“I heard the judge agreed to dismiss the charges on Gary Milton this afternoon.” He leaned against the jamb, hands in his pockets.
“Yeah. The DA’s office never really had a case, to begin with.” I shoved a few files into my already overstuffed briefcase and struggled to latch it shut. The hinges strained and looked ready to break. I was hard on briefcases, mostly because I took so much home with me every night. I may leave the office at six but most days I worked from home as well. I had never learned how to “leave work at the door.”
“That’s ten for ten in the last three weeks. At this rate, Jeremy, Lena, and I don’t have a chance keeping up with you,” he joked.
The four partners Lena, Jeremy, Adam, and I had a running monthly contest to see who could win or close out more cases. I had won the last six months running.
“I hope you aren’t here to ask me to take a dive so you can catch up,” I laughed.
Adam held his hands up. “I’d never do that. When you do well—” he spread his arms out. “We all do well.” He grinned and I rolled my eyes good-naturedly. Adam and I had always gotten along. He was much easier to deal with than Jeremy, but both were good guys, otherwise, I would never have gone into business with them in the first place. He watched me as I finished gathering my things. “I think you should come to get a drink with Jeremy and me tonight. Lena’s gone home, so it’ll just be us guys.”
“I’ve got a lot of work to do—” I started to say but Adam stopped me.
“You know you say that every single time right? It’s okay to do something other than work once in a while. I seem to remember a few times back in law school that involved too much tequila and a lot of vomiting,” he chuckled.
Adam and Jeremy had devoted a lot of our friendship to trying to get me to ‘hang out.’ It hadn’t slowed as we got older and they acquired family lives. If anything, they’d become more vocal about my need to chill out more. To cut loose. To get a ‘life.’
I knew how they viewed me. To them, my closest friends, I was a bit of a snooze. The dependable guy, but not the one you’d call for a spontaneous trip to Atlantic City. They thought because I didn’t usually have a lot to say that that meant I didn’t have a lot going on. That I was a “what you see is what you get” kind of person.
They had no idea.
“Yeah, that trip down memory lane won’t exactly sway me,” I commented, giving the room a final sweep of my eyes. It was impeccably neat. Not a thing out of place. It was a far cry from my shit-hole undergrad dorm room. Once I had money, I found that I took more pride in my surroundings. I didn’t want to go back to living in dumps surrounded by junk.
“Okay fine, how about I’d like to spend time with my friend outside these walls? It’s been at least six months since I’ve coaxed you into an evening out. Meg’s already given me a hall pass until 10, so come on. Help a guy out.”
Adam’s hangdog expression had me laughing. “The pouting thing may work on Meg, but it won’t work on me, buddy,” I chastised, herding him out of my office.
Adam slung an arm around my shoulders and made kissy faces. “You know it works on you too.”
I grunted a monosyllabic response and pushed him away good-naturedly.
Adam laughed, pleased with himself as the two of us walked the two blocks to Sweet Lila’s, the only decent watering hole in town.
As usual, the place was busy. It had recently undergone new management and you could tell. Sweet Lila’s had always been a decent place, characterized by its old-world charm. Lila had modeled it after an old English pub, but the interior hadn’t aged well. One could forgive the less than appealing interior because the cocktails were decently priced, and the food was palatable.
When Lila decided to sell the bar that she had been running for the past forty years and move to Florida, I handled the transaction and title work. I hadn’t been the only one surprised when Brad Sawyer, the bartender, had ponied up the cash. He and his recently paroled brother, Sebastian had decided to pitch in and buy the place. Everyone in town had figured the brothers would run the place into the ground. After all, what could a college dropout and his ex-convict brother know about running a business?
The two had proven every single person wrong—and I, for one, was glad to see it. I liked Brad. He was a hard-working guy and Seb, his brother, while the scary silent type, was cut from the same cloth. They had turned the tired, worn Sweet Lila’s into a modern sports bar that had definite upmarket appeal. It was clean and brightly lit with flat screens on the wall and local microbrews on tap. The food had even gotten an upgrade thanks to the new chef they hired from Pittsburgh, who turned standard bar food into a classy affair. Even though you could still find wings and burgers on the menu, they were interspersed with tastier stuff if you were wanting a nice evening out.
And the citizens of Southport had rewarded the local boys by happily frequenting the newly renovated bar in droves.
Brad, the new owner, was behind the bar when we arrived. He waved in our direction and indicated a free booth in the back. There were definite perks to being the law firm responsible for most of the real estate transactions in Southport—you were everyone’s best friend.
Adam pulled out his phone once we were seated and tapped out a message. “Meg says hello. She’s putting
