Last Lunch Break

I turned 26 that Tuesday. I didn't tell anybody. I bought nothing, planned nothing, and instead I smuggled a Tupperware of my mother's spaghetti al pomodoro past the courthouse security guy and took it upstairs.

There's a jury assembly room on the third floor of the Davidson County building that they condemned two years ago. Water damage, something with the roof. They sealed it with yellow tape and forgot about it. Best lunch spot in downtown Nashville if you ask me. Nobody asks me.

I ate up there every so often. Birthday lunch felt like the right send-off for it. Twenty-six in a dusty room full of folding chairs with plastic over half the windows. That's my twenties in a nutshell, honestly.

I sat on a table, kicked my heels off, and popped the lid. The smell hit me and I almost cried like an idiot. Mom's sauce. Tomatoes, basil, a pinch of sugar because she swears the canned stuff is too angry. She'd made a double batch Sunday and sent me home with enough for a week. I was on day three and it was still perfect.

I twirled a forkful and got it halfway to my mouth when I heard footsteps in the hall.

I froze with the fork up like a moron. The footsteps stopped outside the door. Then they kept coming, unhurried, and a hand lifted the yellow tape.

Nik Reimer ducked under it and stood there grinning at me.

If you don't know the name, lucky you. Nik's an associate over at Bexley and Grimaldi, across the street. Twenty-seven, gym membership he clearly uses, suits that cost more than my car payment. We've been sparring since I was 24, back when I did deposition prep on a case where he was second chair. He's the kind of guy who quotes a deposition number from memory just to watch you check it.

"Happy birthday," he said.

"How the hell do you know it's my birthday?"

"I don't. Lucky guess." He came in and let the tape fall behind him. "You skipped the Grimaldi review this morning."

"I did not skip anything. I have nothing to review. Sergei's office sent the schedule, and Shelley Hunt is not on it."

"New schedule. Went out at eight." He pulled his phone out, scrolled, held it toward me like a peace offering. It wasn't one.

I read it. My name. My firm. Room 402, 1 p.m.

"That's wrong," I said. "Sergei confirmed the schedule two weeks ago. I have the email."

"I know it's wrong. Sergei changed it and didn't tell anybody, because Sergei does whatever Sergei wants." He pocketed the phone. "So here you are, eating spaghetti in a haunted room instead of telling him he's an idiot."

"Sergei is not an idiot. He's just busy. There's a difference and I'd appreciate you learning it."

"Ouch." He sat down on the table across from mine, uninvited, and stretched his legs out. "You going to 402?"

"At one, yes."

"It's 12:40."

"I know what time it is, Nik."

"Then eat fast." He nodded at my Tupperware. "That smell is doing things to me, by the way. I had a granola bar for lunch."

"Tragic. Ask your partners for a raise."

"I have a raise. I asked for it myself." He leaned back on his palms. "What's the occasion? You always eat up here?"

"Sometimes."

"On your birthday."

"I said sometimes."

"You're dodging."

"I'm eating." I twirled another forkful, mostly to have something to do with my hands, and got it in my mouth before he could make me talk. Sauce on the fork, a meatball broken in half, the good stuff. I chewed and stared at a water stain on the ceiling like it was fascinating.

He watched me. I could feel it. Nik watches people the way cats watch birds, patient, like he's got all day.

"You always eat like you're mad at the fork?" he said.

I chewed slower. Took another bite. Big one. A real shove-it-in bite, sauce at the corner of my mouth, and I made no move to wipe it. Let him sit there. This was my lunch, my room, my birthday, and I'd be damned if I was going to make pleasant conversation about document schedules with a guy I'd spent two years beating on redlines.

"I'll just wait, then," he said.

So we sat there. Fluorescent light doing that flicker thing in the corner. The plastic on the windows breathing a little in the AC. My fork scraping the Tupperware. Him watching.

"You know what's funny," he finally said. "I've been trying to get a look at your edit of the Aldridge exhibit for a week. You people redline like you're being paid per comma."

"We are being paid per comma. That's the job."

"Brutal business."

"Mm." Another bite.

"Fine. Don't talk. I'll talk." He shifted around to face me. "You want to hear something funny about the Grimaldi case? My partners think we've got them on the March emails. We don't. We've got them on the February ones, and nobody's noticed except me and, I'd bet money, you."

