“Didn’t you leave your mega law firm so you didn’t have to work at stupid o’clock on the weekend?” Ben asks, sprawling out next to Hallie. He wraps an arm around her and tugs her closer, as if the six inches of distance between them is too much for him to bear. “What time did you even get here this morning?”
“Oh, you know, a while ago,” I say vaguely, taking a sip of the latte Hallie brought me and hoping they’ll drop it. Telling them I’m here because I never left last night and that the last thing I remember before hearing the door slam five minutes ago was idly wondering if I could get an Uber at four in the morning is a complete nonstarter. I will take the secret of my middle of the night desk naps to my grave. Smart, sophisticated, have-it-all-together owners of their own law firm do not take four-hour naps with their heads pillowed on estate planning documents.
And that’s what I am. A partner in a law firm that Hallie and I started with our best friends Emma and Molly. We have been planning this in one way or another since Hallie and I met Emma and Molly during our first year of law school. We officially opened for business a month ago but left our jobs this past summer to start putting our plans into action. We started off as a firm focused solely on estate planning, but last summer Hallie made a big career change and switched her practice tofamily law with a focus on adoption, transitioning the bulk of her estate planning clients to me.
Ben is right that we started this firm to give ourselves the kind of balance that doesn’t usually exist in the big law firm world. But our firm is new and there is always something to do, and I like Saturdays at the office. I can plow through a whole pile of work without email notifications and ringing phones and my friends constantly coming in and out. No one is ever here on Saturdays. Come to think of it…
“What are you two even doing here anyway?”
“We came to tell you about our plans for the football game,” Hallie says, pulling off her jacket and making herself more comfortable on the couch.
I scratch the inside of my left wrist, my fingers itching to pull the Kessler estate planning documents out of my drawer and get back to work. “You couldn’t just text me?”
“We tried, but none of our texts were delivered and your phone kept going straight to voicemail. I figured you were here, so I tried calling the office line, but I kept getting a busy signal, so we came in person.”
I reach for my phone and try to turn it on. Dead. Glancing over at my office phone, I see the receiver sitting on my desk, not in the cradle where it should be. I must have knocked it off while I was asleep.Fuck. My stomach clenches, and my heart pounds at the thought of being totally unreachable to my clients. I hang up my desk phone and hastily plug my cell into the charging station on my desk. I take a deep breath once my phone boots up, and when I see the only missed messages are the ones from Hallie and Ben, my heartrate returns to normal.
“So you’ll come, right?”
It's only then I realize Hallie is still talking, oblivious to my panic.
“Sorry, what did you say? I spaced for a second.” I wince inwardly, hating having to ask her to repeat herself.
“The football game, Jules. Playoffs? The clients your dad was supposed to take to the game got snowed in and can’t make it, and your mom said the only place she’s going today is to the kitchen for snacks, so we’re taking the tickets.”
“Seriously, Hal? It’s freezing outside and I have a ton of work to do.” I love a football game, especially when we get to sit in my dad’s corporate seats in the third row right on the fifty-yard line, but I do not love a football game in January. And I definitely don’t love a football game when I have a ten-mile-long to-do list.
“Come on, Jules,” Ben pipes in. “Molly and Emma are coming too. Jeremy even got passes to the friends and family room after the game, and Allie and Jordan are both off today. We’re going early and drinking in the parking lot. Jeremy is bartending. How often do we all get to hang out together? Come with us and eat eleven a.m. hot dogs that we’ll definitely regret and day drink like we’re twenty-one again.”
Jeremy and Jordan are Ben’s college best friends and, along with Jordan’s fiancée Allie, round out our friend group. Jeremy is also Ben’s partner in Fireside, the bar they own. He is a former NHL player and, in addition to the bar, runs a foundation that gives him connections all over the sports world, so it’s not surprising that he could score friends and family room passes.
“Please come, Jules. It’s been weeks since we’ve done something together that’s not work related. I miss us.”
It’s Hallie’sI miss usthat weakens my resolve to hole up in my office for the rest of the day. Because I miss us too. The breakneck speed of Hallie and Ben’s relationship gave me whiplash. The two people closest to me in the world arebuilding a life together, and I don’t know where I fit in. If I fit in.
I shake away that thought as quickly as it comes. My fingers sneak towards my wrist again, but I pull them back before they can start scratching. I can have today with my best friend and my brother. I need today. Decision made, I press my hands to my desk and push myself up to standing.
“Okay, let’s go to the football game.”
Chapter Two
Asher
I’m out of eggs. I consider this irritating fact while staring into my refrigerator as if a dozen eggs will somehow magically appear from its depths. I don’t know how this happened. But, like, in the metaphorical sense. I definitely know realistically how it happened, and I blame my sister Kyla. She lives across the street from our parents and sent me a picture yesterday morning of the cookies my mom made and brought over to Kyla’s house.
It was a real younger sister move. Anif you lived in Boulder like the rest of us mom would drop cookies off at your house tootaunt. So, then I had to bake cookies and send her back anactually I’m just fine in Pittsburgh when the rest of my family is thirteen hundred miles away and I can make my own cookies thank you very muchpicture.
Except I added too much flour to the first batch, so I had to start again, and now I have three dozen cookies I didn’t want but no eggs in my fridge for my game day breakfast. When I cracked my last egg yesterday, I made a mental note to run outto the store before bed. But thenGoodfellaswas on TV last night, and I am one hundred percent that guy who needs to watchGoodfellaswhen it’s on TV. So of course, I forgot to go to the store. Like I said, I blame Kyla. It’s a big family thing. And with two younger sisters and two older ones, all married and half with kids, my family is borderline ridiculous levels of big.
I sigh and shut the fridge door, grabbing my phone to order an omelet from the diner down the street because my game day breakfast is sacrosanct. The day I’m playing in the divisional round of the playoffs is not a good day to tempt the football gods. Ordering in isn’t as good as making it myself, but it’ll do in an emergency, and waking up to an eggless refrigerator on the morning of a playoff game is an emergency.
It’s not that I’m superstitious. It’s just that I like to do things a certain way on game days. Like wake up at the same time. And eat the same breakfast that my mom used to make for me before game days when I was in high school. And put my pads and uniform on in the same order. Okay fine, I’m superstitious as fuck, but show me a professional athlete who isn’t.
After I eat breakfast, I head upstairs to my room to pack my game day bag. My house is probably too big for just me, but when I was drafted to Pittsburgh after playing four years of college football ten minutes from my parent’s house, the idea of living permanently in the soulless downtown condo I stayed in for a few months before training camp didn’t appeal to me.
With my signing bonus, I bought a big old house on one of the tree-lined Squirrel Hill streets that reminds me of my neighborhood in Boulder. It has plenty of bedrooms for my family to come visit, and I love every inch of it. The only thing that would make it better is if my family actually lived close by. My sisters make me crazy half the time, but I miss the shit out of all of them during the season. I’m just reaching the top of the staircase when my phone pings.
Mom
