Page 3 of Someone Just Like You

The initial gratification as the jab left my lips was immediately replaced with stubborn and enduring guilt. I knew bartending hadn’t been Jude’s first choice for a career.

“Not exactly, but the satisfaction of beating you is the reward that keeps on giving.” Jude flashed a cocky smile and locked his arms behind his head. The swell of his arms from this posture proved that despite being the youngest child, he was no longer the rug rat in the group.

I barely avoided snarling. As if anyone at this table would be impressed by his triceps.

Eddie cleared his throat. “Are you two done?”

His voice pulled me back to the present, and I was determined to stay there. No matter how hard I tried, in the words of Michelle Obama, to go high when Jude went low, he brought out the worst in me.

Eddie continued. “We were thinking of having the party the third weekend in October, which gives us three months to plan and send out the invitations.”

“Will we use Evite?” I couldn’t resist.

“We’ll use proper invitations.” Nicole wrinkled her nose. “In case some of the older guests don’t have computers.”

Over the course of the next hour, our large party of six morphed into mini soirees of two or three. Jude and I managed to avoid overlapping conversations. After dinner, Nicole insisted the three of us share a cab back to the city rather than take the PATH train, and the driver dropped her off on the west side first. Jude and I both resided across town on the east side in Murray Hill. Our apartments were six blocks apart, because apparently eighteen years as neighbors wasn’t enough for us. Nicole had called shotgun, a relic of our youth, which left me alone in the back with Jude, and neither of us switched to the front when she got out.

I curled myself as close to the door as possible. If, God forbid, it opened, I’d roll onto the street. But the fear of falling to my death wasn’t strong enough to lessen the physical distance between us. And we hit traffic because…well…of coursewe did. I was listening toThis American Lifewhen he nudged me in the arm.

I removed my earbuds. “What?” Were we home? I glanced out the window, expecting to see one of our apartment buildings in the distance.

“Why aren’t you a lawyer anymore? What was it? The long hours? The pressure? The lack of control?” Jude’s voice seeped condescension.

I glared at him. “Did you read a top-ten list on BuzzFeed or something? None of the above.”All of the above and then some.“I’m still a lawyer. Like I said, I’m just not practicing.” I was surprised this was news to him, although it had probably been at least a year since we’d seen each other and I wasn’t so self-absorbed as to think my career path was a topic of conversation at the Starks’ dinner table.

“Whatdoyou practice?”

I squeezed my flaring nostrils. “I’m a legal recruiter.”

He made a sound I assumed was supposed to be a laugh. “So, you quit the law to find jobs for other lawyers?”

I gritted my teeth. “Yes. And paralegals and other legal administrative staff too. Any ‘law-related’ positions, really. The majority of recruiters are former lawyers or paralegals. It’s not an unprecedented move.” I wasn’t the first to make the transition, nor would I be the last. My eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?”

“Just curious,” is what he said, but his dubious expression screamed otherwise.

Don’t press him for more. Let it go.But I couldn’t. “You’re dying to say something. Just say it.”

“Wasn’t your dream of being a lawyer why you worked so hard in high school…why you were so determined to be in student government in the first place?”

I might have actually hissed at the audacity of his reminder, given that the inclusion of student council president on my college applications might have gotten me off the wait-list and into the acceptance pile of an Ivy League school. But it was true. My goal of being a lawyer motivated my placement in the top twenty in my high school class of 365, graduating summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, and attending a top-tier law school. My hard work earned me my pick of summer associate programs before I accepted a first-year position at Fitzpatrick & Green, one of the largest global law firms. “Reality didn’t live up to my dreams.”

“It’s not like you to quit.”

My lips pursed. “I didn’t quit.”

Jude cocked an eyebrow.

“Okay. Technically, I quit, but not because I couldn’t hack it. I just wasn’t happy. I get more satisfaction from assisting others in finding jobs that makethemhappy.” I clenched my jaw. Why was I trying to justify my choices to my childhood rival? Jude’s opinion meant nothing to me anymore. I’d given up trying to prove myself worthy of his friendship or, at the very least, his kindness around the fourth grade.

It didn’t matter. Life was good. Legal recruiting suited me more than being a lawyer ever had. I had a fabulous apartment, with the exception of its close proximity to Jude’s, where I lived alone but in walking distance from both work and my best friend, Esther. And I’d just started dating a minor league baseball player, which was a way more glamorous job than that of Jude’s “lawyah” girlfriend. I would know. In fact, the only source of my discontent was being trapped in this car with Jude right now. He could suck it.

“Understood.” He turned to face the window and muttered, “Quitter.”

The blood rushed to my head. I’d done nothing to deserve his disdain. I closed my eyes as a montage of activities contradicting that statement danced in my head. I had, in fact, doneplentyto Jude over the years, but only after he made it his daily goal to make me cry first. He’d given me no choice but to become a worthy opponent or play victim indefinitely. Since graduating high school, I’d made an effort to avoid hostility, but he seemed determined to rattle my chain every chance he got.

It hadn’t always been that way. I had a fuzzy recollection of us playing together long, long ago without fearing he’d destroy my toys or make me the subject of public ridicule—when we were pals. There were even embarrassing pictures to prove it, including one of us at three years old smiling and holding hands, both topless in bathing shorts, in a baby pool in the Starks’ backyard. The eight-by-ten photograph was hung prominently along the stairwells in both families’ houses. It was bad enoughmyparents hung a photo of me topless, but the Starks too? “You were a toddler, Molly,” my dad said when I complained. “You two were adorable,” added my mom. “It’s not like you had tits yet,” my sisters said. Still…it was embarrassing.

I gave Jude side-eye. He was now texting someone. The lawyer? If the traffic kept up, we might be stuck in this car for another twenty minutes. I could use the time to ask how we’d gone from holding hands while joyously splashing in a kiddie pool to him telling our mutual friends I had the farts after he sprayed a classmate’s bathroom with liquid gas at a birthday party, me taping a note with the words“I wet the bed” on his back, and other misdeeds we could never retract. Except there might be a statute of limitations on questioning a lifelong rivalry. And there were certain ghosts in our history I wasn’t prepared to conjure up. So instead, I put my earbuds back in and directed my thoughts to something positive.

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