The Boyfriend Swap Read online

  When the doors of the elevator opened, I stepped out into the lobby and almost collided with Michael Goldberg, a senior associate at the firm with a distaste for country music, solid-color neckties, and me. As far as many of the junior partners and senior associates, including Michael, were concerned, the reason I received a summer associate gig followed by an invitation to be a first-year attorney at Bellows and Burke LLP was because my last name was Bellows and had nothing to do with the fact that I was editor of Colombia Law Review and graduated at the top of my class. Three years later and I still had to work twice as hard for half the credit.

  “Leaving so early, Sidney?” He raised the bag from Main Noodle House in his hand, no doubt wanting me to know he was working through dinner.

  I tried to bite back the desire to say something snotty or defend myself. Nothing I said would make a difference anyway, but I couldn’t let Michael have the final word. “I need to make an appearance at a wine tasting. Sitting behind a desk for twelve hours a day is not the way to bring in new business. Sometimes you need to get out there and network.” Planting on a smile, I said, “I already made myself late sending out last-minute emails to clients, so I must go. Enjoy your Chinese food.” I hoofed it toward the exit without awaiting his response. He probably didn’t buy my story, but I’d find a way to beat him at his own game—maybe impress one of his clients into requesting me as his direct contact. My billing rate was lower and my work product was the level of a fifth-year—more bang for the buck. In the meantime, my skin burned with annoyance, my belly cried for food, and my liver begged for wine.

  When I got outside, I spotted an available cab headed in my direction. I also saw a trio of tourists waving their arms frantically to get its attention. With one gesture of my hand, it stopped at my feet. I climbed inside, pretending not to hear the girls shouting at me. Being a native New Yorker had its advantages.

  Robyn

  Two hours into the party, and enough red wine varietals from the southern hemisphere in my system to feel a buzz, I raised the volume on my iPod and moved my hips to Rhianna’s “Where Have You Been.” I pulled Anne Marie away from the plate of cubed cheese to dance with me as a clear loud voice called out, “Sorry I’m so late.” I twirled around to see a pair of long slender legs in tight blue skinny jeans, a designer trench coat, and high heels. Her face was hidden by the layers of boxes she was holding.

  Afraid they would topple over, I ran over to her. I stood on my toes to remove the top box and smiled up into a pair of forest-green eyes. “Let me help.”

  “I’ve got it,” she said, walking over to the bridge table we’d set up for food. She placed the other two boxes on the nearest surface and turned to face us. “Sorry I’m late. I think it’s a rule in the law firm bible that associates must always be late for Friday night festivities. Anyway, I brought mini cupcakes and pizza so I hope you’ll forgive me.” She smiled. “I’m Sidney. Friend of Anne Marie’s. Well, technically her boss, but not for tonight.”

  I should have known. Anne Marie said her boss was larger than life, and I could tell already the leggy redhead before me was a force. After putting down the cupcakes I was holding, I returned her grin. “Robyn. The roommate.”

  Sidney scrutinized me. “You’re very pretty. I bet you get called ‘cute’ a lot though. Am I right?”

  Amused, I said, “Yes, actually.” I was only five foot three and many people equated lack of height with cuteness. Some of my younger students called me Truly Me, after the American Girl doll with the long wavy brown hair and blue eyes.

  Nodding knowingly, Sidney said, “I thought so.” Before I could thank her and return the compliment, she peered over my shoulder. “Is Anne Marie here?”

  “She’s here some—”

  “Sidney!” Anne Marie raced over to us and wrapped one solid arm around Sidney’s waist and the other one around mine in a group hug.

  I giggled to myself, thinking the three of us, a blonde, brunette, and redhead, probably looked like the modern-day Andrew Sisters. I kept it to myself since I doubted either of them had heard of the American close harmony singing group from the mid-twentieth century.

  “Someone’s had plenty of wine, eh?” Sidney locked eyes with me before we both turned to Anne Marie, whose fair skin was flushed to a deep shade of pink.

