Paige had often thought of her time as a single person as a kind of baseline. A relationship might pull her away from that baseline for a time, but she always reverted back when that relationship ended.
Only this time, she didn’t seem to be reverting. Something had definitely changed when she went out with Josh.
Oh, the routine was the same. Her home was the same—she went to work every day, and she spent time with her friends. Walking into Pop to meet the usual gang one evening felt routine; Paige said hello to the bartender by name on the way in. But it was different, too, because Paige couldn’t help but think about Josh being here with her.
She’d never regretted her decisions where men had been concerned before. Oh, a few breakups had left her feeling sad for a few days. But for the last couple of years, no one had made it past the second date, so she’d moved on without much thought. With Josh, she’d told him not to contact her, and he hadn’t, but part of her still kept checking her phone to see if he’d texted or hoped it was him whenever her phone rang. She couldn’t sit at the corner table in the Cat Café without thinking about him sitting at the table with her. She couldn’t cook at home without wishing he was sitting at the island, making witty banter while she finished dinner.
This was love, wasn’t it? Or it was the end of it, maybe. This ache she felt in her chest whenever she thought of Josh, wondering if she’d done the right thing, this sure felt like heartbreak.
She looked at her friends gathered around their usual table and thought that she had done the right thing, because she couldn’t possibly lose this. Was there some universe where she could have both? She didn’t know, but it hadn’t seemed that way.
She sat at the table with Caleb, Lauren, Evan, and Lindsay and ordered her usual and listened to them gossip about whatever had happened that day. And she couldn’t help but imagine if Josh were here to add a joke about something insane that had happened with one of his less savory clients. He’d never come to drink night, but she’d hoped to invite him once Lauren knew about their relationship. Instead, everything had fallen apart.
“Brace yourselves, guys,” said Evan after everyone’s drinks arrived. “I was wrong about something.”
“I am shocked,” said Lauren.
“That has never happened before,” said Paige.
“Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!” said Lindsay.
Evan turned to Caleb. “You see the abuse I put up with?”
“What happened, Ev?” asked Lauren.
“Will the cookbook editor from that dumb singles thing Lindsay tricked me and Paige into attending actually called me. We’re going out Friday.”
“What, really?” said Lauren.
“What happened to Darius?” asked Caleb.
Evan pursed his lips and shook his head, his expression reading as though something unfortunate had happened to him.
“They broke up a couple of weeks ago,” Lauren stage-whispered.
“Wait, I thought you said that the cookbook editor was hung up on another guy,” said Paige.
“And so I thought, so I confronted him about it, and apparently this Brian guy he has a crush on is married and works in his office, and so is very off-limits, and he promised to work on not talking about him so much.” Evan shrugged. “Time will tell, I guess.”
“Good luck,” said Lindsay. “And what about you, Paige?”
“The guy I met at the single’s thing has not called, and I don’t think he will. Which is fine, because I don’t think we’re very compatible.”
“Yeah, I had an eye on you.” To the rest of the table, Evan added, “When we started the cooking portion of the event, he made Paige do all the work.”
“Oof,” said Lauren.
“He’s the first foodie I’ve met who doesn’t know how to cook,” said Paige.
“They’re out there,” said Lindsay. “Remember when I dated Matt Petroff?”
Everyone groaned. The Petroff family was well known in New York for being culinary giants. They’d run a food-related magazine empire before selling it off to the highest bidder for an absurd profit, and now Matt’s parents owned several of the city’s hottest restaurants. Matt Petroff had all the privilege of the sort of white guy who grew up with very wealthy parents and zero self-awareness.
“I don’t know if that counts,” said Paige. “Matt was like the one person in that whole family who did not care about food.”
Lindsay frowned. “Well, his wife’s social media is wall-to-wall pictures of food, so I guess he’s eating. Oh. I didn’t tell you? He married a photogenic home chef last year.”
“Story checks out,” said Evan.
Lindsay sighed. “You’re right, Paige, men suck.”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Paige.
“No, but that’s the subtext. I have been unimpressed by Brooklyn’s offerings of late.”
“And yet you skipped the singles event of the year,” said Evan.
“Something good came out of it, didn’t it?” said Lindsay.
Evan narrowed his eyes at her. “Sure. I hope that taping you went to was better.”
Lindsay mock swooned. “Chef Campanello is so dreamy. He’s like if Superman grew a beard and became a chef.”
