Julie James - Practice Makes Perfect

J.D. drew in his breath. Oh, shit.

“I suppose they handled the matter promptly enough,” the witness conceded.

“And you would have to agree that they handled the matter effectively, wouldn’t you, seeing how you never again saw your ex-manager, let alone had a problem with him?”

Still leaning against the table, Payton crossed her right ankle over her left, so that all her weight now bore down on her left heel.

J.D. cringed. Crap, crap, this was going to be bad. He couldn’t watch. But yet he had to. Should he do something? Maybe he could—

But right then, Payton eased onto the table—taking the weight off her shoe—as the witness answered.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that the way the company chose to respond to my manager’s harassment was effective enough.”

J.D. exhaled in relief. Close call. But he had better get that note to Brandon/Brendan now, while he still had the chance. He glanced over. A few other latecomers had sat down at the end of his row. He would have to sneak past them to get out.

Meanwhile Payton, sitting on the table, gracefully crossed one leg over the other, continuing her cross-examination.

“And when the director of Human Resources interviewed you a week after the incident, didn’t you, in fact, tell her that you were pleased with the company’s response to your complaint?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think that’s what I said,” Ms. Kemple quickly replied.

Payton seemed surprised by this answer, but remained unflustered. “Really? Do you remember when we spoke earlier at your deposition, Ms. Kemple, where you said . . .”

J.D. watched as Payton searched through the files on her table and quickly found the deposition transcript she was looking for. Payton grabbed the transcript—

“Here, Ms. Kemple, let me read to you a portion of your—”

—and before J.D. realized what was happening, Payton did sort of a half leap off the table to approach the witness stand and when she came down on her feet there was a loud crack! that sounded throughout the courtroom and holy shit suddenly Payton stumbled wildly off balance, her arms flailing, and she—

—dove headfirst straight into the jury box.

The entire courtroom gasped as J.D. flew out of his seat in horror.

Oh, my god!

Everyone was on their feet, stunned, watching as Payton quickly scrambled to pull herself to a stand, grappling, climbing past the jurors who sat in their box, mouths agape, and she managed to get to her feet, a little flustered but covering as she smoothed her skirt and—

“Sorry about that.” Payton smiled calmly at the jurors, regaining her cool. “Now, where was I . . .”

She looked for the deposition transcript she had dropped, she turned around and—

—the entire audience in the galley cried out in shock.

Unbeknownst to Payton, when she had fallen her skirt—those damn slim-fit skirts she liked so much—had torn at the seam and now gaped open, and sweet Jesus, she was wearing a thong and two tiny white butt cheeks peeked out from between the folds of her skirt—

J.D.’s jaw nearly hit the floor.

Oh god, it was horrible, horrible—well, actually it wasn’t all that horrible for him, she had a really great ass—but for Payton, this was a train wreck, a disaster—

Up front, Payton heard the ruckus coming from the audience behind her, so she turned around—

—and the peeky cheeks now faced the judge and jury. The jurors’ mouths dropped open, and a few murmured something incoherent, and they all gaped as Payton hobbled about the courtroom on uneven shoes, confused as to the source of the commotion.

At the defense table, Brandon/Brendan timidly whispered something to Payton; J.D. couldn’t hear it and apparently neither could Payton because she bent over toward Brandon/Brendan to hear better, exposed white buns up in the air for all to see, and the courtroom erupted in complete pandemonium and J.D. started to climb past the people in his row—he somehow had to put a stop to this—

But Payton finally heard Brandon/Brendan.

She stood up, her hand flew to her skirt, and she felt the rip in the seam. She instantly reacted; she unbuttoned her jacket and quickly tied it around her waist—no more peeky-cheeks—and J.D. heard a few groans of disappointment as the judge finally got things under control, banging his gavel and calling for order in the courtroom.

And as quickly as the chaos had erupted, things quieted back down. As people took their seats, the clamor settling, J.D. sat down, too, hiding, thinking now definitely was not the time to be seen by Payton.

As a silence took hold of the courtroom, all eyes were on Payton. Everyone waited to see what she would do, how she would react.

She paused for a moment. Then she turned and faced the jury.

“Raise your hand if you had no idea you’d see so much nudity in one week of jury duty.”

Twelve hands flew straight into the air.

And unbelievably, Payton laughed.

The jurors joined in with her. Then the judge raised his hand, too. With that, the entire courtroom laughed and people began to clap.

Payton held her hand up, acknowledging. “Thank you, thank you. I’m here all week.”

And it was in that moment, as J.D. sat in the galley with people laughing and applauding all around him, as he watched Payton smiling, embarrassed but undefeated, that it happened.

Something changed.

He didn’t know anyone who would’ve handled such a ridiculous situation nearly so well. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it before, but she was actually kind of . . . funny. Or maybe he had already known that, he suddenly wasn’t sure. But what he did know was that he had flipped out over a friggin’ coffee stain on his suit, and yet here Payton had done a full face-plant right into the laps of twelve jurors and then treated them to a free peep show, but nevertheless managed to remain calm and collected.

And suddenly J.D. found himself looking at Payton with quite a bit of admiration.

He grinned and joined in with the others who cheered her on, and he momentarily forgot the role he had played in the whole debacle until, right then, she glanced down at her shoe.