  I shrugged. “I knew somehow the wine ‘tasting’ would turn into a wine ‘drinking.’”

  Separating from Anne Marie, Sidney grabbed a cupcake and an empty glass. “I wouldn’t want it any other way. Now, excuse me while I taste some wine.” She used air quotes around the word “taste” and winked at us before heading over to where the expert was standing a few feet away.

  “Isn’t she a pip?” Anne Marie asked.

  I watched as Sidney instantly drew the attention of the expert away from the crowd and toward herself. “She sure is,” I said with a chuckle. Anne Marie had mentioned Sidney was a driven and focused attorney, and I was surprised she’d accepted our invitation. Fortunately, it appeared she knew how to play hard too. Assuming she didn’t ask Anne Marie to send an email or make copies, I was confident my roommate would enjoy her own party even with her boss in attendance. As Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” played on my “Best of 2011” playlist—I was in the mood for “classic” tunes that night—I bumped my hip against Anne Marie’s. “I love this song. Let’s boogey.”

  Sidney

  I read the text from my boyfriend, Will, and frowned. He was having drinks with a friend from work. The wine expert and all the other guests had left, but I didn’t feel like going home yet if it meant being alone in my apartment. Maybe Anne Marie and her roommate would want to go out for another drink. After scanning the living room area with no luck, I spotted them in the small eat-in kitchen. As Anne Marie bent down to put leftover food in the refrigerator, her sturdy freckled legs stuck out from the red athletic shorts she’d already changed into. And slim Robyn, in striking hot pink pants and a black and white polka dot top, was simultaneously rinsing dishes and dancing in front of the sink. She had moves.

  I walked over to them. “Can I help you guys?”

  Robyn turned around and smiled. Still bopping to the music, she removed the rubber yellow gloves from her hands and placed them on the dish rack before sitting down at the round hardwood table. Waving me away, she said, “I’m finished and, besides, you’re our guest.”

  Joining Robyn at the table, Anne Marie said, “Want to help us empty another bottle of wine?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” I said before plopping myself on one of the high-backed kitchen chairs and accepting a generously poured glass of Malbec.

  During the next couple of hours, the three of us went through almost two bottles of wine and laughed like sorority girls, making me homesick for Lisa, my best friend since childhood. We were inseparable until her family moved to the suburbs of Chicago in middle school, but we remained as close as sisters. I didn’t have the best track record with other female friends and hoped tonight would go a long way toward developing a friendship with Anne Marie outside of work. I delighted in witnessing her relaxed and in her comfort zone. And her roommate was like an encyclopedia for all things music. Since sitting down, I’d already downloaded three new songs to my iPod.

  We’d reached the boy-talk phase of the evening, and Robyn had just told me about her boyfriend, Perry.

  “I can truthfully say you’re the only person I know who met her boyfriend when he pulled her onto the stage in the middle of a live performance.” I doubted a tactic of that nature would have worked on me. I didn’t take kindly to being put on the spot.

  “I think you misunderstood,” Robyn said with a giggle. “Perry was fronting a cover band at a bar where I was celebrating a fellow teacher’s birthday. When he learned I taught music, he pulled me on stage for a duet of Pink’s ‘Just Give Me a Reason.’”

  “Your version makes much more sense,” I
said with a nod. “I think I’ve had too much of this.” I lifted my glass before topping it off. “And what about you?” I jutted my chin toward Anne Marie. “Any cute boys in your life?”

  Anne Marie confided about the crush she had on the bartender at a neighborhood dive bar. “I have no game, but my drinking tolerance is growing from all the time I spend in his pub.” She hiccupped, immediately belying her earlier comment.

  I considered myself somewhat of a connoisseur in the art of seduction. “Let me be your wingman sometime. He’ll be in your bed before you can say ‘tequila.’”

  “Word,” Anne Marie said before giving me a high-five.

  “What about you, Sidney?” Robyn said. “Are you dating someone?”