I stopped chewing. That got my attention. I swallowed. "February's nothing. February's just invoices."

"February fourteenth is not just invoices."

"That's a holiday, not a legal strategy."

"It's both, if you're smart." He was smiling again, but smaller this time. "Anyway. You knew. Didn't you."

I put my fork down and started putting my heels back on. "It's 12:50. I've got a room to get to."

"You've got five minutes of spaghetti left and a guy sitting here being honest with you, which doesn't happen often."

"It happens never, in my experience." I stood. Tupperware in one hand, fork in the other, lid nowhere. Whatever. The floor of a condemned room could hold my lid.

I got two steps toward the door and his hand closed around my wrist.

Not hard. Just there. Warm, his thumb over my pulse like he was taking it.

"Let go of me, Nik."

He let go at once, both hands up. "Five seconds. Just tell me if you flagged the fourteenth."

I turned too fast and the fork dipped. A single strand of spaghetti slid off it, right onto my blouse. White blouse, sauce-red, right across the top of my chest where it dips. Perfect. Comedy. I looked down at it and swore.

"Nice," he said.

"You did that."

"Me? I'm not even touching you." He didn't step back, either. He looked at the sauce and he looked at me and something changed in his face, some switch going over.

"Give me a napkin," I said. "You've got a napkin, guys like you always have a napkin."

"I don't."

"Nik."

"You've got a bathroom down the hall."

"I'm not walking into 402 with marinara on my tit."

"No," he agreed. "You're not." He looked at the stain, then at me. "I could get it. If you want."

"With what?"

He didn't answer. He just waited, close, eyebrows up, and I understood exactly what he was offering.

"Fine," I heard myself say. "Go on, then. Since you're so helpful."

And he leaned down.

I could have taken it back. To be clear about the timeline, there was a whole second where I could have. There was. I stood there. My Tupperware still in my hand, and Nik Reimer bent at the waist and licked the sauce off my blouse.

One slow stripe. His tongue on the fabric over my breastbone, warm through the cotton. I felt it everywhere. My knees went interesting. The Tupperware nearly hit the floor.

"What the hell," I managed.

He straightened up. There was sauce at the corner of his mouth and, God help me, he licked that too. "Mm. Your mother's recipe?"

"How do you know it's my mother's?"

"Your face when you opened it. You looked like somebody let you into a vault." He stepped back half a pace. "Sorry. That was..."

"Insane."

"Crazy."

"Completely inappropriate."

"Absolutely." He was grinning again, but the cocky edge was gone off it. Something newer under there. "Worth it, though."

"It is not worth it." My voice came out about half its usual size.

The strand was gone. The stain was a faint pink smear now, wetter than it started, and I was standing in a condemned jury room on my 26th birthday with my pulse in my ears because a lawyer I couldn't stand had licked me through my shirt.

I should have said something with teeth. I had a whole vocabulary of teeth. I use them for a living.

Instead I heard myself say, "I didn't think you'd actually do it."

"Neither did I."

"And it doesn't happen again."

"Okay," he said it easy, like agreeing to a lunch order. Then he tilted his head. "Unless you ask."

"I'm not going to ask."

"Sure."

"I'm not, Nik."

"Okay, Shelley." He picked my lid up off the floor and held it out to me, which was somehow the most infuriating thing he'd done all day. Courteous. "It's 12:55."

I took the lid. I snapped it on the Tupperware. My hands were not steady and we both knew it.

He was still holding the lid out. Smiling like he'd won something.

So I opened the Tupperware back up. Dipped two fingers in the sauce. And before he could react I smeared it across his lower lip, slow, deliberate, red as a fresh wound.

"There," I said. "Now we match."

He went cross-eyed trying to look at his own mouth. "Did you just..."

"Ask me, Nik."

It came out before I could stop it. His eyebrows went up. He wiped his thumb along his lip, looked at the sauce on it, then looked at me.

"Can I kiss you, Shelley?"

"Yeah," I said. "You can."

He tasted like marinara and garlic and something under that, warm, like coffee. I grabbed his shirt at the front and pulled him in and he made a noise against my mouth, half laugh half groan, and his hands found my hips. The Tupperware got set down somewhere. The fork too. My back hit the doorframe of the old jury room and he kissed me harder and I kissed him back harder and for about a minute neither of us was a lawyer.

"Basil," I said when we broke for air. "You taste like my