“We’re so fucked.”

Josh Malone’s familiar blond head appeared in the doorway of my office. He looked both ways down the hall before stepping in.

I rubbed my eyes, which were glazing over from reading the stacks of paper on my desk. It was turning into the longest Monday in history and somehow it was barely two pm. “What?”

“Chris Easterly,” he said, his voice low so anyone passing wouldn’t overhear. “They cut him loose this morning.”

“No shit.” A fist tightened in my gut.

“Shit,” Josh confirmed. He lifted two file boxes off a chair and set them on the floor with a thud. They joined the other dozen already piling up in my office like Tetris cubes. “Chris was billing higher than me. Higher than you. Everyone liked him. Clients, partners. Hell, even Price liked him,” Josh said, referring to the senior partner who, rumor had it, once smiled back in 1988. “Word is he fumbled on a depo last week.” Josh took a seat in the chair, carefully adjusting the cuffs of his dark Armani suit before folding his arms.

Being an associate in a legal practice was thankless. The first year out of law school you billed more hours per week than some of my undergrad classmates had spent awake. On top of it you were expected to be charming and social, work with the other associates but secretly find ways to undercut them. To show you were competitive.

Thank God it wasn’t like that with me and Josh.

“Why did we want to be lawyers again?”

Josh shook his head. “I don’t know, man. You work your ass off, telling yourself ‘one day soon.’ But it never lets up. How many more years of this? And if they’ve started cutting already, who’s next?”

There were six first-year associates, but by the end of the year, half of us would be gone.

“Could be any of us.”

“Yeah right. Any of us but you.” Josh grinned sardonically. “You could show up hungover at noon, puke on your desk, and then leave, and you’d still make it to next year.”

“I’m not immune to anything.” His comment irritated me. A lot of people thought I got special treatment, but Josh wasn’t a lot of people.

“Relax, Nate,” he said, raising his hand. “All I’m saying is your name’s gold.”

I was resisting the temptation to argue when a thought crossed my mind. “Wait. What happens to Easterly’s cases?”

Josh leaned forward and clasped his hands on the edge of my desk. “That, my friend, is the punchline. We get ’em. All of ’em.”

Of course they’d be split amongst the other associates. Like we didn’t already have enough to do.

I scrubbed a hand through my hair, a habit I’d picked up senior year of high school during SAT prep and never shaken. It was amazing I hadn’t made bald spots.

“Fuck me.”

“Sorry, princess, you’re too pretty.” Josh stood and leaned over, looking for the Carmelo Anthony bobblehead I’d kept on my desk since law school for luck. Today he was tucked behind a stack of papers. Josh flicked the doll, modeled after my favorite Knicks player, with his finger, sending it wobbling back and forth. “I bet Melo never had to put up with this shit.” My friend’s smile didn’t reach his eyes before he turned to leave.

I leaned back in my chair, imagining another week of late nights. The Yankees tickets I had for the weekend would have to go too. For the third time this season.

Plus there was the damn copyright case that’d been sprung on me. I didn’t know anything about copyright, but when Bryson had come in the door this week, my father had asked me to take it. And in this office? When my father called, you answered.

But even my dad couldn’t have known about the twist of fate that’d greeted me this morning.

I wasn’t a numbers guy, taking political science for my undergrad when lots of classmates opted for economics. Still, I estimated that the odds of running into her again were about one in a metric shit ton.

But there she’d been. Sitting across from me with the same eyes, same body, same fire. Spitting accusations at me like she was defender of the righteous and I was the villain of the piece.

Poetic justice, Nathan. I could hear my father’s words like he was there, like he knew. Although of course he couldn’t.

None of it mattered. She was just one more defendant. One more thing between me and what I’d always wanted. I would put her out of my mind like every other girl I’d so much as looked at in the last year. And forgetting her, ignoring her, would be just as easy.

So why did you give her the damn card? The silence that followed left me uneasy.

She’d ignore it. That, at least, was comforting.