If he were, maybe he’d take this case, I think with a grumble.
“Landlord dispute without a rental contract in place. Not my purview. Maybe ask Professor Stanton. He teaches…”
“Disability and the Law—I already did,” I answer, trying to tamper my impatience. “But he’s out of town that day. And my Racial Justice professor can’t do it because her dog is scheduled for surgery.”
Professor Cluce makes an aggravated sound. “Then maybe try one of those service organizations for the blind. They usually have pro-bono lawyers—”
“I tried every single one in New York. But the eviction hearing is in two weeks and the wait time to talk to a lawyer at any of those places is at least two months.”
He sighs. “While I sympathize with your friend’s plight, I don’t think a Public Health Seminar professor is going to be of much help to you.”
Okay, I get that he doesn’t want to help me. I’m just one of the many students that pass through his class every year, and Naima, my former social worker turned friend is even less than that to him. But I can’t back down. Not with the very roof over her and her parent’s heads at stake.
“That’s just it. A little help—a very little help—is all they need. It’s clearly a case of wrongful eviction. I’m sure their new landlord is only doing this because my friend’s parents are both blind and he doesn’t think they can fight back.”
“I don’t practice law anymore, and even if I did, this isn’t a Public Health issue—”
“I know. But the professors who specialize in representing people with disabilities can’t do it, so I’m asking you. Please, Professor Cluce.”
“Really wish I could help you, Amber, but I have a faculty meeting in less than ten minutes—”
I can already hear his footsteps shuffling across the carpet to get to the door.
“Great, a faculty meeting,” I call over the sound of the door swinging open. “I’ll go with you, and we can ask the other professors if they—”
The door whines shut on my suggestion.
Leaving me alone in the seminar room, inwardly cursing professors who claim to want to make the world a better place but who won’t lift a finger to assist the parents of the social worker who helped me get into Columbia Law in the first place.
“Heya, Reynolds. What’s what?”
At least I thought I was alone in the room. But apparently, Jake Ferra has waited up for me. Again. Ugh! He’s been bothering me ever since he transferred to Columbia from Princeton to finish up a dual J.D./MBA degree at the beginning of spring semester.
“Still not interested, Jake,” I say, heading for the door in Professor Cluce’s wake with my AmbuTech mobility cane in an upright position. I don’t use it in here since I know my way around the classroom. Maybe I can figure out where that faculty meeting is and go…
“C’mon, Reynolds, why aren’t you interested?” Suddenly, Jake’s voice is in front of me, and the soft mewl of the door opening but not closing lets me know he’s holding it for me as he says, “I’m a really interesting guy once you get to know me. You should give us a chance.”
“Okay, I’m in a rush, and I’ve got to figure out how to get to Faculty House. So I’m going to say this straight up: I don’t date rich guys or Italians.”
Harsh, I know. But I got majorly dicked over the first and only time I dated a rich guy back in undergrad, and as for Italians… Well, let’s just say, even though I’ve been Amber Reynolds for nearly a decade now, I’ll never forget what happened to Bella Peretti.
A beat passes, then, “Alright, I’ll take you to Faculty House.”
Without waiting for me to accept his offer, he gets on my left side and puts his body in front of mine, so I either have to take his bent arm in front of me or run into it.
“Alright, alright, hold on…”
Since we’re about to leave the building, I put on a pair of sunglasses. Big and very fashionable, or so I’m told by my best friend, Talia, who bought them for me as a birthday present. That was before she up and never came back from summer break last fall.
Now here I am in my last semester at Columbia Law and dealing with boys without her help. She’d been a wiz at redirecting them away from me. But now, not only am I missing my main on-the-fly guide, I have to tell this new one, “Me accepting your help to get to Faculty House does not mean I agree to go out with you.”
“Sure, I get it. Loud and clear. Not yet. Completely understand.”
“Not ever,” I stress as I reluctantly take his arm.
“Wondering how you knew I was Italian? And rich?” he asks as we walk out of the law school’s main building.
“Because you talk like you fell out of Sylvester Stallone’s mouth and smell like those big donor fundraising dinners the school’s always making me attend to prove they accept people with disabilities,” I answer over the sudden sound of New York City traffic and chatting law school students.
“So, let me get this straight…I’m not prejudiced against blind black girls, but you’ve got something against rich Italians?”
“Hey, I’m an American! It’s my civil right, and some would say a requirement of citizenship, to be prejudiced against at least one segment of society. I chose Italians and the one-percenters. Feel free to hold that against all black and blind girls and never come on to one of us ever again.”
He laughs, big and obnoxious. “Good one, but no, not a chance. You know about all these steps, right?”
“Yep,” I answer and quietly start counting as we go down the set of stone stairs outside the law school’s main hall.
He manages to keep his mouth shut until we get all the way to the bottom.
“Okay, Faculty House is to the right and around the corner. But you know, if you need a lawyer I can get you one of those.”
I stop in my tracks, tugging back on his arm to say, “Don’t be funny. My friend and her parents will be out on the street if I don’t find someone to take their case.”
