My mouth fell open. Was I more angry or shocked? I couldn’t tell, but I knew I would punch him if my family weren’t already swimming in bad press. That was beyond the pale. The arrogance of him was shocking.
“You want to date me?” I spit out.
“I wouldn’t go that far. I’d like to sleep with you and am willing to check all the civilized boxes to get from point A to B.”
“Did you use that line on C—”
“No. I didn’t have to.”
I tipped my shades down, half smiling. “Funny, you didn’t seem so eager to be with me when we were in the sauna together.”
“The sauna was a badly plotted scheme. Not to mention I didn’t want to be within the gray area of infidelity. Now that’s out of the way . . .”
“You don’t even like me.” I threw my arms in the air, exasperated. I began pacing the sidewalk, ignoring the curious gazes of people around us. Christian looked more than comfortable, like he was used to pushing people into corners.
“I don’t have to like you to want to bed you. I’d think you’d be familiar with the concept of hate fuck by your fairly advanced age.”
“And how would you know what my fairly advanced age may be?” I stopped, turning to look at him. I saw it then. Just a flash of an oh-crap expression, of someone who’d said something he shouldn’t have, before his face smoothed back to normal.
“I know everything about everyone concerning my cases.”
“If you think I’ll sleep with someone who is trying to make my father go bankrupt, you need a reality check with a side of therapy.”
“So it’s a yes, then.”
“Don’t come here again, Christian.”
With that, I turned around and pushed the entrance door to my building.
I went back to the office, tripping over the stairs at least three times. My mind was jumbled. With Christian, with Dad, and with my parents’ Molotov cocktail of a marriage. When I pushed the door open, I was met with Jillian’s stony face. She was holding her briefcase, her lipstick freshly applied, signaling me she was on her way out.
“You forgot about our meeting with ShapeOn. They just called us saying you are thirty minutes late.” Jillian tried to keep her voice down but failed, as she did often when she was upset. I guessed I had forgotten to put it in my planner. Crap. That was the second client I’d messed up this month.
“I . . .” I trailed off, thinking of something to say. Jillian shook her head, pushing past me as she went out the door. I stood rooted to the threshold, wondering what the hell happened.
I tried to reach my father on his cell for the rest of the day. He didn’t pick up. The truth was closing in on me like an envelope, sealed around me one inch at a time.
By the time I left work for the day, I decided desperate times called for desperate measures and called my mother. She answered on the third ring, sounding frostier than usual.
“Arya. You are calling me out of nowhere, so I’m going to go ahead and assume you want to ask about your father.”
Hello to you too, Mother.
“I don’t remember you calling to check in on me either,” I replied, because frankly, I was fed up with her attitude. “And yes. I am, in fact, calling to ask about Dad. He’s not answering.”
I heard her moving across her grand living room, her designer slippers gliding over the marble. Her pocket-size dog was barking in the background.
“Your father has been holed up in his study with his lawyers all day, conducting a meeting I want absolutely nothing to do with. The new evidence and plaintiffs will definitely make things more difficult. Can you imagine what I’ll have to face when I go to the country-club luncheon next week? I’m thinking of canceling the entire thing. Dick pics, Arya! How absolutely tacky.”
Dick pics. That was one term I’d never thought I’d hear my mother say.
Again, she made this about her, not him. I reached my apartment building’s door, punched in the code, and pushed it open.
“Do you think he did it?” I repeated my question from our brunch. Only this time, I wasn’t met with amusement anymore but somber silence. I never could read Mother. Not enough to know what she was thinking, anyway. If she had an obvious answer to my question, I didn’t know.
“It doesn’t matter, does it? We’re his family. We must stick by him.”
Must we? I thought. Even if he hurt others badly? Maliciously?
I pushed my apartment door open, then took off my heels and stared at the antique shelves on my walls. They were full of pictures of me and Dad from vacations, charity balls, and holidays. None with my mother. She never tagged along for anything. Dad had raised me all by himself.