Uh-oh.

J.D. watched as Payton picked up the shoe and presumably noticed the clean, precise way the heel had broken, the remnants of the glue he had applied. She ran her finger over the broken heel, examining it, and in that moment J.D. knew that she knew.

A random thought occurred to him right then, about how they say that criminals always return to the scene of the crime—wasn’t that how Bundy or Berkowitz or one of those guys got caught—and actually, it was kind of funny that he was thinking about murder right then because when Payton looked up from the broken shoe and glanced across the courtroom and saw J.D. sitting there, murder is exactly what was in her eyes.

When Payton met his gaze, J.D. thought he had never seen her dark blue eyes look so cold. And he knew one thing for certain.

He was toast.

PAYTON STORMED OUT the courthouse doors—suit jacket still tied around her waist—with J.D. following closely on her heels.

“Come on, Payton—it’s not like I meant for that to happen!” he called after her. “Honestly, who could’ve planned that?”

A part of her wished she never had to come back to court. Better yet, a part of her wished the earth would just open up and swallow her, she was that mortified.

The judge had called a one-hour recess so that—as he had delicately put it—“anyone who wished to adjust his or her attire could do so.” Payton now was in a race to get back to the office, change into her spare suit, then get to the nearest department store to buy a new pair of shoes. On top of everything else, the bastard—no other name was necessary, from now on the man formerly known as J.D. would simply be called The Bastard, The Prick, or The Shithead—had ruined her best pair of shoes. But that was hardly her biggest concern.

Her ass had been hanging out in open court.

Her ass had been hanging out in open court.

Clomping along the sidewalk unevenly in her broken heel, stomping past innocent pedestrians who were having a lovely, normal day, people who presumably had not had their asses hanging out in open court, Payton grumbled out loud to herself about the worst part of it all.

“I just had to wear a thong today, didn’t I?” she hissed angrily. She could’ve smacked herself in the head for that decision.

The Shithead was suddenly at her side. He grinned. “Well, point of fact, I think that women should wear thongs every d . . .” he trailed off, seeing her look. “But I can see you’re not in a place to discuss that right now.”

Payton couldn’t take it a moment longer. She advanced on J.D. “Oh, you think this is funny? Please—allow me to disabuse you of that notion.”

“Payton—”

“Don’t. Don’t ‘Payton’ me, don’t waste your breath with excuses or explanations—I don’t care.”

She stared J.D. right in the eyes. “If this is how you want to play the game, Jameson, that’s fine with me. The gloves are now off. I am about to become the bitch you’ve always thought I was.”

Payton saw that her comment took J.D. aback, that it wiped his grin—which she interpreted as a smirk—right off his face. And she saw something momentarily flash in his eyes, maybe it was anger, maybe it was something else—right now she didn’t care either way. Right now, as she stood on that sidewalk, facing J.D. in her torn skirt and broken heel and her naked butt barely covered by the jacket tied around her waist, all she cared about was at least having the dignity of getting in the last word.

So, seeing that she had momentarily silenced him, Payton took advantage of the opportunity and turned and walked away.

“IT COULDN’T HAVE been that bad.”

Curled up on her couch, Payton gave Chase a look over the carton of pad thai she held. She swallowed, then gestured with her chopsticks for emphasis.

“Oh, no, trust me, it was that bad.”

Chase had called her earlier, while she was still at the office. Although the rest of her day in court had thankfully passed by uneventfully—after the break she had even managed to get back on track with her cross-examination of the plaintiff—Payton still had been so embarrassed that she told Chase only, in what had to be the understatement of the year, that she’d had “kind of a bad day in court.”

An hour later, Chase had surprised her at home with a bag of Asian takeout. To cheer her up, he said. Not sure which one she preferred, he’d brought both tofu pad thai and vegetable fried rice. Touched by the gesture, Payton figured she could at least give him the condensed version of what had happened that morning. She appreciated it when he politely covered his laugh as a cough and blamed the spiciness of the food.

“But you recovered well—that’s what the jury will remember,” Chase told her. Stretched out comfortably on the couch across from her, he set his carton down on the coffee table and leaned in.

“I’m actually kind of sad I wasn’t there—I think I would’ve liked the view,” he said with a boyish grin. Then he leaned over and kissed her.

As Payton had described to Laney the other day, she found being with Chase to be . . . calming. It was a nice change of pace for her—certain situations at work, and certain unnamed someones in particular, had a tendency to get her worked up. But with Chase, there was no fuss. At a time when things in Payton’s life seemed uncertain and more than a bit out of control, being with Chase was easy. He was easy.

Not that way.

She didn’t know that.

Yet.

After they kissed for a moment or two, Chase pulled back and gave Payton a serious look. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I think maybe it’s time we take our relationship to the next level.”

Payton raised an eyebrow. Oh, really? “The next level being . . . ?”

“A weekend date.”

“Ah, a weekend date.” Payton shook her head teasingly. “I don’t know, that’s a big step. Did you have any particular weekend in mind?”

“Actually, I was thinking about this one,” Chase said.

“Wow. I don’t know. This weekend, let me see . . .” Payton pretended to mull this over. “There’s some laundry I’ve been meaning to get to, but I suppose if I rearrange my schedule . . .”