Appealed (The Legal Briefs 3)

And that, right there, is progress.

• • •

We sit at a round table in the back corner of an empty pub just a few blocks from the courthouse. The lights are dim and the music is low enough to talk with our indoor voices but still fill any silences.

“Two bacon cheeseburgers, medium rare,” I tell the waitress. “She’ll have onion rings instead of fries and barbecue sauce instead of ketchup. And two draft beers, please.” I glance at Kennedy as I return the menus. “We should pace ourselves—save the hard stuff for later.”

After the waitress goes on her merry way, the blond viper stares at me, her mouth an adorable—annoyed—bow.

“What?”

“Maybe I wanted the veggie burger. I could be vegetarian now.”

I grimace. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Then kindly cease the bitching.” I lean back in my chair, legs open, getting comfortable—debating how to begin.

Kennedy takes the issue out of my hands. “I can’t believe you told Judge Phillips I broke your heart.” Then she kind of snorts, shaking her head, like the notion itself is ridiculous.

I look at her straight on. “You did. It’s been fourteen years, but I can still remember how it felt—I was shattered when you went out with William.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word shattered.”

“Yeah—I do. It’s when you give me the greatest orgasm of my seventeen-year-old life, let me hear you moan my name as you come spectacularly around my fingers—and then ten hours later, push me to the fucking curb for William goddamn Penderghast.”

Did that sound bitter? Good.

Kennedy leans forward, eyes blazing. “You were already back together with Cashmere before I agreed to go out with William!”

I blink. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.”

And the waitress brings our beers—perfect timing. We both take a healthy chug.

After my frosty mug is back on the table, I suggest, “Let’s start at the beginning.”

“Fine,” she agrees. “Parents’ weekend, junior year.”

You up for a little time travel? ’Cause it’s time to party like it’s 1999 . . .

7

Saint Arthur’s boarding school, junior year

“Kitty!”

“Mitzy!”

Our mothers hug like they haven’t seen each other in years. A Welcome Parents sign hangs across the entrance to the main building, the sun is shining, and the air is warm with a hint of early spring crispness. Eagle-Eye Cherry plays from a radio somewhere across the quad, and clusters of families dot the lush green grass.

“I feel like it’s been ages!” Mitzy says. “We should all have lunch together! There’s that fabulous little place down by the lake . . .”

As my mother quietly agrees, I take advantage of my dark, Risky Business–era sunglasses to check Kennedy out. She looks especially cute today. Her brown hair’s wrapped around the top of her head in a messy, kind of sexy bun. She’s wearing snug blue jeans and an open, oversized navy checkered flannel shirt, but the white tank top beneath it shows off her flat waist and sweet-looking tits. She got her braces taken off last month too. Bonus.

And at the moment, she’s doing that thing with her lip—clasping the plump bottom one between her teeth, sucking just a bit. That move gave me my very first boner when I was thirteen years old, and, damn, if it doesn’t hit me the exact same way right now.

Kennedy and I have always been tight . . . up until this year. When I became captain on the lacrosse team and started seriously dating Cazz. Seriously, as in—fucking her. These days, Kennedy hangs with her roommate, Vicki Russo, and I hang with . . . other people.

She adjusts her glasses and smiles up at me. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Like a disapproving blond wraith, Kennedy’s sister appears at her side. “Would it have killed you to dress up a little bit? Honestly, Kennedy, Mother and Father drove all this way . . .”

I slip my hands into my pockets and rock back on my heels. “Hi, Claire. It’s good to see you.”

“Brent.” She smiles tightly. “You’re looking . . .” She takes note of my jeans, sneakers, and white-collared shirt under a navy blue sweater. “. . . typical.”

I put my hand up. “Claire, please—I realize I’m an irresistible specimen of male perfection, but your obsession with me is getting embarrassing.”

Kennedy snorts. The uncontrollable urge to laugh bubbles up from my chest and I don’t even try to resist it—because the sour look on Claire Randolph’s face feels so much more hilarious than it actually is. She turns away and follows our parents up the path, leaving Kennedy and me relatively alone.

“Are you high?” she asks me in a hushed voice.

I lean in close to her. “As fuck. It was the only way I could make it through this weekend.”

I know some guys who are major stoners, and I’m not one of them. But an herbal refreshment before a long, stressful day is totally acceptable.

