Chapter 152

“Anything to say for yourself?” Garrison asked you.

You raised an eyebrow and could feel yourself drawing back from him a bit. There was ... so much that he could be talking about. The least of which was taking some extra break time, and the largest was being overtly sexual with both of your fellow-intern-girlfriends on company time, in the building. And that didn’t even start to cover whatever shit Joy and her mother may have come up with. Why did you just accept that things may have settled yesterday? You’d given them a whole day to scheme something up.

“Sir, I’ve got no idea what you’re asking me about,” you said.

Garrison smirked. “Good. You didn’t try to guess.”

“I don’t understand?” you asked.

Garrison leaned back in his chair and grinned. “I just wanted to see how you would react. I tried that with my nephew yesterday when I met up with my sister’s family and he spilt his guts on a half dozen things his parents didn’t know about. Court is a pressure cooker, so if you couldn’t handle this I wouldn’t bother going forward with the mentorship.”

You opened your mouth for a moment, wanting to say something about how ridiculous that was, but then clicked it shut.

He was going to mentor you.

“Just me?” you asked.

“I’ll talk with Sabrina and Gemma later this morning,” he said, waving at you not to make it an issue. “I checked over some more of the work you three have been doing yesterday to make sure the extra effort I’m about to put in is worth it. I was happy to see it will be.”

“Thank you, sir,” you said.

“Now, there’s plenty I could just dump onto you, but I prefer teaching moments to just spoon-feeding. I believe you took your LSATs right before you started with us, correct?”

“I did,” you nodded. “I still haven’t heard anything back, but I’m planning on applying to schools this fall so I prepped all last year.”

“Good. I also saw Sabrina has done the same thing. Do you know what Gemma’s plans are?”

You frowned. “Not really. She’ll be heading back to Australia at the end of the summer. We- It’s kind of a soft spot between us. We both know she’s leaving, so we’re trying to enjoy things before that happens.”

He snorted and shook her head lightly. “Making things tomorrow-you’s problem isn’t a great plan,” he said. “Well, let’s assume she needed to do something similar if she’s planning on school there and not here. I need you to clear up any emergency work this morning, you’re going to be busy this afternoon.”

“Alright,” you said. “What if I get some pushback, though?”

Garrison furrowed his brow. “From who? An associate?”

“No, the Associates haven’t been like that. At least not yet,” you said. “I mean from Joy.”

“What possible pushback could she give you, John? She’s an intern, and I’m a Partner. She has no say in this.”

“What I mean to say is that she’ll likely take this ... I don’t even know if ‘personally’ is the right phrasing.”

“John,” Garrison said. “Just do what I tell you and don’t worry about it,” he said. “Head back to the conference room and send Sabrina down to see me. Don’t tell her about the ‘anything to say’ trick, or the mentoring. I’ll fill her in myself.”