“What was the taping?” asked Lauren.
“It’s a new reality show called Chef Gauntlet. Four contestants have to get through three rounds of grueling cooking challenges, and whoever is left standing wins. Chef Campanello won, by the way.”
“What is a grueling cooking challenge?” asked Paige.
“Oh, like, make an appetizer with this really gross ingredient, like an obscure fruit from Southeast Asia that smells like dirty diapers. Make an entree, but the only tool you’re allowed is this one big knife. And the last challenge was to repurpose a birthday cake into an entirely different dessert. It was really fun to watch. I’m writing it up for Dine Out New York.”
There’d been a time when these little gatherings had felt more like girls’ nights, plus Evan. Caleb’s presence was throwing Paige off a little. Not that she didn’t feel free to talk openly in front of him, but he was often quiet and made her wonder if he and Lauren talked over everything they said when they got home.
But apparently this was just Paige feeling nervous; Lindsay said, “How about you, Caleb? How is the veterinary biz?”
Caleb smiled. “Fine. A poodle gave birth on my watch today, so that was unexpected.”
Evan gasped. “Are the owners keeping the puppies?”
“Are you going to adopt one?” asked Lauren.
“My cat would probably disapprove.”
“I think they are keeping the puppies. There were only three. The mama poodle is a retired show dog and I kind of got the vibe the owners want to show the puppies when they’re big enough.”
“Dog shows are so weird,” said Lindsay. “I’ve always wanted to go to one. Actually, now that I write for an animal website, I wonder if I can finagle a press pass for the one they do at Chelsea Piers every year.”
“You have to take me,” said Evan.
Maybe the thing bugging Paige was how normal all this felt. Tonight could have been interchangeable with any other night that her friends met for drinks over the last couple of years. Except Paige felt out of sorts. Her gut churned, her chest ached, and she missed Josh so much that she was tempted to text him under the table, though she wouldn’t.
She could so easily picture Josh here with his arm casually draped around Paige’s shoulders the way that Caleb’s was around Lauren. Josh would probably tease Lauren and make jokes with Evan and talk about food with Lindsay.
Paige had never really been able to picture any of the guys she’d gone out with fitting into her friend group so easily. Usually the guys she went out with were radically different from her friends. And that was probably why they’d never worked out; she thought she should date someone different and interesting but what she really wanted was a friend. She’d heard couples say that about each other, that they’d each married their best friend. That’s what Paige wanted. Not some whirlwind romance. Not some impressive guy with an oddball hobby. She wanted to fall in love with a friend.
Which is what had happened. And she’d pushed him away.
“You okay?” asked Evan, who was sitting next to Paige. “You’re a little quiet this evening.”
“I’m okay. Sorry. Mind wandered off.”
“Split a plate of mac and cheese bites with me?”
“Sure.”
Evan leaned over and whispered in Paige’s ear, “It’s okay to miss him.”
“Did I do the right thing?” she asked.
Evan pressed his lips together. “Honestly? I don’t know. Does it feel like the right thing?”
“No. I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“Is it too late to fix it?”
Paige shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“If you kids are passing notes, you have to share with the class,” said Lindsay.
“We were just discussing appetizers,” said Evan. “Ever since Pop expanded their menu, I have struggled with what to order, but maybe we should get the mac and cheese bites and the cheeseburger sliders.”
Paige almost groaned when Evan’s talk of appetizers reminded her of Josh and his appetite. Would everything remind her of Josh?
“Ladies’ room,” Paige said, grabbing her handbag and running to the back of the bar.
She locked herself in a stall and let herself cry. She couldn’t remember crying about a boy since she’d been a teenager, but she cried now because she’d started to fall in love with Josh and couldn’t have him. Because even if she could find some way to reconcile what she wanted with her friends, even if Lauren gave them the green light, the longer she persisted in not talking to Josh, the less likely it was he’d come back. That was the lesson Lauren had been trying to give her when she’d talked about Josh’s ex Megan. Megan hadn’t been committed to making things work with Josh, but Josh deserved someone who was.
And she was afraid. She should let herself be happy, but instead, she’d let her doubts rule the day, and now here she was, alone in a bathroom stall with black marker graffiti on the door saying, Liz + Jared, as if to rub it in that less pathetic people had once been here.
