WHEN ARI FINISHED HEATING up her leftover spaghetti in the kitchen, she joined the people eating lunch in the training room. The twenty of them who stayed behind had interned together.
“Wait until they see how expensive everything within walking distance is,” Javon said as he picked his sandwich up o his lap and took a massive bite. “Not gonna be able to a ord that on our salaries for too long.”
Ari pulled up a chair to where they’d all clumped in a circle to eat. “And what a pain in the ass it is to go any further than a couple of blocks.”
“They’ll learn,” Rita chimed in, holding a salad bowl in one hand while picking at it with the other. “We all did, right?”
Some people are incapable of learning or changing.
“Did you all notice that woman? Tall, rude, looks kind of like a professional beach volleyball player from the 90s?”
Javon asked between bites. “I forgot her name and wish I could forget meeting her.”
“Yes!” Noor, her face framed by a colorful scarf, was excited to air her complaints. “She literally refused to talk to me. At first I took it personally, but then I realized she didn’t talk to the guy after me either. I think it was Sutton?
Simone?”
Ari took a sip of flavored seltzer to wash down the pasta.
“Sloane.”
“That’s it!” Noor agreed. “Sloane. I knew it was something pretentious as hell.”
“We went to law school together,” Ari explained. “She’s an actual nightmare.”
“I don’t remember seeing her before,” Rita said. “Was she a regular intern when we were CLIs?”
Rita, Javon, Noor, and everyone else lunching together had been Certified Legal Interns along with Ari. For the last two years of law school, they’d spent their summers handling their own cases under the watchful eye of a prosecutor. It was more prestigious than a regular internship and showed how serious they were about their career paths.
“She doesn’t even like Crim. Civil has always b
een her thing. I have no idea what she’s doing here. She was supposed to be an associate at Lowry Pendergast in New York.”
Noor’s sculpted eyebrows flew up her forehead. “So that’s why she has that snobby air about her.”
Javon opened a bag of chips. “I wonder why she’s here if she doesn’t want to practice criminal law.”
Shrugging, Ari popped the lid onto her empty container.
“I have no idea.” But I sure as hell wish she wasn’t.
Every time the door creaked open and people returned from lunch in small groups, Ari’s stomach ached. She still couldn’t believe Sloane had appeared in her territory only to extend her torment.
With less than a minute to spare, Sloane finally strolled into the room, her eyes glued to her phone.
Typical.
Whatever was on her phone was obviously more important than paying attention to what was going on around her. She probably thought they were all beneath her.
The only unexpected thing was her rolling solo. Ari was so used to seeing her at the center of a group that she almost looked like a di erent person walking all alone.
Turning her attention toward Hal, the beloved training director doing his best to make the dull policy review as interesting as possible, Ari tried to be present and stop focusing on Sloane. By the time someone from HR appeared to start the workplace harassment training, Ari had almost stopped thinking about her.
After a merciful co ee break, it was time for a video where non-actors plucked from around the o ce re-enacted actual scenarios. The cringeworthy skits were hard to watch and Ari found her attention drifting.
Javon, for all his shit talking, was practically staring at Sloane under cover of the room’s darkness. He was more subtle than the other guys, one of whom was openly gawking. Ari rolled her eyes. Did they see the irony of mentally undressing a colleague during an anti-harassment presentation? Probably not. They were the reason all of them had to be told not to grab anybody’s ass in the copy room.
Moving a swath of wavy light hair out of her face, Sloane was admittedly glossy and attractive. On the outside anyway.