Practice Makes Perfect

"So are you saying this is it?" he asked.

Payton felt something tug at her. "I'm saying . . . that I think we need to see how things go on Tuesday. Then we take it from there." She moved next to him, wanting him to look at her. "Don't be mad at me," she said softly.

J.D. turned his face toward hers. "I'm not mad at you. Just mad at the situation."

Not knowing what to say, Payton kissed him while holding his face in her hands, hoping the gesture at least somewhat conveyed the way she felt. And when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer, with his chin nestled against the top of her head, Payton closed her eyes to savor the moment and forced herself not to think about what might lay ahead.

J.D. MADE UP his mind: Payton had given her answer and that was that.

Truthfully, he wasn't sure he disagreed with her concerns. Come Tuesday, one of them might very well resent the other for making partner, and—given the animosity that had been the cornerstone of their eight-year relationship—who knew where that could take them?

While it was true that J.D. had some definite reactions to Payton's "wait and see" approach—to put it bluntly, he hated it—he didn't want to have to tell her that. And he certainly didn't want to spend any part of their remaining time together arguing. So for the rest of the night, he said nothing.

Similarly, the next morning, when he woke Payton up by sliding over her, when he laced his fingers through hers and kissed her neck, not wanting to waste another moment with sleep, he said nothing.

During breakfast, as they joked about whether they could bill their time for the weekend, and about how Ben and Irma and Kathy and everyone else back in the office would react if they only knew what they had been up to, he said nothing.

During the airplane ride home, when Payton leaned her head against his shoulder and kept it there nearly the entire flight, J.D. may have reached over the armrest to take her hand, but he still said nothing.

And finally, when the plane landed at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, and Payton gave him a sad, regretful smile, J.D.'s heart sank because he knew he was losing her.

But even then, he said nothing.

Once inside her building, J.D. carried her suitcase upstairs and deposited it on her doorstep. But when Payton unlocked her front door, he didn't follow as she stepped inside her apartment.

"I should get back to the car," he said.

She nodded. "Thanks for helping me with my suitcase." Lame. They had been home for all of about thirty seconds and she already hated the way things were between them.

She leaned against the doorway. "I don't want things to be strange between us."

"I don't want that, either," J.D. said. He hesitated. "There's something I've been wanting to say, Payton, something I need you to understand, and that is . . ."

Payton caught herself holding her breath.

". . . that I'm not going to chase you."

Payton blinked. Whatever she thought J.D. was going to say, that hadn't been it.

"You've made your decision," J.D. said. "You want to see how things turn out once the firm makes its decision, and I get that. And while I'm not angry, at the same time I don't know what you expect me to do in response to your decision. So I just felt like I needed to say, for the record, I guess, that—"

"You're not going to chase me," Payton finished for him. "I got it. We're all clear." She tried to decide how annoyed she was with J.D. for thinking she might be the type of girl who wanted to be chased. Then she tried to decide how annoyed she was with herself for secretly thinking that maybe she did.

J.D. gave her a half smile. "Okay. I just didn't want you to be expecting me to show up outside your window blasting Peter Gabriel from my car radio or anything."

Payton couldn't help but laugh at that. The thought of J.D. standing in front of the Bentley holding a boom box over his head was just too priceless. "Are you too proud for that kind of thing, J.D.?" she teased.

She'd meant it as a joke, but J.D. suddenly turned serious.

"Yes," he said softly. He gently touched her chin. "With you, Payton—actually, only with you—I am."

As he held her gaze, Payton realized that he might have been trying to tell her a lot more than she'd initially thought. But she didn't get a chance to do anything further, because he turned and headed down the steps and out the front door.

Payton shut her door, walked over to the window, and watched as J.D. stepped into the town car that waited below for him. For a long while after the car had driven off, she continued to stare out the window, running through his words again and again.

She knew she was in over her head. After a weekend like the one she'd just had, she needed input. Guidance. She needed someone with an objective eye with whom she could review the past two days, someone with whom she could conduct the proper analyses of tone and facial expression, someone whose skills she trusted in that nebulous and precarious art known as Reading Into Every Word. She needed someone who not only understood her, but the enemy as well.

In short, things were going to get tough and she needed her wartime consigliere.

So she picked up the phone and called Laney.