Relationships ended. She’d been operating on the assumption that her relationship with Josh would end at some point, no matter if they fell in love, and it was the fallout from the end of that relationship that she couldn’t face because she knew that if they fell in love and he left her, she would be wrecked. That was the real risk. They would be happy together…until they weren’t. Every relationship ended.
Until one didn’t.
The safer option had always been to end it before they got too involved and retreat back to her comfort zone, but that zone wasn’t so comfortable anymore now that Josh wasn’t in it. There was no going back, not to how things had been before she met Josh.
It was too soon to know if she and Josh could be together for the long haul. And finding out was a risk. And she was a coward.
She let herself feel everything as she stood in the stall and cried. Her thoughts were all over the place and contradicted each other and didn’t completely make sense, but that’s how this whole situation was. She cried until she’d worked through all of it, then she sighed and exited the stall. She grabbed a tissue and wiped her eyes, then she fixed her makeup and hoped her eyes didn’t look so bloodshot that her friends would notice. Once she felt like she looked normal and not like someone who had just sobbed in a bathroom stall, she rejoined her friends, who appeared to be laughing at one of Evan’s stories.
She loved these people, and she’d sacrificed Josh so that she could keep loving them, but she wondered now if she’d given up too easily.
“Oh, Paige,” said Lauren, “did I tell you? We have a customer who is interested in adopting Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” said Paige. “Also sad. I’ve grown kind of attached to those cats.”
“It’s not a done deal, but do you know that couple that comes in on Thursday evenings sometimes? They’re both kind of frumpy and wear big hipster glasses. They always sit in the middle of the cat room.”
Paige couldn’t picture who Lauren was talking about, but she said, “Sure.”
“They want both cats.”
“It’s fitting,” said Evan. “I read an excellent bit of fanfic last year in which Darcy fell in love with Bingley instead of Lizzy Bennet.”
“You read Pride and Prejudice fanfic?” asked Lindsay.
Evan shrugged. “I would have paired Darcy with Wickham, personally. I bet they’d have a lot of angry sex.”
“How are we talking about gay sex in Jane Austen?” asked Lauren.
“Look, I reread the book last month, it gave me ideas,” said Evan. “It totally holds up, by the way. If you haven’t read it since high school, I recommend giving it another look.”
Paige laughed, glad for a distracting conversation.
* * *
Josh watched the sunset from the conference room window, but he wasn’t even that mad about it.
In the five days since Penny had first presented the medical manufacturer case to Josh, he’d dug up a number of old cases that generally showed courts ruled in favor of the manufacturer more often than not. He’d worked out that the key to holding the company accountable was to prove the company knowingly sold a bad product or had at least knowingly cut corners.
Penny had managed to find some examples of negligence, including the factory floor being monitored by company flunkies who didn’t understand manufacturing and parts being purchased from overseas on the cheap without anyone bothering to verify that the parts were safe to use.
“We’re standing on solid ground,” Josh told her. “I found this case in Pennsylvania in which several patients sued a medical manufacturer because there had been electrical issues with a sleep monitoring device. The court found for the prosecution in that case because they managed to prove that the manufacturer had been using cheap parts to save money, but the wires were corroded. I think the fact that all of the people who worked for that manufacturer were making exorbitant salaries and the company was using cheap parts out of sheer greed also helped convince the jury that the manufacturer was at fault.”
Penny nodded. “Good work. I agree, there’s definitely a case here. Criminally negligent homicide will be hard to prove, but I think we should go for it. I don’t believe these guys wanted anyone to die, but they had to know that using cheap parts in medical devices could lead to injuries. I don’t know about you, but if I had to get a hip replaced, I’d want the highest quality replacement parts, you know?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
Penny wrote some notes while Josh looked on. Then he said, “Can I ask you a weird question?”
“Shoot.”
He took a deep breath. “What made you leave DCL and go to the DA’s office?”
Penny looked up and smiled. “Honestly, a lot of it was that I hated most of the sleazes Provost represents.”
Josh nodded. “I’ve only been working here a few months, but I have to say, my first experience in court was defending a guy who deserves to be out of business. And we’re currently representing a real estate developer who I kind of want to punch in the face. Is that a bad thing to say?”
Penny laughed. “No. My first year, we defended both an insider trader and a politician who got caught using campaign money to buy presents for his mistress. They’re not all winners.”