  I opened my mouth to tell them about Will as my phone pinged a text message. “Yes, and this must be him now.” I hoped he’d be game to meet up later. Drinking with the girls was a good time, but sleeping with my boy was a great one. My lips curled into a grin as I reached for the device on the kitchen table. Only it wasn’t Will. It was my mom. She wrote: “Your father said you were on a date tonight. Good luck! Any chance we’ll meet him at Christmas?”

  A surge of annoyance at my parental figures coursed through my veins, but it was nothing more alcohol couldn’t fix. I placed the phone back on the table without responding and took a swig of wine. “Sorry for the delay. My boyfriend’s name is Will and he’s a tall glass of water.”

  “Bring him to the office one day. I work hard for you—the least you can do is provide me some candy to eye up,” Anne Marie said. She glanced out the window and beamed. “It’s snowing.”

  I followed her gaze to the light dusting of snow outside.

  “It’s almost Christmas,” she yelped while waving her hands in glee.

  Robyn and I let out a groan at the same time, and I shot her a curious glance. Between chair-dancing to every song that played on the iPod and her generally giddy demeanor since we’d met, I pegged her as someone who lived for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, kept her holiday playlist on constant rotation, and didn’t even mind the crowds at Macy’s.

  “Personally, I wish we could skip straight to New Year’s Eve,” I said. Will’s parents were going to be in London for the holidays. In a moment of particular fondness—after he’d given me a mind-blowing orgasm—I’d asked him to come to my family home in Scarsdale for Christmas. Once the feeling returned to my legs, I regretted my spontaneity. The four months we’d been together had been filled with lots of laughs, great sex, and zero pressure. There was no doubt my parents would love Will—he was handsome, polite, intelligent, and funny. And he was a lawyer, which would automatically gain him points with my dad and assure my mom he had the requisite social graces to work a room. But I feared their fondness for my boyfriend would have an adverse effect on my own attraction to him. I was enjoying myself too much to risk it. But the invitation was out there, and I couldn’t bring myself to renege on it now.

  “I love Christmas. McAdvenille is the home of the biggest holiday light display in the United States,” Anne Marie declared proudly before taking a bite from the bottom of a red velvet mini cupcake.

  I snorted. “Christmas in North Carolina sounds like a dream. Quite the opposite of Yuletide in the Bellows home. All Harvey does the entire weekend is boast to anyone pretending to listen about his latest wins in court or new cases he’s taken on.” For Robyn’s benefit, I clarified. “Harvey is my dad. One of the two named partners in the firm. Anyway, we try to change the subject, to anything—the weather, the final season of Orphan Black, politics—but he seamlessly ties everything to the successes of the firm. I’m proud of if too, but give it a rest.”

  “Sounds exhausting,” Robyn agreed.

  “It is. I really don’t want to subject my boyfriend to it. He’s also a lawyer, which means my father will grab his ear the entire time to talk shop and no doubt make passive-aggressive digs about Will’s firm not being as good.” I grimaced. “He might even recruit Will to work at Bellows and Burke. I like to keep my professional and personal lives decidedly separate.” My stomach clenched as I imagined Will taking a job at my firm. It was one thing for my dad to watch over my professional growth, but if my personal life was at his disposal, he and my mom might install surveillance videos around the office to keep tabs on the progress of my romantic relationship too.

  “But you’re definitely taking him?” Robyn asked, leaning forward in interest.

  I sighed. “Going stag would be equally as painful. Without an escort, my mom would entrust me with entertaining every unattached male at the very well-attended dinner party—mostly overgrown bachelors with egos as inflated as their stomachs or widowers over the age of sixty-five.” It was rare she thought any of them were appropriate life partners for me, but if I was unattached, she considered it my duty as their only child and junior hostess to make the single men at the Bellow shindigs feel at home.

  Anne Marie chuckled. “You two have something in common.”

  “Your parents stifle you so much, you’re thinking of asking them for an oxygen tank for Christmas too?” I asked Robyn.

