The Birds and the Bees

Will You Bee My Boyfriend?

"So, you were about to tell me about your job?" I asked with all the smoothness of a bowl of granola.

"Y-yeess," he replied slowly and looked just the slightest bit uneasy for the first time. His foot stroked the side of mine as it jiggled under the table. "Well, I specialize in criminal defense. And you might as well get it over with."

"Get what over with?" I asked, trying not to show how much this continued unintentional game of footsie was affecting me.

"The question that everyone asks when you tell them you work in criminal defense," he replied.

This felt uncomfortably like failing an exam. In a blind panic, I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. "Have you ever had sex with a client?"

He stared at me, his eyes hardening, like two surface-to-air missiles that had just found their target. "No," he replied drily. "That would be highly unethical."

"Oh. Of course." I tried to come up with another question. Except now all I could think of with him railing some poor woman accused of murdering her husband. I was sure he wouldn't even take the Armani suit off. "You got me."

"The question most people usually ask," he went on, like he was the only actor in a play who could remember his lines, "is how do you live with yourself when you spend your whole life putting rapists and murderers back on the street?"

I stared at him for a long time. "Actually, that is a good question."

"Should I answer it?"

"Well, you seem to really want to."

"It's not about whether I want to." His jaw tightened and he became more serious than ever. "It's about whether you're going to think I'm an amoral profiteer if I don't."

I couldn't imagine that he or anyone would care that much for my opinion, good, bad, or indifferent. I just liked the way he prounouced his words...that hard "t" and the rolling vowels. He didn't sound like he was from Atlanta. I guess he ditched his southern accent in law school. I spread my hands in a go-for-it gesture. "I guess you'd better tell me then."

"The short version is: I know the criminal justice system isn't perfect, but it's the best that we've got. Statistically yes, most people I defend in court are guilty because the police can broadly do their jobs. But even people who probably did it are entitled to a zealous legal defense. And that's a principle to which...to which I am ideologically committed."

Thankfully, while he had been delivering this monologue, I was served a truly glorious steak tartare.

"Wow." I glanced up from the blood red meat and slammed straight into Adrian's hardest, coldest glare. "You seem really defensive about this."

"I just find it helps to be honest from the beginning. This is who I am, and what I do, and I believe in what I do, Miss O'Hara."

I suddenly noticed he had barely touched his beetroot. Beet root and another virtuous vegetables that I was sure only monks ate. His hands were folded against the table so tightly that his knuckles were white.

"Adrian," I said softly, realizing I had never said his name before, and confused by how intimate it was. "I don't think you're a bad person. Which you must know means next to nothing coming from me, because you only have to pick up a paper or Google my name to know what sort of person I am. And please, stop calling me Miss O'Hara."

"I..." Now he looked uncomfortable for a different reason. "I am aware of your reputation. But if I'm to know you, Eugenie, I'd rather it came from you."

Shit. This has got real out of nowhere. How hard could it be to get a guy to like you enough to date you for a few months but not so much that you had to deal with those weird emotion things that fucked your head, ruined your sleep, and left you crying on the bathroom at three in the morning? "Well, for starters, it's Gene."