“My checkbook will be ready.”
My phone rings that evening, and I roll my eyes. It’s almost eight thirty, but I have a few more hours of work before I can go home and start all over again tomorrow. Elena has been a mess all day. Sometimes I’m part lawyer, part therapist for her. I also have another client dealing with an ex who bugged his phone and harassed him and his wife. I have a small list of clients, but when it rains, it always pours, and these days I’m drinking from a firehose.
I reach for the phone, and the caller ID tells me it’s my mother. If I don’t answer, I know she’ll keep calling.
“Hello, Mamma.” I run my hands through my hair. It makes the curls frizz, but it’s a habit.
“Sweetheart, are you coming on Saturday to my party?” my mother asks in her rich Italian accent.
“Yes, Mamma. I told you I’d be there.” She’s going to call every day to make sure. That’s probably three more calls.
“I think you should wear that pretty pink dress that brings out the color in your cheeks.”
I’m not sure it fits right now. I haven’t been good about working out recently, and I order takeout three meals a day.
I roll my eyes. “Mamma, that’s a summer dress. It’s November. I’ll be cold.”
“Nonsense. You have beautiful shoulders. It’s a great dress.”
It has a full skirt and makes my waist look tiny, but my boobs fall out of the top. My mother is up to something. Someone is coming to the party, and she’s playing matchmaker.
“Mamma? Who have you invited to the party?”
“Family. Friends. You know, the usual suspects.”
She’s trying to brush it off, but I know she’s up to something. For all I know, it could be her gynecologist. She does that.
“Why do I think you’re forgetting someone?”
“I promise you, there’s no set-up going on. Just come and look gorgeous.”
“I may have a date. Can I bring a plus one?” I don’t have a date, but this will temper her expectations.
“Of course, but warn him that your brothers will put him through the wringer.”
I sigh. I have three brothers, and they’re all hyper-protective. They’re the reason I’m almost thirty-two years old and have no social life that isn’t a family event. When I graduated from Michigan Law School, I should have found a job in New York or someplace far away from my family. But no. I moved home, where my brothers still try to run my personal life. No one is good enough.
It doesn’t matter. I spend all my time working anyway.
“I’ll warn him,” I tell her. “He’s not easily intimidated.”
In her eyes, I’m an old maid. By my age, she had all four of us and was a widow. She’s never remarried because my father was the love of her life.
She tells me all about her party plans, and I’m a good daughter and make the appropriate noises as she explains. My three sisters in law have been busy planning, and because I’m so screaming busy, I’ve just written a lot of checks, which doesn’t bother me at all.
Just a few more days, and this will be behind me.
On Saturday, as promised, I arrive at my mother’s sixtieth birthday party in my brother’s backyard in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. He’s two blocks from Golden Gate Park and twenty blocks from the beach. In most parts of California, that would spell expensive real estate—and it is expensive, relatively speaking—but Sunset is in the avenues and is the working-class part of San Francisco, because it sits under clouds of dense fog for more than ten months of the year.
I’ve worn the pink dress, but covered up my overflowing chest with a sweater. I also wear a pair of heels that kill my feet. They always look so good in the store when I try them on. They make my legs look longer and stick my butt out a bit, but if I stand in them too long, my toes cramp and my back hurts. I promise myself I won’t be a slave to fashion forever.
As soon as I’m able, I kick my shoes off and enjoy the grass between my toes. I walk up and down, evaluating all the great food—antipasto, salami and fig crostini from the figs in my mother’s backyard, rosemary-potato focaccia, bruschetta, meatballs that have simmered in my mother’s homemade sauce, cannelloni, and thousands of fried foods. I want to indulge, but if I do, I’ll have to spend hours I don’t have right now on the elliptical in my apartment.
Breath warms my neck. “It’s so sexy when you’re barefoot.”
I turn around. “Walker Clifton? Why are you here?”
“Your mother was a second mother to me. She invited me.”
He’s been handsome his whole life. His dark hair is short, but expensively cut, and if I had to bet, highlighted. He’s wearing a rolled-neck wool sweater that sets off his emerald green eyes and naturally tanned skin, jeans that hug his perfect ass, and a pair of leather half-boots that I’m sure cost more than my brothers make in a year.
I roll my eyes. “You know, it’s bad enough that I have to deal with you at work all week and pretend I don’t know what an asshole you are, but this is my family time. You should leave.”
“Hey, look who’s here!” my oldest brother, Tommy, announces, bringing Walker into a side hug. “If it isn’t the future governor of California gracing us with his presence.”
My mother comes rushing over. “The whole family is here.” She hugs Walker and kisses both of his cheeks, not so subtly winking at me.
My family loves Walker Clifton. They wouldn’t if they knew he’d deflowered me when we were fifteen years old and then dumped me. If I were to tell Tommy his precious Walker popped my cherry, he’d probably cut off his dick. The thought makes me smile.
“You’re beautiful when you smile,” Walker whispers.
“I was thinking about what would happen if I told my brothers what you did to me when we were fifteen.”
“They’d still love me.” He smiles.
“Shall we find out?”
“I can take it, but can you?”
I wish I could haul off and kick him in the balls. He knows my brothers and me well enough that he’s probably right. Damn it.
Walker’s a pain in my ass.
I take my overflowing plate to one of the plastic tables adorned with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, and Walker follows right behind and sits next to me.
“Just because my family likes you doesn’t mean I have to,” I remind him.
“This isn’t what you said when you came to beg me to ask my—what did you call him? minion?—to leave your precious, broken-hearted client alone.”
I shake my head. It’s none of his business that Elena’s employee got her pregnant and broke up with her because of it. I hate men. I just smile and eat my dinner while my family files past to catch up with him.
Walker is our family celebrity. As the night wears on, he talks to everyone, like the politician he is. He dances with my mom, and she laughs and blushes. He’s good to her when he doesn’t have to be. He does have some—albeit minimal—redeeming qualities.
I want to sneak out, but I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t say goodbye, so I’m stuck until every last dish is washed and put away. Tomorrow morning will come early, but there’s nothing I can do. I need to work. I’ll sleep when I die.