Going Nowhere
Kimberly Lauren
Copyright © 2012 Kimberly Lauren
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of the author, or as expressly permitted by law.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Damonza, Awesome Book Covers
Formatting by Hale Author Services
Chapter One
IT WAS LIKE being back in high school.
It was like every other day; my coworkers talked only to each other, barely noticing my existence. I took great pains to pretend I was absorbed by the court briefs on my desk, but I was actually listening to every word they said.
They were all going to John Martin’s tonight in the Gables. Nobody had invited me, which wasn’t a big surprise. Don’t get me wrong: they aren’t awful people. I was sure if I fished for an invite, I’d get one. I liked to think I wasn’t that awkward.
While I was obsessing over what everyone else was doing, I started doodling at the bottom of one of my note sheets. Maybe I should have gone to art school instead of law school; my drawing came out looking exactly like Max Walker, one of the other lawyers at the firm. Trim, expensive suit. Short, dark hair that was constantly ruffled. Piercing eyes that shone brilliantly without the aid of contact lenses.
Well... it needed a bit more to make it a perfect match. With a gleeful smile, I added horns to the top of his head and a spiky tail swirling around his legs. I drew a lovely pitchfork in Max’s hand and a ring of flames behind his grinning face. Perfect.
Then I saw Max approach from the corner of my eye and I shoved the drawing underneath the rest of the papers scattered across my desk, heart beating madly. I didn’t look up until he was beside me—another awkward habit of mine. My mind was a dark, complicated place.
Max leaned on the edge of my desk. “How is the research on the Connor case going?”
“Really well. There’s a lot to go over, though. I think I’ll be burning the midnight oil with this one,” I said with a smile.
“I believe it.” Max reached over and absentmindedly shuffled through the papers covering my desk. He found the drawing just as my lunch rose into my throat,.
“That isn’t mine.”
“Don’t be so modest.” He held the picture up to the light. “This really is quite magnificent. Were you influenced by Rockwell? Wyeth?”
“Both, in fact. I was also inspired by the chaotic relationship between light and dark when played out in the human psyche.”
“Hmm... fascinating.” He folded the sheet in half and put it in his pocket. “I’d better keep this as evidence. It’s so hard to get restraining orders nowadays.”
“You would know.”
Max had a special way of joking with me one minute, then changing back to all-business mode in an instant. “I wanted to talk to you about some things, Katherine.”
“Sure, of course.” I cringed inwardly. I often had to remind myself that Max was on the same level as me. He was a colleague, not a superior. He sure acted like he was above me, though.
“Are you okay? Your face got really red.”
“I’m fine. You were saying?”
He leaned on my desk in a way that brought his height closer to me since I was still sitting. Of course, since he was over six feet tall, it didn’t help that much. “It’s about the partnership. I don’t think it’s going to happen this year. Sorry. Neither of us are on the short list, from what I’ve been told.”
“Why? Who are they looking at?”
“Zoe Malone or Timmy Huntley.”
Two of the usual suspects in the over-sharing of fun weekends I was never invited to. Don’t even get me started on the Facebook pics, which always included a couple of the younger partners. Nothing illicit was going on there, of course, but they were the ones on the beach sipping mojitos while I put in extra hours at the office. Yet somehow, they always recorded the most billable hours (maybe the clients were partying with them, too) and turned up on the short list for partner.
That whole rant was in my head, of course. Out loud, I said, “Oh, okay. I guess you heard this from Sam?”
“Yeah.” Max and Sam were pretty good friends, even though Sam was a partner and Max was a lowly associate.
“Is it possible though? Even slightly?”
“Nothing is impossible until they vote. And you know when that is.”
Right when Sam got back from his annual cruise. Max was going with him and they’d be out of the office for an entire week. A week that I would probably spend obsessing and binge eating myself into a diabetic coma.
“So are you going to John Martin’s tonight?” Max asked, deftly changing the subject.
“No. Way too much to get done by Monday.” At least I could look like a dedicated worker instead of a pathetic loser. Again, just like high school.
“How about we plan for dinner together? You’ll need a break around seven, and I know a great new place.”
My stomach didn’t like that idea. “Um, you know, I wasn’t really going to eat. I mean... I have a meal in the fridge. I was going to eat here, then get right back to work. Thank you for asking, though.”
Max looked at me in a way that wasn’t unfamiliar. It was a combination of confusion and judgment. He didn’t voice any of this, though. He only said, “Some other time, then.”
As he walked away, I felt a little sick. I watched him for a bit. His suit was impeccably tailored and, unlike some of the lawyers in the firm, he looked really good in it. I didn’t know what his life was like outside of the office, but I assumed it was sophisticated. We liked to joke around together, but at the core of it, I’d always assumed he was too good for me.
I also hadn’t known if he’d been inviting me on a date or a business dinner. The confusion had made it impossible to respond.
