The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan

Chapter Forty-Eight

‘I still can’t believe Susan agreed to the whole thing!’ Fia exclaims. It’s Tuesday evening, and they’re up on the roof terrace once again, sitting at one of the little tables, this time. They’ve spread out something of a picnic: nothing romantic – convenience food, the likes of which any two co-workers working late of an evening might decide to share.

It’s perhaps not the dream, but needs must. Benjamin’s roommate having now returned from Mexico, his apartment no longer feels like much of a retreat. Neither does Fia’s own place offer a huge amount in the way of privacy, and heading out for dinner à deux in public feels like a no go. Even in a city the size of New York, Fia’s sure they’d somehow be spotted. On all the occasions you least want it to, Manhattan can feel like a village.

‘I didn’t even really have to do much convincing,’ Benjamin replies, picking at his sweet potato fries. ‘Susan was more than thrilled to get involved in some reconciling.’

Fia cracks a smile. ‘I can’t believe Jonathan went for it either, to be honest. Susan gets that he and Alyvia are definitely not thinking about getting back together, though, right? She knows it’s pretty much just about figuring out the custody at this point, untangling this whole business with Gus?’

Benjamin nods. ‘Yep. We’re all set up for a week from Friday at 9 a.m. You, me, Susan Followill, Alyvia, Jonathan, Jonathan’s original lawyer, and Jonathan’s new girlfriend – he insisted she’s part of the package now. Doesn’t that sound like a fun morning?’

‘The best,’ Fia says, taking a sip from her Diet Coke. In fact, it is a pretty remarkable achievement, Benjamin having managed – in double-quick time – to get all those different parties to agree on a plan of action, a date, a venue.

As for herpart in bringing the whole arrangement together, that came down to two words: Celia Hannity.

Yesterday afternoon, Fia ventured to her boss’s office, and explained the situation as clearly as she could. When she was finished, though, Celia still looked altogether confused.

‘Wait, let’s back up a second here,’ she said, one eyebrow raised. ‘You’ve sent our client to some other lawyer?’

Fia flinched internally. She supposed she could have killed Benjamin’s suggestion the moment he offered it last week, on that call with Alyvia. She could have doubled down, made it her business to dig up some dirt on Jonathan, fought tooth and nail for the best possible result in court – she’d done all that before. Or, she could have simply accepted the inevitability of a poor result in court, collected the cheque just the same. She’d done that before too.

Either of those options would have been better for the firm. Better, in turn, for Fia herself.

On this occasion, though, even as her boss stared her down, Fia just couldn’t feel too badly about having taken another route.

‘I just … thought it would be the best thing for Alyvia. For her kid. We don’t offer mediation at ZOLA.’

Celia seemed to note that, seemed to decide, in front of Fia’s very eyes, that there was no point in crying over spilled milk. Did she, in the end, offer an enthusiastic, full-throated approval of the new plan? Fia wouldn’t say so, no. But she signed off on it.

‘And we’re really doing it at the Met?’ Fia continues now, looking across at Benjamin on the roof terrace.

‘Yeah. Apparently, Jonathan and Alyvia had Gus’s humanist naming ceremony there, in one of the private event spaces.’

‘Of course they did.’

‘There are smaller rooms you can rent out, too, so we’ve booked one of those for the whole morning. Costs a pretty penny but, hey, if they’re willing to pay it.’

‘I suppose I’ll just walk from my apartment then, instead of coming into the office first,’ Fia says, reaching for a few of Benjamin’s fries. Their chairs are positioned almost beside one another’s, for purposes of taking in the cityscape (among other reasons). She sighs a little as she looks out ahead. While they might be up here mostly for reasons of practicality, discretion, the view is undeniably as great as it’s ever been – and actually, this has started to feel a bit like their place.

‘What a way to end your summer associateship,’ she says, trying to keep her voice light. Friday of next week will be Benjamin’s last day on the job. With nothing of note having yet made its way to them in the post, Fia’s beginning to suspect he’ll be leaving ZOLA the same way he arrived, as far as marital status goes. That thought doesn’t seem to panic her the way it once would have, though. She doesn’t exactly know how to feel about it.

