I study Aimee, who refuses to meet my eye. She sips her wine slowly, with great care. I know I’m not crazy.
“But you’ve said things to make me believe that she was still your doctor. You knew I thought it was… strange.”
Farah pulls Aimee’s wineglass away from her mouth to reveal a devious grin.
“You’re so naive sometimes, Margot,” Aimee laughs.
“From her chart, I’d say Margot is earnest,” Rini says. Her simple kindness shifts the energy in the room.
“And Aimee does enjoy making herself out to seem worse than she is. Her bark is louder than her bite,” Farah adds.
Adam places his wineglass on the bar with an ear-piercing clink. “Ha. Now who’s the naive one?” he says. Adam lets his barb land without acknowledging Farah and Aimee. Instead, he stares directly at me. His attention is comforting.
The server arrives with a tequila soda for me and an IPA for Ted.
“I’d say it’s time to get started,” Rini says. “Margot and Ted. Pisces and Aquarius. At first glance this might look like opposites attract, Aquarius being known as independent and ambitious, while Pisces are emotional and dreamy, but you are united by your hardworking, never-surrender Capricorn moons. It’s the exact right combination of qualities.”
“It’s worked for over a decade,” Ted says, rubbing my knee.
Ted and I met while I was a first-year associate at Gannett, Horvath, Swine & Moore. I’d crashed Adam’s annual Yale-alumni Manhattan bar crawl at Dorian’s after we’d wrapped a law firm event at Quality Meats. I was complaining to Adam that my graduating class didn’t do impromptu reunions when Ted interjected.
“If you want one, you should organize it yourself,” he said plainly.
“Margot, this is Ted,” Adam said.
I nodded at Ted and sipped my gin and tonic through a tiny black straw. I could see his impulse to shake my hand, perhaps the way his corn-fed father had taught him to do, or his favorite professor in school, but he wisely resisted. He had good awareness of social cues.
Adam was pulled away to the bar while Ted and I stood around the small high-top table. The music was loud, the crowd even more so.
“You look like the kind of woman who could make that happen if she wanted to,” Ted shouted.
“Well, I’m busy making many things happen, Ted, things bigger than a bar crawl.”
“Like?”
I leaned in close to him. I could smell his cologne over the mixed stench of bleach and alcohol in the bar. I inhaled so deeply it made me dizzy, but I never lost my train of thought. I exhaled out my answer.
“Being the youngest partner at my firm, and then a top rainmaker by fifty, after I settle in as a hot young wife and mother to four without slowing down one bit.”
“Ambitious and family focused, a rare combo,” Ted remarked.
“Is it?”
“Unless the kids are just a vanity play and you have no intention of spending time with them.”
“Four of them?”
“Good point. But maybe you’re excessive.”
From another man that might have been code for “too much,” but the twinkle in Ted’s eye told me it was a challenge. He dared me to be too much for him. He wasn’t going to scare easily.
“Family is everything to me,” I said.
“Well then, you pass all my criteria. I have met my match.”
“The question is, Have I?” I said, flirting. “Are you a lawyer too?”
“Investment banker. Morgan Stanley.”
“And you want four kids?”
“I’m an only child; it’s part of my God-shaped hole.”
“Your what?”
He tapped his suit pocket and gestured with his head. I followed him under the flat-screen TV hanging from the ceiling to the red EXIT sign at the side door. It was a gorgeous summer night, the kind where you could feel that people had been stuck inside all day, bathing in the air-conditioning of their office buildings, waiting for the moment to feel the warm, thick breeze and remember again they were primal and human. It was almost as loud outside as inside, without the relentless bass of the music.
“I hope you didn’t bring me out here to show me any hole on your body.”
Ted smiled and slipped a vape pen out of his breast pocket. He offered it to me first.
“What is it?” I asked, knowing I wouldn’t accept it no matter the answer.
“Little bit of weed.”
“Weed is for lazy people,” I said.
“Coke is for the gunners?”
