Hot Daddy_A Romantic Comedy

by Lila Monroe

  “To close on the house, you mean?” he interrupts.

  “I didn’t know that’s what you were doing,” I protest. “You didn’t tell me, so I had no idea—”

  “Exactly,” Cal snaps, turning on me with anger burning in his eyes. “You didn’t know anything about me, which didn’t stop you from putting all kinds of slanderous shit in writing and then leaving it around where anyone could see.”

  “I was venting!” I protest. “I had no idea Vivian was going to snoop in my phone. How would I ever have known that? I thought it was harmless, I—”

  “Nothing is harmless when there are kids involved,” he counters, an angry edge of sarcasm in his voice. “You’re the one who told me that.”

  I exhale. “You’re right,” I say, miserable. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “I promised Ez and Lottie I’d make this work,” he says, his whole body tense. His hands are gripping into two fists at his sides, and I can only imagine how he must feel, watching them walk away. “I promised Rob and Mel! And now they’re gone, and the kids are, too, and I can’t do a goddamn thing about it, and all because—” He catches himself, but he doesn’t need to say it.

  This is all my fault.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him again, desperately. “I’m so sorry, Cal.”

  “Stop saying that!” he exclaims hoarsely. “It doesn’t change a thing. None of this would be happening if you’d just minded your goddamn business and stayed out of it!”

  I pause. As sorry as I am, there’s a bitterness in Cal’s voice I just can’t ignore. “How was I supposed to stay out of it? That was the day you just dumped the kids on me and took off—”

  “To buy them a house!”

  “—and blew up at me when I dared suggest that maybe you needed some help,” I finish, determined. “Of course I wouldn’t have written that stuff if I’d known anyone would ever see it, but I’m guessing you have your share of messages you’d rather not share with the court!”

  “That’s not the same.” Cal swears under his breath, looking frustrated. “All I know is that you just dropped into my life with no warning, and now—”

  “You hired me!” I protest. “This is what you wanted. You planned on lying to try and win the kids, and I know you did it for the right reasons, and I fucked up too, but don’t act like you didn’t have any say in this either!”

  Cal snaps his jaws shut. “You’re right,” he says, his voice like steel. “You kept trying to tell me that, didn’t you? That this was just a business arrangement. But I didn’t want to listen.”

  My heart sinks at how impassive he sounds now, like he’s talking about a deal for the company, not our lives. Our hearts. “Cal,” I begin, “that’s not what I meant.”

  “This was a business arrangement,” he repeats, “and now it’s outlasted its usefulness.” He gives me a cold look. “You’ve fulfilled your contract, as far as I’m concerned. You can go play some other idiot’s girlfriend. I never want to see you again.”

  “Are you serious right now? Cal.” I’m reaching for him, ready to fight—ready to fight for us—but Cal just shrugs.

  “Like I said, the contract is terminated. Go. Now. Before I have security remove you.”

  I stand there in shock. I can’t believe that he would just shut down like this. After everything he said about us being together, he’s turned on a dime. I search for the words to convince him, make him see that we can get through this—together—but nothing comes.

  Because he’s right, I realize, with an aching heart. There’s no way for me to clean up this mess. The kids are gone, and he’ll never, ever forgive me for it. All I can do is get out of his way. “Okay,” I say softly, holding back tears. I take a deep breath. “Then I guess this is goodbye.”

  He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at me, just stands there with his fists jammed in his pockets, staring at the wall.

  So I go. I swallow hard and force myself to keep my back straight as I walk down the hallway and out the door of the courthouse. I make it all the way out onto the streets of Boston before I start to cry.

  19

  Jules

  I go home.

  New York in summertime is a special kind of pretty, the whole world suddenly leafy and bright and full of good spirits. The whole world, except me. I wander around the neighborhood in leggings and a stretched-out T-shirt in some kind of a heartbroken, snotty daze. Without a job to force me to get out of bed—and, okay, shower—mostly I sit curled on the couch in my apartment, staring blankly at a new season of The Great British Bake Off on Netflix and trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do next.