‘It’s been quite the ride, that’s for sure,’ he replies, and he leans forwards to kiss her.

She mumbles a half-hearted protest into his mouth. ‘We can’t – someone could come up.’

‘Nobody’s going to come up,’ he replies, and when he moves in towards her again, it feels so natural to twist her body around to meet his, to let her lips part, to let him pull her hair free from its bun.

‘I fucking love your hair,’ he mumbles, leaning back to look at her for a second. ‘Can I just tell you that? Any time you leave it down, I swear that’s all I can think.’

And in a flash, every morning she’s ever wrestled with it, wished it to be different, is forgotten. It is impossible, in this moment, to imagine that Benjamin might someday decide not to care a jot about her hair, or about any other part of her; that he might disappear (again) without a trace. Purely as a matter of fact, Fia supposes that’s as true as it has ever been. But somehow, in her bones, she just doesn’t believe it anymore. How can she, when he’s looking at her like he is?

He pulls her mouth back to his, then, and the moan at the back of Fia’s throat prompts an identical reaction in him, each of them sinking fully into this kiss. Fia can’t hold back another strangled sound – she’s not inclined to hold it back – when, all of a sudden, Benjamin is pushing her away from him. Not pulling apart for air, not seeking to reposition them or refocus his attention in some spectacular way … actually pushing her away from him.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asks, all confusion, but she falls silent once she sees the panic in his eyes, once she follows where they’re focused.

After that, the thing she’s most conscious of feeling – honestly – is anger. As both she and Benjamin instinctively leap to their feet, there is an overwhelming sense, spreading swiftly throughout Fia’s whole body, of I told you so.

Because behind them, someone has just stepped out onto the roof terrace. It is the one person, in the whole firm, who Fia would least like it to be.

It’s Celia Hannity.

Celia, who for four years has consistently made it her business to acknowledge Fia; who has supported her, in bigger and smaller ways, including as recently as just yesterday; who has pushed her forward for things, been kind to her, said, ‘We Irish girls have to stick together’.

Celia, who is presently looking at Fia and Benjamin with some combination of abject horror and profound disappointment.

Based on the cigarette packet she’s clutching, she was on her way up here for a sneaky one. Everyone, it turns out, has their vices. But it is very clear whose are going to be up for discussion right now.

‘What in the hell …?’ Celia says, apparently too shocked to even manage a full sentence. Instead, she lets out a joyless little huff of laughter – of disbelief, really – looking skywards for a moment before coming back to face her subordinates. She shakes her head, something about her seeming pent up, barely contained. ‘For Christ’s sake, Fia,’ she hisses. ‘What are you thinking? He’s a summer associate! You’re basically his boss!’

Fia shoots Benjamin a sidelong glance. In this precise moment, though, she doesn’t feel even remotely smug.

This could all have been avoided, she thinks to herself, had Benjamin just listened to her. But no. He’s always been about bending the rules, hasn’t he? Always pushing the boundaries, always with the it’ll be fine.

And look where they have ended up – so close to the finish line, but very far from fine.

‘This … this isn’t what it looks like!’ she hears herself yelp, before she’s even conscious of deciding to speak. ‘I mean …’ She feels her heart beat ever faster, her mouth go dry, her mind go blank. ‘Uh, what I mean is … Benjamin and I, we’re actually married!’

Of course, this revelation isn’t planned either, it’s just all she can think of in the moment. It’s a desperate, spontaneous attempt to make things better – to somehow negate the impression of a certain kind of impropriety.

It doesn’t make things better, though. One look at Celia’s face tells Fia that, clearly and unequivocally. It doesn’t make things better at all.

‘Married?’ Celia exclaims, utterly aghast. ‘How? When? You’ve only known each other a matter of weeks!’

‘… We were actually married before this summer,’ Benjamin admits then, shifting his weight awkwardly.

And with that, he tells Celia the whole story. Or certain key details, at least – the circumstances of their marriage, their mutual surprise that first day he’d arrived at the firm, the fact of their imminent divorce. Actually, when Fia thinks about it, that’s nowhere near the whole story.