She shakes her head and her nose wrinkles with exasperation. This too is also really fucking cute.

We fall in step beside each other, trailing behind our chattering parents.

“I see your sister still hasn’t elected to have that surgery yet.”

She comes right back with, “You mean the one that will remove the stick from up her ass? Nope, not yet.”

I laugh out loud. “Shit, Kennedy, it feels like we haven’t hung out in forever. Where have you been?”

I’ve seen her around—campus isn’t that big. But I haven’t seen her, seen her. Can’t remember the last time I really talked to her, and she’s a cool girl to talk to.

She turns her head, looking at me for a few seconds, and her voice is almost a sigh. “I’ve been right here the whole time.”

• • •

“Posture, Kennedy. Slouching is for girls with weak spines.”

“Why won’t you wear contact lenses, Kennedy? Your eyes are your best feature, yet you insist on hiding them.”

“Another roll, Kennedy? Tsk-tsk, those carbs are a dancer’s enemy.”

It’s been like this since we sat down. For the last hour, Mitzy Randolph has criticized Kennedy right down to her goddamn fingernails.

My buzz is gone and my head feels like it’s going to explode if I have to listen to one more bitchy comment from Mrs. Randolph.

So, of course she says, “Kennedy could have been a classic prima ballerina—if only she had managed to be taller.”

And I say, “Well maybe the rack will come back into fashion and we can strap her on for a nice stretch.”

All four parents stop. And look at me with blank faces.

Just as I’m about to tell them where to go, Kennedy starts to giggle beside me. It’s that forced kind of giggle—a signal to everyone else that a joke was told and they should laugh to be polite. And as long as you’re not her younger daughter, Mitzy Randolph is the epitome of politeness.

Same goes for my mother. “Brent, darling, take off those sunglasses. It’s rude to wear them at the table.”

I take them off and try to hide my eyes by looking down. My mother’s gasp is horrified, so that plan obviously tanked.

“My goodness, why are your eyes so red? Do you have an infection?”

Claire Randolph finally cracks a smile. I bet she enjoys watching worms squirm under a magnifying glass on a sunny day too.

“No, Mom, they’re not infected.”

“But they look terrible!” Her hand rests on my father’s forearm. “Donald, dear, perhaps we should have the doctor come look at Brent?”

“Allergies,” Kennedy pipes up—sounding like she just thought of it herself. “His eyes are red from allergies.”

“Brent doesn’t have any allergies.”

Kennedy smiles at my mother, and sounds so confident I’d believe her. “We all have allergies here. Something to do with the special species of trees in Connecticut. The p

ollen they . . . ejaculate.”

Ejaculate?

Then she sneezes for added effect.

It’s obvious Claire doesn’t buy it, but the rest of them swallow it like hundred-year-old scotch.

Then it only takes a few minutes before:

“Do make a salon appointment, Kennedy. I can see your split ends from here.”

I stand up so fast the glasses on the table rattle. “We’re going for a walk.”

My mother’s eyes are wide like an owl’s. “Why?”

Saying I’m on the verge of stuffing the tablecloth down her best friend’s throat probably won’t go over well. “I just spotted a . . . double-breasted blue robin down by the lake. They’re super rare. Kennedy and I need to study it for horticulture—”

“Horticulture’s plants,” Kennedy whispers frantically.

“—and winged wildlife class.”

I’m a lacrosse goalie—I’m all about the save.

And they go for it.

Five minutes later, Kennedy and I are walking on the bank of the lake outside. I pick up a rock and throw it hard into the water. “How do you stand it?”

“Stand what?”

“Posture, Kennedy, split ends, Kennedy, fucking carbs, Kennedy . . . I wanted to jam my fork into my ear just so I wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore—and she wasn’t even talking about me!”

Kennedy smiles. And it’s not sad or fake or bitter at all. It’s just pretty. “She doesn’t mean those things the way they sound.”

“Then how the hell does she mean them?”

Kennedy shrugs a shoulder and tosses a rock of her own.

“She wants me to be happy. What she thinks happiness is. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t say anything at all. She’d just ignore me. And that would be worse.”

Our eyes hold for a few seconds and I realize how much I’ve missed this girl. It’s not manly to say—but it’s really fucking true. The people I spend my time with, talk to every day—they’re not real. They don’t look at things the way she does.