“And you love it.”
“So how did you find yourself at Harvard Law School, seeing as you and your parents aren’t on speaking terms? Don’t tell me you got a full ride. That’s nearly impossible. Especially in your tax bracket.”
She still believed I came from money. I didn’t correct her assumption. This was the point when I considered how much to tell her. Only Riggs and Arsène knew my story. Ultimately, I realized it didn’t really matter.
“Promise not to judge?”
“Can’t promise that, Counselor. But I’m not usually the judgy type.”
I stuffed my hands into my front pockets. “I had a . . . a sponsor of sorts.”
“Phew, I was worried you were going to confess to bestiality.” She pretended to wipe her brow. “What’s a sponsor, exactly? Is that a code for sugar mama? Or is the correct term a cougar these days?”
“I’m not sure what the terminology for it is, but she’s the one who put me through law school when I couldn’t even afford the train ticket to Boston.”
“Wait, she shelled out six figures for your education?” Arya sobered up. “Are you that good in bed?”
I let out a laugh that seeped into my bones. It was the first time I’d really laughed in decades. My body wasn’t used to that anymore.
“First of all, the answer is yes, I am, in fact, that good in bed. Second, get your mind outa the gutter. Mrs. Gudinski was in her fifties when I was in high school. She was very lonely. I was a stable boy.”
“Sounds like a well-produced porn movie so far.”
I bumped my shoulder into hers again, and we both laughed.
“She had horses. Expensive ones. But she only came to visit them, never to ride. Her late husband was an amateur equestrian. She kept the horses to honor him but had no interest in them whatsoever. She had too much money and no one to spend it on. She needed someone to keep her company during the holidays. Someone to visit her on the weekends. You know. Someone to care.”
“And that someone was you?” Arya raised a skeptical eyebrow.
I flashed her a wounded frown. “Me and my closest friends, who I roped into it. Together, we became one big, screwed-up family.”
“Huh.”
“Don’t ‘huh’ me. Tell me what you think.”
“You don’t strike me as a caring person.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“For one thing, because all you want is to bed me. Relationship-phobe much?”
Her jealousy stirred something dangerous in the pit of my stomach. The kind of feeling you get when you realize you’ve just survived a near-fatal car crash.
“That’s different. I don’t want anything serious with you because I cannot afford to be with you. Dating the daughter of the person I’m suing, especially in a case like this one, is not a healthy career move.”
“Do I smell leverage?” Her eyes lit up as we picked up our pace to get warm.
“No, you smell a pragmatic business decision. For you too. Imagine what it’d look like if word got out. Our relationship is doomed. That doesn’t mean I’m against settling down when the right woman arrives.”
“Way to make a woman feel special.”
I laughed.
“Are you still in touch with her? With your sugar mama?” Arya hugged her midriff, protecting herself from the cold.
“Yes. What about you?” I asked.
“I don’t know her, but I mean . . . I could give her a call?” She played dumb. I laughed some more. Shit. This was a lot of laughter.
“What were you like as a teenager?” I amended my question.
“Rebellious. Angsty. Bookworm.”
A knowing smile tugged at my lips. I still remembered her gulping books up, at least one a day during summer breaks, like the words would fade if she didn’t read them fast enough.
“Bookworm,” I repeated, feigning surprise. “What’s your favorite book?”
Atonement.
“Atonement, hands down. I stole it from my local library when I was fourteen, because it was risqué and I knew my parents would never let me purchase it. It’s tragically underrated. Have you read it?”
“Can’t say I have,” I said, tsking. I couldn’t, as a matter of principle, read the book that had caused my downfall. Because if I hadn’t kissed Arya . . . if I hadn’t caved in to her request . . .
Then what? You’d have stayed in the slums, with a mother who didn’t love you and a girl you were pining after but who could never be yours, only to grow up to be a criminal.
Things could have gone a lot worse, I knew. If I’d stayed home and gone to a shitty school. Because even if that first kiss had gone unnoticed, the second or the third or the fourth one wouldn’t have. And even if all our hypothetical kisses had gone undetected, I still couldn’t have had her. I would have had to sit on the sidelines and watch as Arya fell in love with someone she could actually be with. A Will or Richard or Theodore. Who had a driver and a maid and a college adviser from age ten.