Page 41 of Aim for Love

The attorney’s name is Roger Smith and he’s ancient. I watch him get up and slowly walk to the door through the glass. It takes several minutes. I listen to the sound of birds and tourists passing as I wait. It’s nice. It’s peaceful.

“Hello there,” he says once he finally makes it to the door. “How can I help you?”

This is not going to be easy. I don’t know what I expected—him to take one look at me and ask if I wanted a job? I force myself to dive in. “Hello, my name is Mollie. I’m a paralegal in Denver. I wondered if I could ask you a few questions about working in law in a small town?”

“Hm,” he says, and studies me.

It seems one thing attorneys in big cities and small towns have in common is they don’t like someone wasting billable time. Amid the risk I’m taking, that gives me some comfort.

“The practice is about the same. Different scenery. Slower, perhaps.”

I nod quickly, bobbing my head like a doll. “That makes sense.” My feet want to run away from this awkward conversation. “I’m just…looking to make a change. I’m tired of, well, of the scenery.”

He opens the door a little further for me. I guess he’s decided I’m worth his time. “Work is work, no matter where it is. You don’t like what you do in the city, you’re not going to like it anywhere else.”

Considering this, I bite my lip. “I like my work. It’s my life I don’t like in the city.” I say it like a confession, like he’s a priest who’s going to provide me some way to cleanse myself of the sin of being unhappy. I gather myself and straighten my spine so that I can ask for what I really want. “I wondered if you knew of any small town attorneys who might need a paralegal?”

He surveys me through rheumy eyes for another long moment, the sound of the street and my nervous heart all I can hear. At the last minute, I couldn’t voice exactly what I wanted, but it turns out this man is kind enough to hear what I can’t say.

“Why not here?” he asks, and lets me in.

fifteen

HUNTER

This iswhat I agreed to, after all. A vacation fling with someone I don’t know that well and never will.

By the time I meet Mollie for another axe-throwing lesson, I’ve convinced myself nothing’s changed. We were never meant to last longer than a week, and anything more was all in my head.

So I try not to be weird with her. And it mostly works—coaching her through bad habits she’s somehow already formed is distracting—except she keeps asking me if I’m OK.

“Nora said you and Scott aren’t talking.”

“We’re notnottalking.” When we tried to talk about it, Scott said something like “I shouldn’t have encouraged her into a situation she wasn’t comfortable with” and I felt the situation never should have been an option in the first place. So now I’m not sure I can trust him on outings, and that means I’m doing extra work to make up for his poor judgment. Tom doesn't seem to notice, and if I said something, I’m not sure which way it would go—Scott fired or me dressed down? Neither result issomething I’m comfortable with. So not talking is the best choice right now.

“It’s not his fault,” Mollie offers.

“It’s pretty much completely his fault,” I counter.

“Well, Nora did ask him to take us on the craziest hike he’s ever done near town.”

Of course she did.I scowl and shake my head. “He’s the professional. He should have known better.”

“He was off duty.”

I’m not sure why we’re arguing about this. It’s making the back of my neck hot. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I say, and we fall into a silence that’s similar to the one between me and Scott.

Mollie’s not getting any better at axe-throwing. I keep correcting her form and explaining follow-through and timing on her throws and most of the time, she can hit the target. She’s notaccurate. In the tournament we have scheduled tomorrow to celebrate the end of the week’s tour, she’ll get knocked out right away despite all the practice.

And my frustration makes me a terrible coach. She’s notgettingit—just like she doesn’t get that what I really want is a quiet moment where I can tuck her safely under my arm and feel safe. She can’t land the axe and she can’t make me feel like everything’s OK because we’re not.

Inviting her back to my place is out, because Tom’s likely there. The last thing I need is to exacerbate the tension between us. I haven’t been into his office since our last conversation.

And yet I need to touch Mollie like I need water. And our time is so short now. At the end of the lesson, I explain that the house is busy tonight and add, “I still owe you that massage.”

“Do you want to go back to my hotel room? Nora and Sophie are out with the other guys.” Mollie smiles back at me tentatively, graciously accepting my attempt to backtrack towhere we’d been a day ago. “Maybe you can give me some tips and I can return the favor.”

We walk back to her hotel, me carrying the bag of custom axes I brought with me to throw. They didn’t help Mollie’s aim much. Maybe she needs a different weight on hers. We could look into an axe customized to her. Well, if we had more time and she wasn’t leaving soon. I keep thinking of things we could do in the future and reminding myself we don’t have that.

---