“I get it, and I’m not trying to be funny. Got a friend of the family who’d be happy to do it.”
“You really have a lawyer?” I downshift my shoulders, not wanting to believe what he’s telling me. But having nearly run out of options, I’m forced to ask, “Would he work pro bono? My friend’s parents have, like, no money and she’s a social worker living in New York. So, your guy would have to do it for free.”
“He will. We’ve got him on exclusive retainer, so he’s always free to do pro bono stuff when we don’t need him. I’ll call him right now and put him on the case.”
A kind offer, but I don’t hear him reaching for his phone. “Let me guess. You’re not doing this out of the kindness of your heart. I’m going to have to go out with you if I want your lawyer to take my friend’s case.”
“C’mon, Reynolds. You’re acting like going to dinner with me is a burden. I’d call it a benefit of accepting my generous offer.”
Yeah, he would call it that. But I’ve met guys like Jake. Bored rich guys who’ve grown tired of all the easy conquests. And I hear the titters every time he walks into our seminar.
I have no idea what he looks like, but I overheard three girls the other day before class:
“I can’t believe she shot him down like that…I would die if Jake Ferra asked me out. Die.”
“I would die if he spoke to me.”
“I would die if he even looked at me. Like, I’d be dead right here on the floor. You guys would have to call a coroner to carry my body out. My family could file a wrongful death suit against him for killing me with direct eye contact.”
So…though I’ll never see what he looks like, I get it…he’s that kind of hot.
In my experience, that kind of hot has it way too easy with girls and is always on the lookout for new experience points. And as I found out the hard way when I started undergrad as a naïve freshman at Hamilton College, Pretty Blind Girl counts for a lot of experience points.
But the thing is…Naima
’s parents need a lawyer. Like, stat. And one date seems like a small price to pay to make sure Nai and her parents get to stay in their home.
I let out a disgusted sound and say, “Fine. But only if he wins the case.”
Matti Gelb, Jake’s “friend of the family,” wins the case for the Almontes. Of course, he does. The Ferra family’s lawyer smells even more big donor than Jake, and he easily convinces the judge to declare a stay on the eviction notice until the Almontes can get their new service dogs licensed, so they no longer violate their landlord’s “no pets” policy.
Not only that, he alludes that because of their duplex owner’s attempted eviction, the Almontes can now bring a discrimination suit against him. The owner is the skeezy son of their old landlord with whom the Almontes only had a handshake agreement. But Jake’s family lawyer argues that by choosing to serve his inherited tenants with at-will eviction papers for taking on seeing-eye dogs instead of providing them with a formal lease, he violated a whole list of the Almontes’ rights—both ADA and tenant. By the time the judge happily rules in the Almontes’ favor, everyone except their new landlord and his lawyer is ecstatic.
“Oh, thank you-thank you-thank you!” Naima says, giving me a huge hug. “I thought this was only going to get us thirty days, but now it looks like we might get to stay for at least another year. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“No thanks necessary,” I answer, my sense of injustice flaming at the thought of what that asshole landlord tried to do to my supportive friend and her parents. “That eviction notice was total BS, and now we know he won’t ever try to pull that fuckery on a disabled tenant again.”
“That’s why the world needs more lawyers like you,” Naima says. Just like she told me two years ago when I showed up at her office and hesitantly asked her to help me apply to law school. Which she did, even though she was already overburdened with case files, and I’d technically aged out of the Foster Youth College Initiative that had allowed me to go to undergrad on full scholarship with once a month visits from an assigned social worker. Naima’s not blind but having parents who met as two of the youngest people at a Macular Degeneration support group, she understands the issues blind people have in ways most sighted people don’t. And she’s proven herself to be a true friend in the years since she closed my case file.
Maybe one day I’ll actually start believing I deserve her friendship. Forget how I grew up and not feel like a fraud she’d never would’ve befriended if she knew who I really was before I lost my sight and gained a conscious.
“I seriously can’t wait to graduate in May,” I tell her, meaning it.
“Less than four months to go—whoa who is that?”
Naima’s sudden drop in tone from cheerleader to stunned makes me ask, “Who is who?”
“Some crazy hot guy just came into the courtroom. He’s like tall, olive-skinned, pretty eyes, and oh my God, he’s walking this way!”
Somehow, I know who it is even before he comes over to our group and says, “Heya, Reynolds. What’s what?”
Apparently, Jake’s here to collect on his date with the blind girl. I thank him for loaning the Almontes his family’s lawyer.
Then I listen as Jake works the room, thanking the lawyer and giving the Almontes and Naima his card while smoothly responding to their profuse thank yous with a line about how he’d been happy to help.
But then, of course, he asks if I’m ready to go to dinner in front of everyone like we had something planned all along.
I can almost hear Naima’s inner cheers. And instead of pointing out our plans to go somewhere for a celebration dinner with her parents, she says, “Well, we won’t keep you. Have fun!”
