Page 23 of Escape Girl

I lowered my voice in sympathy. “Especially if the person you’re stealing from has fewer resources. Especially if you can threaten her with shame. Especially if you don’t expect her to be able to fight back.”

She stood up and walked to the window and turned her back to me. “I’m positive he thinks I won’t fight,” she whispered. “That night, on our impromptu ‘date,’ I told him how my savings were almost drained. I confided in him about my grandmother being ill, and how I always told her that everything in my life was perfect because she worries so much about me and I could never cause her additional stress.”

That made a lot of sense. If Taggert thought of her as broke and unwilling to hurt a beloved family member, he probably did figure that she’d just slink away.

“He was right too.” She let out a harsh sigh. “I would never have risked any sort of press that would slut-shame me or callme a thief. I could never expose my grandma to that kind of trauma.”

Confused, I looked down at the six-page cease-and-desist letter spread across the table. So, she didn’t want to continue?

Bella made a strangled sort of sniffle, and I jumped halfway out of my seat when I realized she was swallowing back sobs. “But my grandmother died two weeks ago,” she managed. “So yeah. I’m going to fight.”

I walked across the office slowly, to give her a moment, and returned with a box of tissues. In the face of her sorrow, I felt ashamed I’d even considered not taking the case. “Good,” I said softly.

She blew her nose. “What’s next?”

“You can go home to Chicago, and we’ll continue to work together via video conference,” I said. “I’ll provide you with some options and the consequences of each. For example, you could ignore the cease and desist and continue with hiring your testers and working on your product release. The consequence may be that Taggert files an injunction against you and we prepare to go to court. Or, we could go on the offensive. We could reply to the cease and desist, asking them for more comprehensive proof that they own this intellectual property and see how they respond.”

She nodded, slowly. “OK. I sure wish there was something even more proactive that we could do.” She grabbed another tissue. “Like punch him in the face.”

I laughed. Driven by anger, I bet Bella could pack quite a punch. “Definitely stay away from him,” I warned. “His lawyer will be looking for ways to twist any interaction between the two of you, so it’s far safer for there to be none.”

She sighed. “Fine, I’ll behave.” Her eyes brightened. “Hey! Since I’ll fly home tomorrow, can I take you out to lunch today? I’d love a way to say thank you!”

I pulled up the calendar on my phone, ready to make an excuse—except I didn’t want to.

How weird. I’d planned to immediately inform the partners that I was going to take a pro bono case on the side, emphasizing that I would still have most of my considerable time to spend on billable hours for any case they wanted to assign me. Starting this very afternoon! I’d be willing to jump in wherever would be most helpful.

But now, I didn’t want to do any of that. Now, I wanted to go out to lunch with Bella. I stood staring at my phone in silence, way too long. What was with me today?

Maybe it wasn’t so unusual to just need a moment to breathe. Jesus, I’d worked eighty-hour weeks straight since the beginning of April. No mystery there; that was my modus operandi in life. I suffocated myself in work to avoid everything else. But between Bella’s case and the forced memories of last year, something inside was stirring.

“Great!” I smiled at her and shoved my phone in my pocket. “Let’s go.”

*

Lunch was surprisinglyfun. We went to a simple Italian place around the corner and took our time, ordering plates of antipasto to share before splitting two huge bowls of cacio e pepe and rigatoni with fennel sausage.

The conversation flowed easily, now that we weren’t restricted to her legal case. We spoke about movies, books, our best work stories, and what it was like to grow up in Bella’s small hometown. She was kind, funny, and extremely easy to talk to. It made me realize how long it’d had been since I’d simply relaxedwith a female friend, and I felt a fresh twinge of old guilt at how I’d let my college friendships languish.

After a dessert of tiramisu, Bella put a hand to her belly. “I suppose you have to get back to work now, right?”

My suit pants felt like they were bursting at the seams. Sitting in my office for the rest of the day suddenly felt like the worst idea ever. A few free hours wasn’t that big of a deal. I could always work late into the night, right? “Actually, I’m going to treat myself to a rare afternoon off,” I announced.

Bella smiled. “Want to walk off some of these carbs?”

A very long walk turned into happy hour drinks at an Irish pub halfway between Bella’s hotel and my apartment. We’d been there about two minutes when a guy at the bar offered to buy her a drink. She graciously declined, and he wandered off to find his buddies.

“Don’t say no on my account,” I insisted. “He was pretty cute. If you want to talk to him, it’s totally fine.”

Bella snorted. “Have you forgotten the result of my last romantic entanglement?” She shuddered and slurped her beer. “I may never sleep with a man again.”

She twirled on her barstool. “Do you have a boyfriend? Or a partner?” she asked curiously.

Well, I needed to learn how to push this phrase out of my mouth sometime. “I’m getting divorced,” I practiced.

Bella’s face fell. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!”

“It sucks,” I admitted.

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