  I miss Boston. I miss the kids. I miss Cal most of all.

  Hallie calls on Thursday in a valiant attempt to drag me out of the house: “Max and I are going to dinner at this amazing new Korean barbecue place,” she says. “You have to come.”

  “Thanks,” I sigh, “but I’m going to stay in tonight.”

  And every night, forever. The thought of being around people—let alone a happy smooching couple—is unbearable, plus there’s the teeny-tiny fact that I can’t exactly afford to go to dinner right now.

  I look at the kitchen counter and wince. There’s a notice from the management company for next month’s rent. And right beside it is a check from Olivia, delivered by certified mail the day after I got back from Boston. I can’t bring myself to take it to the bank, even though I’m probably days away from finding an eviction notice taped to my front door.

  “Come on, Jules,” Hallie urges me. “You can’t sit around moping forever.”

  “I know. But trust me, you don’t want to be around me right now,” I say miserably.

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  “No.” I gulp. “You haven’t.”

  I fob her off with promises to get together on the weekend, then go sink bank onto the couch. I keep waiting to feel better, to snap back into the person I was before, but instead I just feel worse. I’ve ducked all my calls, and about the only person I’ve talked to since I got back is my next-door neighbor Mrs. Comparato, who demanded to know where I’d been the last couple of weeks and warned me that I better not be renting my place out on Airbnb. “That’s how we get bedbugs in the building,” she scolded me, shuffling down the hallway with her tabby cat, Pavarotti, tucked under one arm. “And drugs. And worst of all: tourists.”

  I’m lying on the couch under a worn fleece blanket when my phone rings. It takes me a solid minute to dig it out from in between the cushions, coming up with two nickels, a raisin, and a handful of crumbs for my trouble. “Jules Robinson,” I say with a sigh.

  “Hi, Jules,” says a brisk voice on the other end. “Barbara Milstein calling.”

  I sit up so fast I almost get dizzy.

  Barbara Milstein is the managing partner at my old firm—and Tommy Milstein’s mother.

  Aka Tommy “Limp Dick” Milstein.

  Right away I feel my palms start to sweat. It occurs to me that after everything they went through to make sure I didn’t sue them, they might have decided to sue me instead.

  “Hi, Mrs. Milstein,” I say, clearing my throat. “How are you?”

  “Oh, Jules, call me Barbara,” she says, cheerfully. I can picture her sitting in her massive office: all Hermes scarves and expensive pantsuits. “I’m fine, fine. This weather we’re having, right?” Then, without waiting for me to answer: “I’ll cut right to the chase, Jules. I’m calling to see if you’ll consider rejoining the firm.”

  I almost choke. “What?”

  “We made a mistake letting you go,” Barbara tells me. “Your clients value you—Miguel Rioja in particular can’t stop asking when you’re coming back—but more than that, the firm values you. We want to make this right if we can.”

  Is she for real?

  I look around, in case this is some kind of elaborate Punk’d prank and Ashton Kutcher is going to jump out of the hall closet, but there’s no sign of a camera crew.

  “That
’s really nice to hear, Ms.—uh, Barbara,” I reply cautiously. I have never been less clear about what the fuck is going on in my entire life. “But I have to be honest, I don’t really see Tommy and I having a productive working relationship at this point.” Because he’s a creepy weaseling sexual predator, I tactfully don’t add.

  “Tommy is no longer with the firm.”

  Holy crapballs. “He’s not?”

  Barbara sighs. “My son is a no-good piece of shit, Jules. He’s always been a no-good piece of shit, and I’ve let him get away with it for way too long. He was terminated not long after your . . . altercation.”

  There’s that word again. I almost laugh, feeling slightly hysterical now, but Barbara is still talking. “We’re having everyone complete a mandatory sensitivity training,” she explains proudly, as if that will make up for fifty years of casual sexism in the workplace, “and I think you’ll find our corporate culture is really shifting around here.”

  “Oh,” I say faintly, my head still spinning.