Instead of trying to figure that out, I would stay in the office working until ten o’clock, hit up McDonald’s on the way home, then sit alone on the couch in my pajamas watching sitcoms I’d TiVoed during the work week. Don’t get me wrong, I’d probably enjoy myself, but it was the coward’s way out. It was safer than actually putting myself out there.
I pressed the spacebar on my laptop and looked at the clock on the upper right corner of the screen. It was now only three minutes until lunch. I willed the digits to change with telekinesis, but, unfortunately, my powers were weak.
Thank God it was Friday.
I leaned back on my hand-me-down couch and tucked my feet under a threadbare throw. I had a remote, my cellphone, a glass of water, and a pint of Häagen Dazs Coffee ice cream. What more could a girl want? I’d probably eat the entire pint in one sitting, and then wonder why I was organizing my closet at 3am.
As soon as I turned on the television, the phone rang. I cringed. Still clutching my pint, I checked the screen. An extremely necessary first step in order to avoid old boyfriends and my mother. Thankfully, this was none of those cases and I picked up on the third ring. “Miami Beach Police Station. How may I help you?”
“I’ve been molested!”
“How terrible, ma’am! Do you have a description of the suspect?”
“Well, he was white and kind of wispy.”
“Wispy?”
“It was a ghost... and well... actually, it was pretty good. I don’t know why I’m complaining.”
“Necrophilia is a very serious offense, ma’am, whether or not you enjoyed it.”
April
laughed. “Next time I’m going to call you from a blocked number.”
I tucked the phone between my shoulder and chin. “I would never answer. Picking up the phone before knowing who’s on the other end is Russian roulette. I don’t know how other people do it.”
“You mean normal people?”
“Exactly.”
She cleared her throat. “So I didn’t get to talk to you at work today. Are you a partner yet?”
“Hardly. And Max tells me it is unlikely at this point. Really puts a kink in the fifteen-year plan.”
“You and your fifteen-year plan.”
It wasn’t like I was obsessively anal and thought everything had to go exactly the way I’d planned—my goals were just important to me. I’d created each of them for a very specific reason. Starting from high school, it went like this:
Four years for Bachelor degree.
Three years for law school.
Three years to establish myself at a leading firm.
Make partner.
Knock their socks off for two years.
Have a baby.
Telecommute for a year while nurturing child.
Back to work and on my way to becoming a Supreme Court Justice by age thirty-five.
If I missed any of my deadlines, the whole house of cards started to collapse. Don’t even get me started on the whole ‘you need a husband before you have a baby’ thing. I knew there were some things I couldn’t control. I was hopeful that somewhere along the way, I’d find the right guy and that process would be happening in the background.
“You know who has the most sway,” April said, deftly interrupting my reverie.
“I know. Sam. Who happens to be friends with Max.”
April sighed. “They’re friends, but they’re not that close. And you know how weird Sam can be.”
“He asked me out, you know.”
April’s voice box was silent for a few beats. “Sam Goldblum asked you out?”
“No, Max did. To dinner. Tonight.”
It sounded like she exhaled into the receiver. “Since you’re home, I’m assuming you said no. Unless he took you for a quick bite at McDonald’s.”
“No, I went there by myself.”
“Oh, Kate. Why did you say no?” April asked. “I always thought he was cute, but he doesn’t know I’m alive.”
“Being on his radar isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He’s constantly harassing me about my performance.” Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I wondered if I resented Max’s attention or if I welcomed it.
“You can’t be doing that badly if he’s willing to spend some of his off-site hours with you.”
“Either that, or he thinks I’m easy.” As I laughed uncomfortably at that idea, I suddenly heard a very unwelcome sound coming from the direction of my lap. It was the spoon scraping against the bottom of the ice cream container. Darn. “Look, I have to go.”
“Why?”
“I’m out of ice cream.”
I heard April fiddling with something on the other end of the line. “I’ll let you go, then. Do me a favor and try to wait until next week before you buy more ice cream. Even if it’s on sale, don’t buy four pints and tell yourself you’ll save them. You won’t.”
“Okay, but how would that be doing you a favor?”
“I’m the one who has to be seen with you,” she said.
“Look, I don’t have a man or a cat and now you’re trying to take my ice cream away? Dream on.”
After I hung up with April, I stared at the ice cream carton. Every Friday night was the same. Alone with my junk food in front of the boob tube. I could hear the wall clock ticking away with each melancholy breath. Tick. Inhale. Tock. Exhale. My life felt as empty as my pint of Häagen Dazs. What harm would it have done to go out with Max?
I watched about twenty more minutes of TV before remembering that Walgreens sold ice cream and was open twenty-four hours. If I walked there and back, I’d burn enough calories to make up for the extra ice cream. After debating it for another fifteen minutes, I left.
Of course, I didn’t walk, and I didn’t only buy one pint. Double darn.
