RomCom Cliché

Chapter Three

The next few days passed by quickly, with Rebecca too distracted by a heavy workload to worry too much about her date with Freen. 

She spent days combing through the information presented to her by Paralegals, choosing what parts she would use in her defence, picking her team carefully and then trying not to snap too much at their mistakes. Most of them were of an age with her, and it was sometimes uncomfortable, watching them chafe at her orders or struggle at things she'd learnt at twenty.

Rebecca wasn't friends with them and most of them saw her as an oddity: pretty, young, smart and rich, she defied their expectations by being the combination of all of those things instead of sticking to one or two. 

As for herself, Rebecca was too consumed with her determination to be a shark in the courtroom and find true love outside of it to care too much about what they thought, or allow for the pretense that there was any sort of informal relationship between herself and her colleagues. 

The only one she might admit to somewhat liking was a Paralegal named Mai, who Rebecca loved to poach for all of her cases.

They'd spent all day in a meeting together Wednesday, poring over dissected text messages between the couple, of which the woman had been the victim of a nasty car accident when her recent ex purposely drove into oncoming traffic. 

Rebecca had stayed at the office until almost midnight, ordering from her favourite takeout spot down the street, quinoa half-eaten and empty water bottles littering the table as she stayed hydrated to keep her mind sharp. It would be a relatively easy case, she imagined, but she liked to put in the legwork anyway.

Leaving late, she slept a little and woke up with the sunrise, enjoying the quiet morning routine of drinking her coffee and standing in the colourful patches of early sunlight pooling on the floor as she stared out at the view. 

Dressing for her early yoga session, Rebecca filed into the spacious studio and let the tension bleed from her exhausted body as she twisted it through various forms, letting her mind fall into the blissful peace of emptiness.

Driving home again, she showered and turned on her laptop with the intention of listening to transcripts as she made breakfast, the information drilling into her mind as she sipped another cup of espresso and pulled an array of cooking utensils out of cupboards and drawers. 

Spending a good five minutes scouring Google for a relatively simple recipe as she listened to the facts laid out, memorising the entire thing.

She had just found her recipe and measured out the sugar, a pan on low heat as a blob of butter slowly melted, when her phone started ringing. Pausing the audio, Rebecca reached for her phone and looked down at Nam's name lighting up the screen. She answered and turned back to her breakfast.

"Morning."

"Hey, no work today?"

"I stayed late last night; I'm heading in at lunch."

"Big case coming up?"

Rebecca hummed distractedly as she pulled her phone back and brought up the recipe again, taking in the measurements and setting the phone down as she put it on speaker, Nam's voice filling the kitchen.

"What're you doing?"

"Making blueberry pancakes," Rebecca curtly replied, a look of concentration on her face as she weighed out the flour, narrowing her eyes at the number before adding a tiny bit more to the pile and then exchanging the measuring cup for a sieve.

Dumping the flour onto the fine mesh, she tapped the side as she listened to Nam's bewildered reply and watched fine flour cascade through the holes. 

"Why are you making blueberry pancakes?"