  “Now, your old office is still available,” she continues, “but Ed Barker just retired, and there’s a much larger one sitting empty on the thirty-fourth floor, if you wanted to move up a level. And I don’t see why we couldn’t throw in a bit of extra vacation time as well.”

  My eyes widen: Ed Barker, I happen to know, had a corner suite. “That’s very . . . generous of you,” I manage.

  “Well, Jules, I’m sure you have plenty of options right now. But we want you to know we’re committed.” Barbara clears her throat. “Now, we’d assume you’d be bringing McAdams Automotive with you, of course.”

  My stomach swoops.

  “Wait a minute.” I pause, confused. “McAdams?”

  Barbara chuckles. “No need to play coy,” she tells me. “I know they haven’t made the official announcement yet, that they’re changing firms, But Diana McAdams let it out of the bag. She called here today looking to speak to you on urgent business.”

  And suddenly, everything becomes clear.

  A client as large—and flush—as McAdams would be a major get for any firm. No wonder they sent Tommy packing and have come crawling back to me, if they think I can deliver the car company.

  Which I can’t. I don’t know what Diana was calling about, but it was probably to pick up where Cal left off and yell at me some more.

  “I’m . . . not at liberty to discuss my relationship with McAdams,” I manage to tell Barbara, and she gives a chuckle.

  “I understand. Well, Jules, as I said, we’d love to have you back at Harper Wells. I hope you’ll think about the offer.”

  “Sure.” I blink in disbelief. “I will.”

  I puzzle over the offer for the rest of the week. I even pick up the phone to call Diana—and chicken out.

  Thirteen and a half times.

  By the time Kelly shows up at my apartment with a dozen donuts, I’m no closer to figuring this out.

  “She’s alive!” she cries when I answer the door. “I was worried about you. Thought you’d hit your head and died and the cat from 7C was eating your face.”

  “No face-eating,” I greet her with a hug. “Although, it can’t hurt more than a broken heart.”

  “Aww, babe.” Her gaze flicks around my dirty apartment. Overflowing laundry hamper, dishes piled in the sink, an empty bag of cheddar Goldfish and half-drunk cans of soda scattered forlornly on the coffee table. “Is it that bad?”

  “I’m fine,” I lie, “I’m just, you know—”

  “Wallowing,” Kelly tells me. She nods at the bathroom. “Go hose off.”

  I sigh. “Your mom voice is already very impressive.”

  “Mm-hmm. Thank you.” She looks at me archly. “I’ll wait.”

  I do actually feel better once I’ve showered, towel-drying my hair and rubbing some tinted moisturizer on my face for good measure. By the time I come back, she’s tidied up the living room and wiped down my kitchen counters, opened the windows a crack to let in the warm summer breeze. The TV is off for the first time in days, Bonnie Raitt crooning on my little Bluetooth speaker.

  “You cleaned?” I ask, feeling myself welling up. God, I cry at everything lately: American Express commercials, little kids holding hands on the sidewalk, a perfectly executed black forest gateau on the Baking Show. It’s like all my emotions are too close to the surface. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “What are best friends for?” Kelly asks. Then she shrugs. “Honestly, the truth is I barfed in your trash can the second I opened that box of doughnuts. Once I cleaned that up, it was easy to just keep on going. Now, get your keys.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you and I are leaving this apartment.”

  I gasp in fake shock. “But why?”

  Kelly laughs. “Because you look like a vampire. And I need to eat. Again. Have you even eaten a vegetable since you crossed the state line?” she asks.

  “Good point.”

  We go to a hipster salad place, then for a long, bracing walk to Soho, where we stroll through a couple of wildly overpriced baby boutiques she read about on one of the New York mom blogs she’s been reading since she got pregnant. “I know the baby’s going to grow out of this stuff in five seconds,” she says, shuffling through racks of tiny onesies. “But they’re just so cute!”

  “I kind of wish they came in adult sizes,” I confess, holding up an absurdly soft cashmere sweater. “And, you know, that I could afford it.”

