first place. The key was not to wallow in them, but instead keep moving forward. Move forward and be careful never to repeat that same mistake.

The first step was forgetting the hotel and room number her brain had automatically memorized. The second was forgetting how absolutely perfect it felt to be in Joe’s arms again. To pick up where they had left off, as if they’d never been apart.

It was going to be a long night.

***

The Billings airport restaurant didn’t open until five AM. Sarah was still a few minutes early. She waited outside the door, hoping they had oatmeal.

The terminal was small enough that she knew there would be no hiding from each other. Marcela had already passed her with a yawn and the greeting, “Just one more morning like this, then we can sleep all weekend.” Chapman shuffled by without bothering to say anything. And then she saw Joe.

Damn it, why did he have to look like that? Sarah thought. Although Joe in a suit was nothing compared to him in jeans.

Sarah still had his hoodie. She’d forgotten about it until she unpacked her workout clothes the day before. Now it still sat in her bag, waiting for a convenient and covert time to give it back. She couldn’t exactly pull it out of her luggage and hand it to him now. If either Marcela or Chapman noticed, they might wonder.

The restaurant door opened behind her and Sarah quickly ducked inside.

But it was too much to think she would escape him.

“Morning,” Joe said, coming in behind her.

“Good morning,” she answered without turning her head. She concentrated on the menu, then ordered tea, a banana, and a bagel.

“Sleep all right?” Joe asked her. “I’ll take a coffee to go,” he told the server.

“Fine,” Sarah said. “You?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that.”

She listened for some tone in his voice, some hint of pouting or anger, but it didn’t appear to be there. He was as casual as if they were discussing the weather.

“Maybe tonight,” Joe said, and then left it at that. He paid for his coffee and told her he’d see her later.

While meanwhile Sarah’s heart beat at a staccato.

She sat at one of the tables and concentrated hard on spreading jam over her bagel. The bread was stale, but she ate it anyway. She needed something to do with her hands and her mouth.

Maybe tonight.

Her body buzzed at the mere suggestion.

See, this was the problem, she thought. You can’t have just one. So, tonight in some hotel room in Boise, Idaho. Tomorrow, somewhere else. Was this really what her life was reduced to? Sneaking around with Joe in whatever town they happened to be in, both of them filling up their idle hours with as much sex as they could fit in before they had to fall asleep and go back to work the next morning?

As opposed to what? Sarah asked herself. As opposed to returning to her hotel room alone every night, eating bad food from room service, reading through documents until she passed out and woke up to the alarm and rushed off to some airport to do it all over again?

Chapman had the right idea, getting someone else to do the dirty work. Sarah would have much preferred being one of the attorneys back in the office, sending out discovery requests without ever having to catch a flight and face another long, tiring day of depositions and being in the same room with Joe for six or seven hours, then having to walk away from him again. And again.

A text popped up on her screen.

Feel like takeout tonight?

Why did he have to make it sound so easy?

Sarah turned off her phone.

But then a minute later, turned it back on again.

And sat staring at the text for a long time before turning the phone off for good.