Piano in the Dark. Eric Pete

      “So. He deserves it. Jacobi’s put in a lot of time and hard work at the firm.”

      “Hmph. On your shoulders,” she stated, waving her hands in the air. “Is that why you were out celebrating with him tonight? I know what’s going on when you don’t answer the phone, Chase. Drinking and whatever else.”

      I stood up, ready for a shower more than ever. Like I said, I’d never win challenging her. “I have a long day ahead of me, babe,” I mumbled. Despite this disagreement, I loved Dawn. As I walked by, I leaned over and gently kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, girl,” I said in her ear. She reached up, placing her arm around my neck in a semi-hug.

      “It should be you about to make partner, sweetheart. You know he’s only successful because you cover up for his mistakes. Then he takes credit for all your hard work. Y’know…one of these days, he’s going to stab you in the back.”

      “Stop. Jacobi’s my friend, Dawn,” was all I could offer in response. Our argument was over for the night, but as sure as the day is long, we’d revisit it. As long as things stayed the way they were. Dawn wanted me to go back and finish law school and pass the bar. Questioning a man’s heart and the choices he made was always a sure way to generate conflict. You’d almost swear she was unfulfilled instead of me.

      But Dawn wasn’t the only one to question me tonight. And I wasn’t thinking about Jacobi, either.

      That woman had questioned my calling.

      A stranger, as far as I was concerned.

      4

      That night, while I slept with Dawn, I dreamed of another. We were back again at the corner of Bagby and Webster. This time, I stopped Ava from leaving. Told her about my insane urges and that I had to have her despite my reservations. And she agreed, putting my hands in places on her other than her back, which I’d innocently rubbed earlier. Placing my desperate tongue in her willing mouth, we made love beneath the streetlights. Aware of what the other desired so bad. Aware anyone could be watching. Aware we could be arrested. Aware that we didn’t care.

      But how do you make love to someone you don’t know?

      I asked myself that when I awoke from the crazy fantasy and went to work. It was an irksome thought I couldn’t shake while I sat at my downtown desk at Casey, Warner & Associates on the forty-first floor of the Wells Fargo Plaza. Fending off that as well as my awful hangover, I downed some more of my tall Starbucks, checking Harris County court records online for filing dates on a case.

      “Incoming!” Jacobi yelled, scurrying into my office with a stack of files. His crisp white shirt was already showing wrinkles. He’d come in early. Waitress must’ve not held his attention last night.

      “Damn, dude. Trying to make me spill my coffee?” I scolded, quickly putting my drink down and clearing a spot on my desk for his newest pile of work. People around here always wondered how Jacobi could keep his office so pristine. Easy. He shuttled all of his shit over here.

      I did my very best, taking pride in my work, despite pulling beyond my fair share around here. Growing up, I saw how hard things were for my mom on her own and she took way more shit than I. In this economy, I was lucky to be here. A smile led to certainty. So I was determined to keep my smile.

      “Sorry. I need you to check on some case law for Andrews vs. Stratford Circle and look over these filings for the Hinijosa case.”

      “Good morning to you too,” I said drily. “I thought you wanted the docket control orders first thing.”

      Jacobi chuckled as he folded his arms. “Dawn was pissed at you, huh? I knew it. Shoulda returned her call last night, fool. Maybe you wouldn’t be so crabby now.”

      “Wouldn’t have mattered…much,” I said as I pinched between my eyebrows to alleviate some of the pain I was experiencing. “How in the fuck are you so awake? I at least went to bed.”

      “Took a Five-hour Energy,” Jacobi replied. “Kicked the girl from the pub out, went for a three-mile run around the Rice University campus, then came in to work.”

      I shook my head. As with Dawn, sometimes there was no winning with my friend, either. “So, you want me to jump on this instead?” I asked, turning back to the new work he’d delivered as I heard Dawn’s voice inside my head ridiculing me.

      “Yes, please,” he said as he prepared to leave me to my work again. “And I’m sorry for keeping you out last night, bro. Need me to talk to Dawn for you?”

      Remembering her words about Jacobi, I replied, “Nah. I got it.”

      “You sure?”

      “Yeah.”

      “We one hundred?”

      “Yeah,” I said with a chuckle of my own. I gave him an imaginary fist bump across the room. “We one hundred.”

      He’d almost completed his dart into the hallway when I did something against my better instincts once again.

      “Jay?” I called out.

      “Yeah?” he responded, his head extending into view in my doorway.

      “Did you see this girl in a black dress at the pub last night?”

      “I need more details than that, bro,” Jacobi said as he fully backed up into view. “How’d she look?”

      “Light-skinned sister with long black hair. Kinda East Indian looking. Beautiful.”

      “Oh. Damn. Probably one of them Louisiana redbones—Thibodeaux, Fontenot, Arceneaux, Bilbo?” he clowned, rattling off the last names in rapid succession.

      I laughed. “Yeah, I guess.”

      “Nope. Definitely didn’t see that last night, but wish I had,” he said with a smirk. “Sounds a little like Lila Reed. Remember her? She used to be an attorney here. Think she moved back to Dallas to take care of her parents or something. Now that was a woman I would do in a millisecond.”

      “Probably as long as you’d last. A millisecond.”

      “I won’t dignify that poor joke. Did you?”

      “Did I what?”

      “C’mon. Don’t play any stupider than you are. You were a zombie a moment ago; now you’re smiling like a rich kid with his first trust-fund payment. Did you get it? Did you chop it down? Did you wax that ass? My boy! I knew you still had it in ya!”

      “Nah. Nothing like that, man. Happily married and out the game,” I said, ignoring the dream still playing through my head on a continuous loop. A framed picture of me and Dawn in Italy on our honeymoon rested off to the left of a mountain of papers. We were standing outside the ruins of the Coliseum. “Just ran into her after you left. Innocent conversation. Says we went to school together, but I don’t remember her. I can be bad with names, but never faces.”

      “Uh-huh,” Jacobi said, eyeing me suspiciously. “Maybe she’s had some kind of extreme makeover since you last saw her. Ugly duckling into a swan or something. I knew a few like that from back in my day. Girl was probably in your biology class, panties all wet and swooning, and you didn’t even notice.”

      “Y’know…I didn’t think about that. That’s probably it.”

      “Glad I could solve your problem, bro. Now you know I can talk about fine-ass women all day, but can you please get back to work?”

      “I’m on it,” I said, smiling.

      I got into my groove, working through lunch as I immersed myself in my work without any further interruptions from Jacobi.

      My desk phone buzzed. So much for being interruption-free.

      “Chase, are you there?” our receptionist Kelli Jo called out over the intercom.

      “Yes.