  Kelly makes a face. “Well, you could, if you’d get over whatever weird hang-up is keeping you from cashing that giant honking check sitting on your kitchen counter—which you earned fair and square, by the way. Or took the gig at Harper Milstein.”

  I mimic her expression, putting the sweater back on the shelf. “Well, when you put it that way, it almost sounds like I’m getting in my own way, doesn’t it.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Kelly says sweetly.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about the firm,” I confess with a sigh. “Three weeks ago this was literally all I wanted, you know? They offered me a literal corner office. But now something about it just feels . . . wrong.”

  “Well, sure,” Kelly says. “They’re the devil. Maybe you’ve forgiven them for how they treated you, but I sure as shit haven’t.” She picks up an adorable pair of leather booties, grimacing at the price tag. “But still: a paycheck is a paycheck.”

  “No kidding.” I follow her up to the register, where she pays for the booties and a onesie printed with the NYC subway map. “The other thing I can’t figure out, though, is what the hell Diana McAdams is after.”

  Kelly shrugs. “Maybe she really does want you to represent her,” she suggests, slinging her shopping bag over one wrist and leading me out onto the sidewalk. I take a deep breath of familiar city air, car exhaust and perfume and a tiny bit of raw sewage. “I mean, why wouldn’t she? You are extremely impressive.”

  “Well, I don’t feel impressive,” I confess. “I can tell you that much.”

  “That’s because you’re sad.”

  “Shocking insight, Doctor Freud.”

  “Don’t be fresh,” Kelly chides. “I’m an attorney, not a therapist.” Then she softens. “You haven’t heard from Cal at all, huh?”

  I shake my head. “And I don’t think I will. He was pretty mad at me, and I can’t blame him for that.”

  “I’m sorry.” She squeezes me. Kelly thinks for a moment, tilting her head to the side like possibly my shambles of a love life is simply a legal puzzle to be solved. “But it doesn’t explain what Diana wanted. Maybe it’s, like, his way of breaking the ice. ”

  “Having his mom call my firm?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “That seems like a stretch, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know!” Kelly laughs. “I have no idea how billionaires do things.”

  “Neither do I, clearly.”

  “You know, you could always be a big girl and call him,” she points out. “Then you could ask him these que
stions instead of just shouting them into the void.”

  Right away, I shake my head. “Nope. He literally said he never wanted to hear from me again.” My stomach clenches at the memory—though I suppose it could just be the fact that I ate some lettuce for the first time in the better part a week.

  Kelly isn’t convinced. “People say all kinds of things when they’re upset,” she counters. “For example, two nights ago I told Phil I didn’t like ice cream. Clearly I was out of my mind.”

  “Clearly,” I say with a smile. I appreciate what Kelly is trying to do here—it’s the same thing I’d do for her if the situation was reversed—but I know there’s no fix for what happened between Cal and me. How could there be, after everything we said?

  Sure, for a few days I thought there was something real between us, that we were laying the foundation for the kind of relationship that could withstand even the really bad times. But the reality is we hardly knew each other. And the only people we managed to fool were ourselves.

  “Come on,” I say now, linking my arm through Kelly’s. “You’ve got me thinking about ice cream. Let’s go uptown to Serendipity and get a couple of frozen hot chocolates.”

  “See, you’re the queen of good ideas,” Kelly says, smiling. “I just wish you’d have some for yourself.”

  “What can I say? Nobody’s perfect.”

  20

  Cal

  I’m in a meeting with some new clients when my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s the kids, I see when I sneak a look at it, calling on FaceTime. There’s fifty million on the table in new investments, but suddenly, I couldn’t care less.

  “Sorry,” I say, bolting out of my chair. “I’ve got to take this.”

  “Hey, kiddo,” I say once I’ve ducked out into the hallway. I’m expecting them both—they usually FaceTime together, the camera wobbling around dizzyingly—but today it’s just Lottie. Her hair is teased into in tidy ringlets—Vivian’s doing, no doubt—and she’s frowning even harder than usual. “How you doing?”