Listen…Ten years ago, my beloved father’s real life showed up at our front door, killed my mother, and literally blew up my life. And the last rich guy who pursued me as hard as Jake turned out to have some really fucked up motives. So yeah, bet I’ve got some trust issues. And no matter how well this Jake Ferra dude came through for Nai and her fam, I can’t let my guard down with him. Because he’s a total shark. I just know he is, on, like, a gut level.
But that all said… I’m not exactly not feeling him right now. In fact, my stomach flutters with all the butterflies as he leads me away from my Naima-shaped comfort zone.
“Can I choose the place?” I suddenly ask after Jake opens the court building’s front door.
“Sure, you got a restaurant you like better than La Mirabelle, I’ll take you there,” he answers. Confident, like New York is just a town that totally belongs to him.
“I do,” I answer. “It’s my favorite place in the city.”
“Cool, just give the driver the address after I hail us a taxi.”
“Okay,” I answer, a little more breathless than I want to be. Because yeah, I teased him about his Rocky impersonation of a voice, but here’s the thing. As far as sexy voices go, Sylvester Stallone is batting one-hundred, no visuals required. I wish I didn’t think that. But I do.
And even though I have a plan to get through this farce of a date, without my heart coming anywhere near it, the fact remains…it’s beating a million miles per hour inside my chest.
3
Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered
“This is your favorite place to eat, huh?” Jake says when I return from the bathroom.
“Yeah, I know it’s a little dumpy, but the food’s great. And it’s got a homey atmosphere, you know?”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” he answers, tone dry.
I imagine he’s been looking around my one-bedroom grad student apartment while I was in the bathroom. Wondering why I would choose it over one of the best French restaurants on the Upper West Side.
But instead of asking, he hits me with a suspicious, “You really cook?”
“Sure do,” I answer, making my way over to the open-plan kitchen. “Super well, too.”
“Like Cynthia Ha.”
“No, not as good as a MasterChef winner. But better than alright. I can make just about any Italian dish you can name.”
His footsteps echo on the wooden floors as he follows me over to the kitchen and steps inside the arched doorway. “I don’t eat Italian food.”
“Seriously? I’ve never met an Italian who doesn’t eat Italian food.”
“I’ve never met anyone who hates Italians but knows how to make Italian food.”
Touché. He’s probably expecting me to explain, but instead, I say, “I’ll make us an omelet. Cool?”
“Cool.”
His tone is casual, but my skin tingles with the sensation of him watching me closely as I move around the kitchen.
“You’re more at ease here in your own space,” he observes. “That’s why you chose it over La Mirabelle, right?”
One of the reasons. “Plus, I needed to pee, and I would have had to use my stick to get around the restaurant.”
“So, you don’t like going out?”
“No, I like it. It’s just been a long day, and I don’t have a ton of mental energy left.”
I tend to date guys with an equally strong sense of social justice. Sensitive and caring guys, who would let their blind date off the hook and offer to rain check as soon as she mentioned she was on her last dregs of mental energy. Jake just says, “Gotta a question for you, Reynolds.”
“Okay,” I say, taking out the eggs and setting them on the counter. Time for the Q&A about how I became blind, I think as I bend back down into the fridge. I run my hands over various packages on the two shelves designated for vegetables and meat until I find all the ingredients I need for making omelets—save the Italian salami.
“What’s with the table of hair? Feels like I got a bunch of faceless girls staring at me.”
I smile at the thought of my wig collection, which I had to move to a table in the living room, because it’s gotten so big, checking him out like all the women in our Public Health seminar probably do.
“It’s easier for me to
keep my hair super short and wear wigs,” I answer. “A lot of people have, like, two. But I am a firm believer in Black Girl Magic, so I have twenty. I know, I know. I have a problem. My best friend, Talia, already told me this, so you don’t have to.”
“Talia, Talia…oh yeah! That’s the chick who didn’t come back for her final year because she got knocked up by that prince, right?”
“Yeah, well, before she became world famous for that, she was my sweet best friend.”
“You miss her?”
“Yeah, of course. How about you?”
“She wasn’t here when I transferred in, so I don’t know her…”
“No, I mean do you have a best friend? Like, a wingman?”
“Yeah, sorta. From high school.” But instead of saying more about his crew, he asks, “You got any friends you still keep in touch with from high school?”
“No,” I answer. Because Amber never went to high school, and Bella was homeschooled.
But instead of the truth, I feed him the WITSEC story as I start chopping veggies for the omelet. “My parents died in the car accident that blinded me when I was sixteen, and I don’t have any other relatives, so I had to go into a group foster home for kids with visual impairments. Lost touch with my high school friends after that.”
He makes a considering noise and says, “It’s almost like you’re two people, huh? Who you were before the accident, and who you are now.”
So no, I guess my home field advantage plan isn’t exactly working, because here come the nervous butterflies again along with the pressure of his steady gaze.
It feels like he’s hunting me, and I have to put every bit of concentration I have into not letting my voice quaver as I answer, “Yeah, almost…”
Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3) Page 46
