“But you had sex with a guy twice your age.”
She shrugged. “Are you telling me you weren’t having sex at that age?”
“You were a kid and he should’ve known better.”
She rapped her fork on her plate, twice. “You don’t get to judge me, Tom O’Connell. You didn’t have to do what I had to do to get here and to go where I’m going. We never had sex, but we might as well have. It’s what everyone assumed, that I was a fifteen-year-old slut. He lost his job because of me. People spat on him in the street and called me a whore to my face. Drew didn’t rape me. He didn’t abuse me. He wouldn’t sleep with me, even though that’s what I wanted. He supported me when there was no one else who would. He’s an English teacher now. He’s married. He has two kids. We talk on our birthdays and at Christmas, and I still miss him.”
He didn’t like the way Flick’s words made shame and anger curdle in his gut. He thought he’d begun to understand her, less a whirlwind, erratic and out of control, and more a storm front, deliberate and direct. He had no right to question her choices, but the anger he felt wasn’t only for Flick, it was for all women who had to play by different rules to be in the same game, and for how little he’d recognized that.
“I’m sorry you had to make those choices. I’m sorry I come across as a judgmental prick. I didn’t have my first real kiss till I was seventeen.”
“Don’t sweat it. You can make it up with your cobbler.”
She was going to shrug his fumbled apology off and that was fitting. She didn’t need his sympathy or his approval.
They ate while Bowie sang “Absolute Beginners.” He’d try to begin again with Flick, starting with this conversation.
“Why don’t you want to tell your family about your job?” he said. “Sounds like it’s not a new problem.”
“It’s not. They won’t understand and I can’t work out if that matters.”
“See if I understand.”
She laid her silverware down. “I didn’t tell you about the job?”
“Only that you got a new one and it’s in Washington.” He took both their plates to the sink, then slid the cobbler into the oven and set the timer.
“When I was at school we had one of those mock trials. I loved it,” she said.
He came back to his stool and topped their wineglasses. Flick the storyteller was in town.
“Thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Later I figured out what I loved was that there was this person whose job it was to stand up for the rights of other people. If someone had done that for my mom, or my sisters, everything would’ve been different. I didn’t want to stand up for one person but for whole groups of people who were disadvantaged or put down or just made to be less than they could be.”
She took a sip of wine and watched him over the rim of the glass. She had his full attention.
“I’ve wanted to work at the Coalition for Humanity since I graduated. It’s nonprofit, not aligned politically. It advocates for the rights of people disadvantaged by gender, birthplace and circumstance, and to create the environment and policies that support justice and equality. That probably makes me sound like a cheap superhero to you.”
“Not at all.” What he’d once thought was razzle-dazzle with Flick was more like burnished gold.
“I knew I had a long way to go. I had to become a credible communicator first. Learn everything I could about influencing and lobbying. I had to earn my chops to get a chance to play in the big league.”
“That’s what’s in Washington. Congratulations.”
“K Street. I’m getting everything I wanted when I was ground down for wanting anything at all. I can’t fix that for my sisters, for the girls I grew up with, but maybe I can fix it for future generations.”
She had a vision. She stuck to it. She made hard choices. She paid her dues. “You deserve success.”
“I don’t know how to tell my family all that.” She shifted restlessly on the stool. “It’s another reason for them to resent me and to ask for money. That’s all they’ll see. But I’m going to less salary in a more expensive city. It’s why finding temp accommodation with you was so important.”
“Don’t tell them.”
She lifted her glass. “Mr. Straighty-One-Eighty is telling me to lie to my folks.”
“Jesus Christ, what did you tell them when you moved in with Drew? How is this harder?”
“That I was moving in with Drew. One less mouth to feed. No one cared, except to use it against me. They will care, but not in a good way, when I say I’m moving to Washington.”
“The real question is, why do you still care what they think?”