I watch most everyone else finish their work and leave for the night. A couple of my colleagues poked their heads in my door on the way out to give me a message — some work-related, and some just nonsense. Josh Briar tells me I came in second in last week’s Pick ‘Em league, which means I won a whopping twenty dollars, and my paralegal lets me know she’ll finish the stack of lease agreements I gave her as soon as she got back in the morning.

The last to go is Uncle Oran. He’s one of the managing partners of the firm, and my father’s half-brother. He’s always been my favorite relative. In fact, he’s the reason I became a lawyer in the first place.

At family parties I’d corner him, and demand to hear another story of odd and interesting legal cases, like the man who sued Pepsi for refusing to provide him with a $23 million dollar fighter jet in exchange for Pepsi Points, or the time that Proctor & Gamble tried to argue in a court of law that their own Pringles were not, in fact, potato chips.

Uncle Oran is an excellent storyteller, well able to milk drama out of even the most convoluted cases. He’d explain to me precedent and statutes, and how important even the tiniest of details could be... how even a comma in the wrong place could invalidate an entire contract.

I found Uncle Oran fascinating not only because he was so funny and charming, but because he was so similar and yet so different from my father.

They both dressed well, in fitted suits, but Uncle Oran’s looked like something a Trinity professor would wear — always tweed or wool, with wooden buttons and elbow patches — while my father looked like an American businessman. They’re both tall with the same thick graying hair, and long, lean faces, but Uncle Oran has the coloring they call “Black Irish” — dark eyes, and an olive tone to his skin. My father’s eyes are cornflower blue.

Oran’s accent fascinated me the most. He’d lost some of it, living in America for years. But you could still hear it gilding the edges of his words. And he loved a good Irish saying:

“Forgetting a debt doesn’t mean it’s paid.” Or, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, except your own obituary.”

He was a version of my father who had grown up in Ireland — an alternate reality, if we’d all been raised there instead of Chicago.

Tonight he knocks on my doorframe, saying, “You know we don’t pay you by the hour, Riona. You can go home once in a while and still have plenty of money for those fancy shoes.”

The shoes in question are a pair of oxblood Nomasi pumps, set neatly to the side under my desk. I take them off when I know I’ll be sitting a while, so they don’t get creases across the toes.

I smile up at Uncle Oran. “I knew you’d notice those,” I say.

“I notice everything,” he says. “Like the fact that you’ve got all the South Shore land purchase agreements in front of you. I told you Josh was going to handle those.”

“I had already started them,” I say, shrugging. “I figured I might as well finish.”

Oran shakes his head.

“You work too hard, Riona,” he says, seriously. “You’re young. You should be out with friends and boyfriends. Once in a while, at least.”

“I have a boyfriend,” I say.

“Yeah? Where is he?”

“About five miles that way.” I nod my head toward the window. “At Mercy Hospital.”

“Oh, that surgeon?” Oran sniffs. “He’s still around?”

“Yes,” I laugh. “What’s wrong with Dean?”

“Well...” Oran sighs. “I wasn’t going to say anything. But I saw he sent you roses the other day. Red roses.”

“So?”

“Not very imaginative, is he?”

I shrug. “Some people like the classics.”

“Some people are intellectually lazy.”

“What’s the right flowers to send a woman?”

Oran grins. “I always send whiskey. You send a woman a bottle of Bunnahabhain 40-Year Single Malt... then she knows you’re serious.”

“Well, we’re not,” I tell him. “Not serious.”

Oran strides into my office and scoops up the stack of folders off my desk.

“Hey!” I protest.

“This is for your own good,” he says. “Go home. Put on a nice dress. Go get your man from the hospital. Enjoy a night out. Josh will find these on his desk tomorrow morning, the lazy shite.”

“Fine,” I say, just to placate him.

I let Oran carry the folders away, and then I watch him head over to the elevators, leather satchel slung over his shoulder in place of a briefcase. But I have no intention of actually leaving. I’ve got a million other projects to work on, with or without the purchase agreements.

And this is my favorite time to do it — after everyone else had left, and the lights have automatically dimmed across the floor. In total silence, the rest of the office dark, and only the city lights sparkling below me. No interruptions.

Well — almost none.

My cell phone buzzes on the desk next to me, where it lays face-down. I flip it over, seeing Dean’s name.

You still at it? Want to come meet me for a drink at Rosie’s?

I consider. Rosie’s is only a couple of blocks away. I could easily stop for a drink on my way home.

But I’m tired. My shoulders are stiff. And I haven’t had a chance to exercise yet today. I think about a glass of wine in the trendy, noisy bar, compared to a glass of wine drunk in my own bathtub, listening to a podcast instead of a recap of Dean’s day.

I know which one sounds more appealing to me.

“Sorry,” I text back. “Going to be working late. Then I’ll just head home.”

“Alright,” Dean replies. “Dinner tomorrow?”

I hesitate. “Sure,” I say. “6:30 tomorrow.”

Dean and I have been dating for three months. He’s a thoracic surgeon — intelligent, successful, handsome. Competent in bed (I would guess all surgeons are — they understand the human body and they’re in full control of their hands).

I should want to go to dinner tomorrow. I should be excited about it.

But I’m just... indifferent.

It’s nothing to do with Dean. It’s a problem I seem to have again and again. I get to know someone, and I start picking away at all their flaws. I notice inconsistencies in their statements. Holes in logic in their arguments. I wish I could turn off that part of my brain, but I can’t.

My father would say that I expect too much from people.

“No one’s perfect Riona. Least of all yourself.”

I know that.

I notice my own flaws more than anyone’s — I can be cold and unwelcoming. Obsessive. Quick to get angry and slow to forgive.

Worst of all, I’m easily annoyed.

Like when a man becomes repetitive.

It’s only been a few months, and already Dean’s told me three times about how he thinks the anesthesiologists in his department are conspiring against him, after he refused to hire one of their friends.

“It’s these South Africans,” he complained, last time we went to lunch. “You hire one, and then they want you to hire their cousin or their brother-in-law, and all of a sudden the surgical unit is overrun with them.”