Guilt surges through me at not ever having told Cort about what my group is. He’s never asked so blatantly before and I’m unsure how to respond. My group is very near and dear to me. Each person in there is closer to me than my own mother. Our pasts are all brittle and broken. It seems traitorous to share what we are about with someone who could never understand.
“It’s a support group. And Claud’s a great lady but she’s not interested in ever remarrying,” I clip out and cut my eyes over to her. She’s slicing an orange to garnish our beers with and she’s lost in thought. When no one’s looking, she drops her playful demeanor. Loss and heartache plague her features. But the moment she lifts her chin and her eyes meet mine, she forces a grin. I smile back. “Anyway, what’re you doing your topic on?”
Cort narrows his eyes at me but respects my blatant subject change. “Personality and Psychopathology. Thought I might figure out ole’ Daddy,” he grits out.
His parents divorced when he was a senior in high school, when his mother found her best friend in bed with her husband. It was a bitter, nasty divorce that pulled both him and his younger sister into it.
“Psychopathology isn’t the same as psychopathy, man. Hate to burst your bubble there. Your dad’s just a cheating asshole. That’s my professional opinion,” I tell him with a shrug.
He laughs and soon we’re past tense subjects while we devour fried pickles and beer that Claudia’s long since brought to us.
My laptop sits on the coffee table in front of me, open to Blackboard. Most of my students have already inputted their topics, a few brave souls—Mack included—challenging me by taking on ‘Power and Dominance.’ But my gaze isn’t on my computer, instead it’s on the wall in front of me—a wall I’ve painted countless times. Clamping my eyes shut, I attempt to conjure up the exact shade I remember. Everything is sketchy in my memory bank and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get it right.
One thing’s for sure, though.
It’s the wrong goddamned shade.
With a huff, I rise to my feet and stalk over to the bookshelf in the corner. On the top shelf, sits a color palette booklet. Snatching it up, I thumb through the colors of the rainbow until I find the one color that always alludes me yet is perfectly imprinted in my brain.
I count through the Xs over each wrong color.
Sixteen.
The seventeenth shade gets a big fucking X too.
Since I only instruct Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, Tuesdays and Thursdays are my play days. Tomorrow, it would seem, I’ll be playing in the paint section of the hardware store.
I carry over the palette to the bar and drop it beside my wallet. Tomorrow I’ll attempt, once again, to find that color.
The color that haunts my dreams.
The color that should bring joy but instead drags out depression from the depths of my soul.
A color that will always be perfect in my head but no matter how hard I fucking try, I’ll never bring it to life on my living room wall.
“Life’s not fair,” I mimic Mom’s words.
I cringe at her harsh words that were meant to mend my heart and push me back into reality. Back then, despite her unyielding personality, she was there for me. Tough love, she used to say. But, she eventually lost the bite of her rigid nature, the moment Alzheimer’s started playing tricks on her. Little by little, it stole my strict mother away and in return gave me this confused, lost woman. One of the only three people I’ve ever truly loved came to a point where she couldn’t remember if she loved me back or not. Now, I feel as though I’m all on my own, facing reality, without my mother’s guiding hand and advice.
My head throbs in unison with my broken heart and I run my fingers through my hair. Gripping at it, I slam my eyes shut.
Discombobulated shards of my brutal past stab and slice through my head. I force my eyes back open and with it, the sadness that ever attaches itself to my psyche withdraws into the shadows of my mind.
Tomorrow, I’ll visit her.
Tuesdays they have fresh daffodils at Schrage’s Florist, and just like I do each week, I’ll bring them to her.
She doesn’t have to tell me she likes them because I know.
Pain once again slices through my chest and I stumble into the kitchen, on a desperate mission to dull it. Yanking open the cabinet door above the stove, I grab the amber colored whiskey bottle and unscrew the cap. I bring it to my lips and take a long swig, enjoying the burn as it races down my throat.
It burns in my chest and chases away the hurt.
But for how long?
Another pull of the whiskey.
Life’s not fucking fair.
The wind whips at my hair and rogue strands plaster against the front of my face. Damn it. I tuck them back, irritated that I didn’t put on that extra layer of hairspray this morning. It’s a rare spring day in Chicago, the weather in April often swinging from fifty degrees to seventy-five day to day.
I walk swiftly up Whacker Drive toward my office building, barely noticing the river, still green from the St. Patrick’s Day celebration. I don’t see the other people around me, taking in the sites, eating a Chicago dog from a street vendor, the sights and sounds of the city that excite so many people. I miss it all, my thoughts focused on my upcoming meeting.
After the accident, I couldn’t bring myself to attend Northwestern, so I transferred to the University of Chicago and was eventually accepted into their law program. I didn’t have a specific track in mind, but when it came time to apply for positions as an associate, the best offer was from the firm Abbott & Taft. They are one of the most prestigious firms in the city, but the opening was in the specialty of divorce. It ended up being an area where I excelled.
Perhaps there is some irony there, helping others to see what I already knew—love brings nothing but hurt.
I dedicated myself to the job one hundred and twenty percent, leaving no time for family or friends. The result was to become the youngest junior partner in the history of the firm.
My upcoming appointment is with my most wealthy client. I represent a Chicago Cubs outfielder whose wife violated the fidelity clause in their prenup. Repeatedly. Apparently, he was head over heels because he kept forgiving her until she unexpectedly filed for divorce three months ago. For some reason, the hussy thought by being the one to file, it would negate the rules. He got himself a smart one there, didn’t he?
Once I met with her overly confident lawyer—idiot—and laid out the ironclad—and I say ironclad, because it just so happens that I was the one who put their prenup together—agreement with her lawyer, I sent him back to her with his tail between his legs.
If I had my way, the bitch wouldn’t get one single cent, but they have a kid together, and David wants to settle this out of court. I don’t handle cases where children are involved and my boss, Larry, knows this. Due to the deep background checks they do on all possible candidates for an associate position, he is aware of the accident and subsequent loss. I’ve never talked about it, but he knows. So, I was monumentally pissed when he laid this one on my doorstep.
I have a reputation as an ice queen, a bitch, a pit-bull, and many other terms that probably seem unflattering. But, I don’t give a shit. To me, those names represent my ability to effectively do my job without any emotional crap getting in the way. I’m a merciless negotiator. I’ll take on the toughest of cases, and even though I follow the letter of the law, that doesn’t mean I fight fair.