Forgotten: A Novel by Catherine McKenzie Page B

walls are a dark gray-blue, and the furniture is all the same heavy mahogany as the front door. A rain forest had to die to make this apartment.
    It’s a place I’ve never felt quite comfortable in, no matter how much time I’ve spent here. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take him up on his offer to stay here while he was away?
    “So,” I say when we’ve taken off our coats and hung them on the chrome coatrack by the door, “you wanted to talk?”
    Craig runs a hand through his hair, smoothing it down. He looks a little heavier than the last time I saw him, like he hasn’t been eating well or working out. Craig’s a one-thing-at-a-time kind of guy, and whenever things get crazy at work, he eats like crap and stops going to the gym.
    “Emma, this might seem like I’m putting you off, but I had a long flight. I’d love to take a shower and get changed before . . . well, you know. Do you mind?”
    “No, that’s all right.” And maybe by the time you get out, I’ll know what to say.
    “I won’t be long. There should be some food in the fridge. I asked Juliana to stock it.”
    “Is she still cooking for you?”
    “Of course. Why wouldn’t she be?”
    “I don’t know, I keep expecting things to be the same, but then they’re different—”
    Craig shakes his head. “Shower, then talk, okay?”
    “Yeah, sorry. Go, go.”
    I watch him walk toward his bedroom, then I pull out my cell phone to check if there’s a message from Stephanie. No new messages. I dial her number, now memorized. It goes right to voice mail like it always does, and I leave her another message (this is not a test, this is my life) and close the phone.
    Surprisingly hungry, I go to the kitchen to see what Juliana left. She’s an amazing cook and totally devoted to Craig, an only child whose jet-setting parents didn’t have much time for him when he was growing up. Instead, he had Juliana.
    I find some chicken and saffron rice in a Tupperware container and put it in the microwave. When the dinger sounds, I plate it up and bring it to the dining room table. My eyes wander to the glass cabinet in the corner, which is filled with odds and ends from Craig’s life (books he’s never read, the paperweights his parents brought back from around the world, a few formal shots of him growing up). I check the top shelf, and there it is: the trophy we won at a litigation workshop we attended together four years ago.
    Litigation boot camp, as we called it, was mandatory for all of TPC’s litigators after a couple of years of practice. It was led by a group of sadistic men who took great pleasure in breaking lawyers down before building them back up.
    Craig and I were paired for the week, which culminated in a daylong mock trial. I knew Craig before boot camp, but we’d never spent much time together. Up until then, I’d kind of written him off as one of those private-school, uptight assholes you meet a lot of in my profession.
    As we worked around the clock preparing, I learned that I was both right and wrong about him. He could be one of those private-school, uptight assholes (it was kind of his default setting), but he was also really smart and thoughtful. We were too busy for romance that week, but he did all these little things that caught my attention. Like he let me do the closing argument, though I could tell he wanted to, and he had this sixth sense about when I needed more coffee, or snacks, or even, briefly, a back rub. It felt like we spent the whole week moving toward each other. And when we held the Best Team trophy between us and smiled for the photographer, I knew it was only a matter of time before we slept together.
    I thought that might be all it was at first. But we had fun together, and we understood each other’s crazy, unpredictable schedules, even when Craig’s got worse once he left litigation and joined the Corporate department. Sometimes, when we were stuck at work after hours, we’d steal forty-five minutes together