Call Me Copy Girl One More Time Chapter 13

Call Me Copy Girl One More Time Chapter 13: What He Wanted, Part Two

ELAshford went back to school fourteen days after the verdict, and the first thing he did was post a selfie

with me by the courthouse steps, captioned my lawyer is scarier than yours.

It got six hundred thousand views, which is how the legal press found me, which is how, six weeks later, was standing in a rooftop restaurant with a glass of something expensive being asked the same question for the ”

ninth time that night.

“Ms. Calloway, the whole profession thought you’d quit. Where have you been?”

“The basement,” I said.

They laughed. They thought it was a joke.

Cole, three feet away, did not laugh, because he knew it wasn’t.

Later, on the terrace, when everyone else had gone in:

“I want to build something,” he said.

“That’s a terrifying sentence from a man with your money.”

“A defense project. The cases nobody else will take. Wrongful charges, junk forensics, kids who got a public defender with two hundred open files. Free representation for anyone under twenty-five who can’t pay.” He turned his glass in his hand. “I want you to run it.”

“Cole-”

“Name your salary.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep not answering.”

I looked out at the city. Ten million lights, all of them somebody.

“Why?” I said. “And don’t tell me it’s because I’m good. There are twenty good trial lawyers in this city and eighteen of them are easier to be in a room with.”

He set down the glass.

“Because the first time I saw you, you were holding a coffee pot and you’d gone white reading a file you weren’t allowed to read,” he said. “And I have spent my entire life around people who perform competence. You were the first person I’d ever met who had it and was trying to hide it. I couldn’t stop thinking about that. I still

can’t.”

That’s a business reason.”

“It’s a completely dishonest business reason,” he agreed. “The real one is that I’ve been in love with you since roughly nine minutes into that courthouse hallway and I’ve been managing it very badly ever since

I stared at him.

“You are,” I said, “so direct.”

“I’m told it’s a flaw.”

“It’s not a flaw.”

“Then say something, Tess, because I’m standing on a roof with no argument prepared, and you of all people

know what that costs.”

I laughed. And then I stepped forward, and put my hand flat against that expensive shirt, right over his heart, right where a prosecutor would aim.

“One dollar,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s my salary. One dollar. Put the rest into the fund.” I looked up at him. “And yes.”

“Yes to which part?”

“Both parts.”

He kissed me on a rooftop in November while the city hummed underneath us, and somewhere across the river a nineteen-year-old with an expunged record was probably posting about it.

Two months later I got an email from an address I didn’t recognize.

I’m doing public defense in Ohio. Two hundred files. Nobody fixes my briefs anymore. Turns out I’m about a 6

out of 10, which is survivable information at 36.

I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m telling you because you’re the only person who’d understand what it cost

me to type it.

The kid looked good on the news.