  She chuckled before slowly shaking her long raven waves. “No. But Anne Marie knows I’m on the fence about taking Perry home for the holidays. My parents make it no secret they think he’s a flake. I don’t want to spend the entire time defending my relationship choices or playing referee to my mom and Perry. But the only other option is to leave him home alone.” She pushed out her naturally glossy lips. “I can’t do that to him on Christmas.”

  I closed my eyes and smiled dreamily. “I wish Will were a flake. My parents would take no interest and I might actually enjoy Christmas in peace.” Opening my eyes, I said, “As it stands, the minute I introduce them to him, any semblance of personal space I’ve managed to maintain thus far will burn to ashes. A struggling actor would serve me much better this Christmas.”

  “And my parents would love for me to bring home a lawyer or anyone whose job comes with health insurance,” Robyn said with a sigh.

  Anne Marie adjusted the black elastic headband keeping her long bangs off her forehead. “If only you guys were dating each other’s boyfriends, it would be a holly jolly Christmas for all. Maybe you should swap boyfriends for the week.”

  Her comment elicited a hearty laugh from all of us and we clinked glasses to the notion before opening the final bottle of wine. The subject of conversation turned to our plans for the rest of the weekend. I listened as Anne Marie complained about the early start of her Saturday morning boot-camp class. While Robyn spoke of an electronic music festival she was attending with Perry, I had a vision of a family dinner with Will. During the appetizer and dinner courses, my dad and Will would enjoy courtroom humor, and after dessert my mom would display my baby pictures across the kitchen table and gush to Will about my chubby thighs and ginger baby hair. At the conclusion of the evening, a professional photographer would take a family portrait of the four of us—my dad, Will, and me wearing matching “Trust Me. I’m a Lawyer” t-shirts and my mom donning one that said, “They’re my lawyers” with arrows pointing in all directions.

  Then I pictured the same night with an out-of-work actor as my date. My dad would bring his laptop to the table and work through dinner until my mom told him to put it away. He’d do as told only for her to ignore him in favor of her latest Celebrate magazine. Neither would balk when I excused myself and my “boyfriend” early from the table. Then he’d go to the guest room to do his acting exercises or whatever activities guys like him did and I’d go to my childhood bedroom and sext with Will. A sudden lightness took over me at the possibility.

  “What about you, Sidney? Doing anything fun this weekend?”

  I shook myself out of my fantasy and faced Anne Marie. It was balls-to-the-wall crazy, but it could work. I swallowed hard before locking eyes with Robyn across the table. “I think we should swap boyfriends
for the holidays.”

  Robyn

  I cackled. “You can’t be serious.”

  Sidney took a sip of wine. “I know it sounds deranged, and when Anne Marie first said it, I laughed it off too. But the more I imagine the possibilities, the more I’m convinced your roommate here was touched with genius.” She pointed her elbow at Anne Marie.

  “Thank you. Thank you very much,” Anne Marie said in an Elvis Presley impression.

  I visualized walking into my parents’ colonial-style house and introducing some random dude as my boyfriend while Sidney claimed Perry as hers hundreds of miles away. “Genius? I’d call it absurd.” I laughed again.

  “Give the idea a minute to percolate,” Sidney said calmly. Her mouth remained in a straight line, indicating she wasn’t joking.

  My stomach quivered with unease, but I took calming breaths to settle down. According to Anne Marie, Sidney was very opinionated and sometimes wouldn’t shut up until she got her way. I’d just let her keep at it until her throat hurt or she passed out from too much wine.

  Sidney continued, “If left to our own devices, the holidays are going to blow chunks, but if we pool together, we’ll all be better off. And it’s only for a few days. It’s the perfect solution to our mutual problem.”

  I stood from the table and removed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. I poured a glass and placed it in front of her. Hopefully she’d take the hint. The wine was clearly going to her head.

  “What do you say?” she asked the minute I sat back down.

  The girl had to be on more than fermented grape juice. Hallucinogenics maybe? Whatever influence she was under, she clearly believed her ludicrous plan had merit, and I was going to have to put my foot down. “I say that I’m a grown woman and shouldn’t need to lie to my parents about who I’m dating.”