It’s more than enough for Celia to digest in one go, though. Standing across from them, she looks nothing short of shellshocked now. She starts to pace back and forth across the terrace, every second of it feeling like an hour.

‘I just … I don’t even know where to start with this,’ she says eventually. ‘Is it that we offered a position – a very highly competitive position, might I add – to the husband of one of our associates? And then we went ahead and just put him in her office, under her supervision? Because that’s bad.’

It seems like a rhetorical question, and so Fia stays silent. She just stands there, heat burning through her entire body, as Celia continues.

‘Or is it that he’s somehow not really her husband, he’s just the guy we assigned her to mentor, and she decided to take advantage of that power dynamic? Because that’s bad, too.’

Again, Fia can offer nothing in response. Because the thing is, she knows this. She has known absolutely all this for the entire summer, and yet she has chosen to ignore it.

‘Obviously, I’m going to have to report this to Human Resources,’ Celia continues. It seems almost as though she is taking to herself at this point. At last, she stops with the pacing.

Fia feels her heart sink, and when she looks over at Benjamin, she’s sure the dread is written all over her face. They both know what that could mean. For him, there’d be no job offer from ZOLA once he finishes law school, which she knows he doesn’t care about. There’d also be no reference. She knows he does care about that.

Nevertheless, she’s inclined to think such a consequence pales in comparison to the ones she could face: dismissal – deportation.

And, once more, it is so, so hard not to blame him, at least substantially. Yes, she has free will, but for so much of the last fortnight especially, it hasn’t felt much like it. He is the one who has got under her skin, who has made her reckless, made her risk all the years of care and control she’s put in here at ZOLA.

She looks away from him swiftly. Somehow, even to meet his eyes, with Celia there to witness it, feels forbidden now.

‘Please,’ Benjamin says then. ‘Can’t we just … pretend tonight didn’t happen?’

Celia laughs grimly, and Fia almost does, too. The request seems so ludicrous.

But then, perhaps if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Because the next thing Fia knows, Celia’s eyes are narrowing, her lips pursing. Could it be that she is actually considering the idea?

‘What is this, between the two of you?’ she asks.

In response, from both Fia and Benjamin, there is only shock. Silence.

‘I need to know,’ Celia continues, ‘if I’m going to even consider turning a blind eye to this. So, tell me: what is it? Not when you guys were in college or whatever, not when Benjamin got here back in June. Now.’

Fia sucks in a breath. That’s a complicated, frightening question, even setting aside that her boss is the one asking it. Nonetheless, she’s prepared to try to answer honestly. She barely has her mouth open to begin, though, when Benjamin beats her to it.

‘Nothing,’ he says simply.

‘What?’ Celia asks.

Fia, too, feels the jolt.

‘It’s nothing,’ Benjamin repeats. ‘Just … long hours, close quarters. Add a little bit of history into that mix?’ He shrugs, looking suddenly every bit like the 21-year-old Fia once detested. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to join the dots for you. Fia and I were just … blowing off some steam.’

He doesn’t look at her as he says it. Fia suddenly finds she can’t take her eyes off him, though, Celia’s presence be damned. She can’t stop the cocktail of emotion that floods through her all at once, most of the constituent parts all too familiar to her: confusion, fury, foolishness.

‘All right,’ Celia replies. ‘What I just saw tonight was a one-time thing, then, was it? It’s done now?’

‘Done,’ Benjamin confirms, not a jot of uncertainty about it, not one bit of regret.

If Celia notices that he ignores her first enquiry altogether – and surely, she must notice – she chooses not to press the matter. Instead, she turns to Fia. ‘What about for you? I need to know what your priority is here. It is your work? Or is it something else?’

And Fia still feels half-paralysed. She is not in a position to properly think. But the answer to this one trips off her tongue, so obvious as not even to require consideration.

‘Work,’ she says immediately. ‘Of course. This was just a … a lapse in judgement.’

And, looking at Benjamin now – looking at how very unaffected he seems, by every bit of this – she finds she really means it.