LANEY OPENED THE front door to the town house she shared with Nate. Payton quickly stepped inside, eager to get out of the rain that had set down upon her as soon as she'd jumped in the cab to come over.

They had decided to skip the coffee shop, their usual meeting place, since Nate was out with some friends and because Payton was already wired and could probably do without the additional buzz of caffeine.

She had been vague on the phone with Laney—saying only that she needed to talk—because she wanted to say this in person. But unable to wait any longer, she had barely stepped foot into her friend's immaculately designed Martha Stewart Living-esque home before she got right down to it.

"I have something I need to tell you about this weekend," Payton said, setting her purse on the console table next to the front door, never again making the mistake of tossing it onto the couch as she might have done at her own home, because—as Laney had most helpfully noted the one and only time Payton had done so—this was, indeed, not her home.

"And I know this is going to come as a shock," she continued, "so I'm just going to come right out and say it." She stopped. "Wait—I just realized that I never told you that I broke up with Chase."

"No, you didn't," Laney said pointedly as she oversaw Payton's efforts to dry her shoes on the mat next to the door. "I had to learn about it through Nate."

"I know, I know, I'm sorry about that—everything's been happening so fast these days, and I meant to tell you, but then the trip to Florida came up." Payton tentatively stepped one shoe off the mat. When Laney said nothing, Payton took this as an indication that she had been granted access to the town house proper.

She stepped into the living room. "But if it makes you feel any better, you are the first and only person who I've told this to." She turned and faced Laney.

"I slept with J.D."

Laney's mouth dropped open, stunned.

"I know." Payton smiled. "Holy shit, Laney—I slept with J.D."

Laney shook off her shock. "Where? When?"

"This weekend. Palm Beach. We flew down to meet Jasper Conroy and the new general counsel of Gibson's." Payton looked her friend in the eyes. "Laney—it was incredible."

Payton pointed down the hallway, in the direction of the kitchen. "Do you mind? I'm gonna grab a glass of water." Hell, she was already getting flushed, reliving the weekend in her mind. As she headed down the hall, she began the postgame analysis. "I barely even know where to start—"

"Actually, Payton, you might want to—"

"—I mean, we had sex, like, a billion times. And I'm talking everywhere—in the bed, on the floor, on the desk, in the shower—I'm sure the unlucky people in the room next to us heard that one—which reminds me: Do you and Nate have one of those bench thingies in your shower?"

"As a matter of fact, we do, but—"

"Good—because I've gotta tell you about this trick I figured out that makes it a helluva lot easier to—"

"I really don't think you want to get into that at this particular moment—"

Payton waved over her shoulder. "Fine, later then—anyway, I had no idea how ridiculously hot J.D. is—and I don't only mean his body, which, yummy—the things I did to that man, that's all I'll say there—but also the way he looked at me and, ho-ly shit, some of the things he said were so sexy they blew my mind, like this one time when he pinned me against the wall and told me he wanted to—" She stopped as she turned the corner into the kitchen.

Nate and five other guys were standing around the counter.

Having just heard everything.

The six men stood motionless with their mouths agape as Laney came next around the corner.

Payton glared at her. "I thought you said Nate had a softball game."

Laney gestured to the window, at the rain falling steadily outside. "Canceled."

Payton's mouth formed an O. Canceled. Bugger.

Suddenly finding his voice, Nate turned to his wife with a question of his own. "Is this how you talk?" He gestured between the two women.

Laney shrugged. "Yes."

Nate and his friends whispered nervously amongst each other at this.

Men.

If they only knew.

Payton glanced over at Laney. "Maybe we should go to the coffee shop after all," she suggested, with a raised eyebrow that spoke volumes in code. Me: Embarrassed. You: Deep shit. Next time. Try harder. To warn.

"In light of what I've heard so far, I think I'm going to need something stronger than coffee," Laney said. She grabbed her keys off the organizer that she and Nate had built into the wall, then walked over and gave her husband a chaste kiss on the cheek. "I might be late. There's a lasagna in the fridge."

Nate nodded. "Okay—call me from the cab on your way home." Then he paused, glanced briefly in Payton's direction, and lowered his voice as he whispered in his wife's ear.

"And find out what the trick is with the shower seat."