Page 53 of I Love You, I Hate You
“That sucks, man,” Andy said, touching his arm gently. “Any chance you can repair it?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted honestly. “It was pretty bad.”Plus I’m keeping a fairly big secret from her and I don’t know how she’ll handle it.He knew Ashley was right, but he figured Victoria needed a little time to cool down. If he tried to apologize now, he risked making everything worse. Better to let her heal a little on her own, then explain.
Cassie wrinkled her nose. “Then I assume it’s pointless to ask if she heard from Reproductive Justice,” she said. Andy threw his arm around her casually and once again, Owen wished he had handled everything differently. It would be so nice to have Victoria here, to whisper in her ear when things got boring, to touch her whenever he wanted. From the stage in the corner, the boring jazz band that worked all of Ashley’s galas started to play quietly.
“About what?”
“Oh, their in-house counsel is leaving for a job in DC, so I mentioned to their HR director that Victoria would be kickass at that. I don’t think she’s really looking to leave Smorgasbord, but I figured it’d be worth a shot for them.”
Owen couldn’t suppress a smile at the thought of Victoria working for RJ. It was the perfect job for her—progressive, feminist, and plenty disruptive. She would be filing suits and tearing old white men a new one on a daily basis, and he genuinely hoped she’d gotten an offer. “Yeah, I don’t know about that. But I do know she’d be perfect for it, so let’s hope they manage to poach her.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw his father and Ashley wrap up their conversation and start walking in his direction. He steeled himself and bid goodbye to the newlyweds, making sure to grab himself another glass of wine before his father finished crossing the room.
Charles Pohl looked exactly the way a multimillionaire in his early sixties would look if he were the star of a movie—square-jawed and handsome in a salt-and-pepper way, with an impeccably tailored suit and just enough tan to his skin to tell you he had a second home just outside Hilton Head. He was an exacting, unforgiving man, or at least he had been when Owen was a kid. Ashley claimed he had softened of late, and it did seem the girls were growing up with a slightly looser set of rules. Charles liked lawyers when they were working for him and making him rich, but he loathed the sorts of lawsuits Owen tended to bring, feeling they disturbed the invisible hand of the marketplace. That got in the way of making money, and that was an offense Charles couldn’t forgive.
They shared a handshake and Ashley visibly stifled an eye roll. “How are you, Owen?” Charles asked formally.
“I’m great. Suing Smorgasbord again.”
A beat of silence. “How is that going?” Charles asked, and Owen wondered if Ashley had made him practice for this conversation. She probably had.
“Pretty good. I’m taking them to court, and we should be doing the pre-hearing motions next week.”
“Ah. That must . . . be what you hoped for?”
“What I hope for is for them to stop exploiting their workers but yeah, this is a decent start.”
A familiar muscle twitched in Charles’ jaw, one that Owen recognized from childhood when his father would walk into his complete disaster of a bedroom and start ordering him toput your damn things away or else. “Then I’m happy for you,” Charles said stiffly.
Ashley patted his arm and nodded to a server. “I have to go check in with the caterer,” she said, leaving the two Pohl men to stare awkwardly at each other over their drinks.
“Ashley says you’re doing well,” Charles offered. “That’s good. I’m glad.”
“Are you?” Without Ashley there to soften his edges, Owen’s old habits with his father came roaring back.
An unfamiliar look crossed Charles’ perfectly weathered face. “Of course I am. I know I made mistakes when you were young, but—”
“But what, you think a couple of conversations because your wife told you to try will fix them?”
“Of course not,” he said, unexpectedly soft. “I just wanted to apologize. According to Ashley, that’s the first step toward repairing our relationship.”
Owen blinked in surprise. “And you want to do that? Or she’s making you?”
“I want to,” he said, still in that same gentle tone. “I never wanted—I know I was absent and harsh, and there’s no excuse for that. I thought I was doing what you needed to push you to succeed, but Ashley and the girls—I’ve realized what I did back then wasn’t right, and I’m sorry. I can’t fix that, but I can try and be better going forward.”
“Damn, Ashley’s really done a number on you,” Owen muttered, shaking his head.
Surprisingly, his father smiled. “She really has. In a good way, I hope.”
Against all of his instincts, Owen smiled back.
Nora @Noraephronwasagenius
I’m bored. What should I do? Live-tweet a rom com? Join a dating app and post all the terrible “hey beautiful” messages I get sent within the first twenty minutes? Tweet something with the hashtag feminist and see how many men pile into my mentions to scream at me?
Victoria hadn’t posted like this publicly in a while, preferring to save her salt for the group, but she felt like being a little feisty. She waited for the responses to roll in, which they predictably did within seconds.
Kara Hates Nazis @Neverthelesskararesisted