Josh pointed to his notes. “This case, this is more what I was looking to do when I studied law.”
Penny nodded. “When I worked here, Provost had another associate who was whipsmart, but it quickly became clear she hated the actual practice of law. I think she actually only went to law school because she wanted to get into politics. She quit after six months to go work for the mayor’s reelection campaign. Which, you know, good for her, but she’s drowning in law school debt. I always tell people, don’t go to law school unless you want to be a lawyer. It’s not worth it otherwise.”
Josh laughed. “I went to law school with a few of those, too. And that’s excellent advice. But why the DA’s office?”
“It was a big pay cut, but the work is so much more rewarding. I got to be second chair on the Saperstein case last year.”
Josh whistled. That case had made big headlines. Saperstein was a television producer and serial rapist who had preyed on young starlets for decades before anyone found the guts to prosecute him. He’d been found guilty and was currently serving a twenty-year sentence upstate. “That’s amazing. It must have been rewarding to put him away.”
“It was. I was proud of my work on that case.” She glanced at her notes. “Are you thinking about switching teams and becoming a prosecutor?”
“The thought crossed my mind. I want to stick this out for at least a year, but I have days when I want to quit. It’s a lot of hours and, yeah, Provost defends some sleazy people. But this case is really interesting and, you know, I like being able to pay down my debt every month.”
Penny smiled. “Well, just know that we could use someone with your research skills at the DA’s office. And Provost says you write a mean brief.”
Josh laughed. “I suppose that’s true.”
“Your help here has been invaluable. If you ever want to join the dark side, I’d be happy to put in a word for you with the DA. He is usually not a part of the hiring process directly, but he likes to have final say. And you’d have to work your way up. I work in major crimes now, but I was stuck in misdemeanors for a while, mostly issuing fines to kids who stayed in the parks after they closed. So it’s not all glitz and glamour.”
Josh laughed. “I was going to make an argument like, ‘Well at least you’re helping people,’ but I didn’t know until just now that the parks ever closed, so probably you weren’t doing a lot to help people in those cases.”
“Yeah, no, not really. Every now and then a trafficking case would get thrown my way, and those were kind of interesting. One of my law school classmates works for the Department of Labor and mostly prosecutes people who defraud the unemployment benefits system, but even then, a lot of the defendants in her cases are people who filled out a form incorrectly and aren’t actually guilty of fraud. So I’m not saying working for the city is the best job in the world. And the hours are just as bad most of the time. And there’s less money in it. But I do get to go after bad guys sometimes, and that is very rewarding.”
“And, see, this is why I haven’t quit this job yet. There is no perfect job, is there?”
“In law? Probably not.” But Penny smiled. It was clear from talking to her that she loved her job.
And so did Paige. Why that thought popped into Josh’s head now was a mystery. But Josh knew she loved working at the Cat Café. An easy solution to their relationship strife might have been to talk her into leaving her job so she didn’t work for Lauren anymore, but Josh hadn’t even offered it up because he knew Paige loved that job. Josh didn’t really love working for Provost and DCL, but he thought it was a stepping stone to a job he would love. Maybe the DA’s office wasn’t the right place for him either, but if he paid his dues and got enough experience, there was a potential future in which he started his own firm and had complete discretion over which cases he took.
“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said to Penny.
She smiled. “Can I confess something?”
“Please do.”
“I find you really attractive. Maybe it’s just proximity and the fact that you’re the first guy I’ve worked with in a while under the age of fifty.”
Josh met Penny’s gaze. She really was gorgeous. And Paige still hadn’t reached out, so that seemed to be over. There wasn’t any reason why he couldn’t…
He leaned forward and so did Penny. But just as their lips were about to touch, an image of Paige popped into his head. No, he wasn’t done with Paige yet. He still wanted her, was still willing to try to win her over.
He jerked back. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You’re smart and beautiful and I really appreciate you talking to me about jobs, but my heart is tied up with someone else. I can’t do this to you or to her.”
Penny smiled ruefully. “Yeah. I figured you were too good to be true.”
“I mean, really, any other time…but I’ve got this ‘it’s complicated’ situation with a really wonderful woman, and well…”
“You don’t have to explain. I hate that your honesty makes you more likable, though.”
“I’ll try to lie more, if it makes you feel better.”
She laughed. “Nah, that’s fine. Let’s get back to the case.”