Chapter Two
IF I EVER got the partnership I so desperately craved, the first thing I was going to do was buy April a watch.
I clambered into her car. “You’re late.”
She wagged her finger at me. “Is that how you greet your best friend? No ‘how nice to see you’ or ‘don’t you look smashing?’ before launching into your tirade?”
I quickly swept my eyes over what April was wearing. Tube top, micro-mini (she’d be yanking it down all night), and knee-high boots. Basically the same thing she wore every Saturday. “You look great, but that doesn’t change the fact that you were late.”
“I’m always late.” She backed out of the parking lot with screeching tires, without sparing a single glance for oncoming traffic. “You, of all people, should know that.”
“Not forty-five minutes late,” I said, quickly clicking my seatbelt into place.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice bereft of remorse. “I had a hair crisis.”
“I was standing outside on the curb the entire time. I’m surprised I didn’t get any inquiries into my hourly rate. Well, not so much surprised as insulted.”
April gave me the once-over. “You look good, but those boot-cut khakis you’re wearing aren’t the most provocative outfit I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
“Less is more, dahling.”
“Seriously, what’s with the business casual?”
I adjusted the passenger seat so that I was more upright. “I wasn’t in the mood to get all skanked up.”
“Since when?” she asked, as she lit a cigarette and continued to drive the Bimmer as if it were a 4×4.
I dug my nails into the armrest on the car door. “I know I’m not going to get this partnership. I always get overlooked.”
“Ugh! Is that all you ever talk about? Seriously, get a hobby.”
I pouted. “Fifteen-year plan! If I don’t become partner, I’m going to die alone.”
“That doesn’t really track.” April ran a hand through her dyed blonde hair. “Tonight, you need to have fun. Can you do that?”
I shrugged noncommittally, but fifteen minutes later, I was trying my best to submerge my problems under the thumping house music at Vanilla Bar. After narrowly avoiding the advances of a few foreign men and some mid-western tourists with no rhythm, a somewhat promising guy came along.
He had that Abercrombie & Fitch frat boy look about him, but I was willing to forgive that if he could form a coherent sentence.
I smiled encouragingly as he came closer.
He held up his hand. “Wassup?”
I immediately cringed, then allowed myself to reconsider my swift judgment of him. I suppose it had become a pretty common greeting, no longer confined to thirteen year olds or wannabe rap stars. I decided to give him a chance; hopefully he would prove that first impressions could be wrong. “Hi. I’m Kate.”
“Andrew Franklin. It’s nice to finally meet a pretty girl.”
“Thanks. You from here?”
He nodded. “North Miami.”
We danced to the music, not getting too close, but not in separate containment units, either. He wasn’t so bad. A man of few words was far better than a loud-mouthed fool. A Kylie Minogue song came on and we continued to dance. “You still live there?”
“No, I go to the University of Florida.”
Uh oh, back up. “You’re going to UF right now?”
“Yeah, why? Are you an FSU chick?”
“No, I went to UF, too, but that was some years ago.”
He smiled. “That’s okay. I like older women.”
Charming. Like I wanted to be someone’s older woman.
Andrew tried to get closer to me. “You smell good.”
One of his frat boy friends came by at that opportune moment to give him an obvious wink and a conspicuo
us nudge. “Wassup, man? Is this a bad time?”
“You know me, dog. I ain’t got no bad time!” Andrew replied, punching his friend in the arm.
I bid farewell to frat boy.
This was pathetic. Even when I lowered my standards to proficiency of the English language, I still failed to find a suitable candidate. I beckoned to April from the edge of the dance floor and waited for her to join me at the bar. She came quickly, making it clear what she thought of her dance partner.
I sat down. “Why do we do it, April? It’s not like we’re ever going to meet a nice guy here. They’re all at home with their wives.”
She motioned to the female bartender. We ordered a round of dirty martinis.
I sipped the martini the bartender placed in front of me and winced.
April was cradling her purse in her arms, as though it were a baby or seven million dollars in gold bullion. She tried to balance her drink in her other hand, but it kept sloshing over the sides of the glass and onto the floor.
“Okay, what’s with the purse?”
“This is a Gucci.”
“God bless you.”
“It’s not a fake, Kate. It’s one hundred percent real,” she replied, eyes bugging out at the sheer audacity of my mocking reply.
“Isn’t it nice to have a nest egg? Seriously, put it down, April. No one’s going to steal it.”
“I can’t put it down on the bar. It could be wet.”
“Isn’t that what those little feet are for?”
Giving me one of those ‘you’ll never understand’ looks, April opened the purse and reached down to the bottom. “Look, I got you something from my trip last week. Maybe it will help you with your little problem.”
“The way you say ‘my little problem’ makes me think you’re about to slip me a box of Monistat under the table.”
She produced a small, soft bundle. “Nope. It’s an authentic New Orleans good luck voodoo doll.”