29
I hung my red trench coat on the back of my office door, took a seat at my desk, and pressed the start button on my computer. It was still booting up when the phone rang. I checked the number on the curled business card clutched in my damp hand. Yes, it was him, just as he promised.
“Christie Tate speaking,” I said to sound official, to steady my nerves, to prop up the sham that this was a business call. Reed, the new man in my Tuesday group, had been running deals—or whatever hedge fund managers do—for two decades. I’d been a lawyer for two years. He didn’t need my legal advice. When he laughed on the other end of the line, I could picture his dimples because I’d just seen them in group when we’d laughed at something Rory said about her dad.
“You sound like a real lawyer,” he said.
“That’s because I am a real lawyer.” My body temperature rose. I fanned myself with the card he’d pressed into my hand.
“Did you think I would call?”
Would truth function here—in the untamed, unsupervised space outside of group—like it did in there? Would it rescue me from the cliché I saw myself diving into like a shimmering pool in a 1970s nighttime drama like Dynasty or Dallas? What did I think would happen between me and this married older man with the ropy forearms and lean neck with a hairline like the seashore? The married man who joined my therapy group because he couldn’t stop getting blow jobs from other women?
“I wasn’t sure.” But I hoped he would, was glad he did. “How can I help you?”
“Do you know anyone who does M&A work?”
My turn to laugh. Skadden was internationally famous for mergers and acquisitions work. I sat one floor away from thirty M&A lawyers. “I can give you the name of the head of the department.”
“I’ll take a name and a number.”
I gave him the name and number of the partner with the snow-white hair who wore custom-made pinstriped suits and closed deals that ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
There was a pause. I flicked the corner of Reed’s business card, and then pinned it to the bulletin board behind my phone, even though I’d already memorized his number.
There was another pause. Then another.
“So,” he said, and I could hear his smirk and picture the glint in his eye. “If I keep you on the phone, are we going to need a chaperone?”
“What for?” I wanted to make him say it.
“For all the things we are going to say and do to each other.”
When I hung up the phone, still smiling, still warmed and thrumming from my thighs to my scalp, I stood up and wrung my hands, trying to break the spell, the heat, the throbbing, the pleasure of having Reed’s attention. I relived each beat of our conversation, thrilled that he’d punctured the pretense that our conversation was work related.
I cracked my neck and arched my back, but my body begged for release, so I pressed in the metal lock on my door. Pushed back my chair and lay on the floor. I slid my hands between my legs. My jaw tightened as I touched myself, thinking of Reed’s dimples, his strong hands, and his crisp collars. His voice on the phone. Those delicious pauses. I came with such force that I bumped my head on the edge of my computer tower. My whole body pulsed—fingertips, triceps, lips, belly, Achilles’ heel, toes.
I was still breathing hard when I sat in my chair, straightened my sweater, and began to answer e-mails from Jack and the team in Germany.
From group, I knew that Reed viewed his marriage as a stalemate. He was the guilty, straying husband; his wife Miranda’s rage simmered just below boiling. Their communication was limited to terse exchanges about the logistics of getting their girls to gymnastics and tutoring. They slept with their backs to each other.
I also knew it was cliché for me to run headfirst into a relationship with him while I was still reeling from Alex. And yet I sprinted.
The following Thursday and Monday sessions, I didn’t mention Reed, an omission I justified because he was in my Tuesday group, so I should talk about him then. On Tuesday, I set my alarm fifteen minutes early so I could take extra time getting dressed. My stomach somersaulted when the train pulled into the Washington stop. I get to be with him for ninety minutes.
Reed arrived a few minutes late. He put his briefcase next to my chair, and as he sat down, he scooted several inches closer to me. Could they all feel the heat rising between us? My heart was pounding. Surely Dr. Rosen and everyone else could hear it.
During the session, I stared at the dark indigo of Reed’s slacks, the fine hair on his wrists. When he talked, I watched his lips move; when he brushed his hand through his hair in frustration, I couldn’t make myself look away. But I also watched the clock obsessively, because at nine o’clock, group would end, and Reed would head north to his office and I would head west to mine, where my gray life of document review and Riverdance awaited me. But in group, less than a foot away from Reed, my life shimmered with color and promise because I could watch him challenge the Colonel, brush his foot with mine, listen to his laugh.
And this: my feelings for Reed were undeniably of a sexual nature, which meant I should share them with the group. The pressure to disclose pressed against my lips, but Reed beat me to it.
“I think about Christie all the time. When I get in bed with Miranda, I wish she was Christie. At the girls’ soccer games, I wish Christie was with me. We talked on the phone the other
