I had asked around before our lunch, and it seemed that everybody at the firm knew who Jordan Sellar was. My guess was that this was due in equal parts to his attractiveness and his legal talents. He wasn’t just handsome compared to Klasko’s pallid pool of lawyers—he was unarguably handsome, J.Crew-model handsome, good-genes handsome, with broad shoulders and thick black hair he wore just long enough to tuck behind his ears. And he was known to be one of the most promising associates at the firm, one who exuded calm and control in a setting where others seemed to always be panicking into phone receivers and scrambling into their next meetings. And for some reason, even though I hadn’t yet listed M&A as an area of interest, he had asked me to lunch.

Jordan flipped his blue tie over his right shoulder, looking for a brief moment as though he were hanging from a noose, adjusted the large face of his Rolex, rotated his bull and bear cuff links, and cracked his neck. He seemed to be making a production of waiting for me to be served before diving into his steak, and the blonde finally noticed, looking up from her plate and her eyes growing wide at the sight of his untouched meal. She placed her fork down and blushed, covering her mouth as she finished chewing.

“So sorry, I didn’t realize that Alex didn’t have her food!” Her voice sounded painfully saccharine.

The scarlet hue rising from her neck to her cheeks aroused my sympathy. “Oh gosh. Please! Eat,” I insisted.

“You wouldn’t want your salad to get cold,” Jordan said with a wink, though he seemed only half kidding.

Mercifully the waiter arrived just then with my salmon, and Jordan picked up his steak knife and fork.

“So, Jordan, did you always know you wanted to be an M&A lawyer?” the blonde asked.

“Since I was in diapers,” he said dryly, his mouth partially full of T-bone.

I snorted and covered my mouth. He swallowed and grinned, revealing a row of Chiclet-white teeth. I glanced at his left hand, just to confirm there was a wedding ring on it, to assure myself that he wouldn’t take my laughing at his jokes as flirting. The girl whose name I couldn’t remember looked as though she was about to cry, though, and I felt bad. For the first time in my entire life, I was grateful that I had grown up an only child, constantly taken to restaurants with cloth napkins and waiters in bow ties where I was bored out of my mind by adult conversation. My parents had unintentionally taught me to navigate work lunches.

“Come on! Valid question!” I said to Jordan, trying to deflect. “Did you want to be in M&A when you started at Klasko?”

“Look,” he said, pointing from her to me with his fork and leaning forward to put his elbows on the table, “this is one of the best law firms in the world. But the truth is, all of our revenue comes out of two practices. M&A and capital markets. Every other group is here for support. Litigation and bankruptcy just exist for diversification, you know?” I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “They all work for us. But we’re supposed to pretend we’re all equal, just to be PC.”

I cocked my head to the side as I thought about my real estate assignment for Lara, and the perks of being in a “support group,” as she had explained them to me, while my fellow associate busied herself with nodding enthusiastically.

“I mean, we can’t say it out loud, but they compensate us accordingly,” Jordan continued. “Senior partners in M&A make five to six million a year. Real estate makes one. Tops. Nobody chooses to do anything other than M&A around here.”

What about people who want a work/life balance?

“What about people who want a work/life balance?” the blonde asked.

Jordan’s eyes widened, as though the question belied her laziness and na?veté. Thank god I didn’t ask that out loud, I thought. “We fund everybody else’s ‘balanced’ life. Plus, nobody actually chooses free time over six million a year,” he snorted.

I was trying to wrap my mind around what $6 million in my bank account would look like when Jordan pointed the tip of his knife in my direction. “What are you working on?”

“Well, I’m on that one real estate matter . . . uh, real estate portion of the M&A matter with you,” I mumbled, suddenly embarrassed to be working for a support group.

Jordan stared at me with a slightly stupefied expression before he snapped himself out of it. “Who is the partner?”

He has no idea who he was on the phone with last week.

“Lara Maloney.”

“Jesus.” Jordan shook his head with a disgusted sneer. “That group is a mess.” I thought of Lara’s disheveled look and the bit of egg on Michelle’s lip in the morning meeting. Still, it seemed an unnecessarily harsh assessment to me. The real estate lawyers I had met were smart and nice and valued their families . . .

“You know, you should be on an M&A deal. I’ll put you on one of mine.” He said it as though he was giving me a gift.

I smiled gratefully, taking in Jordan again. There was something about him. And it wasn’t privilege—like those lazy trust-fund boys I’d known in college. Jordan had something different behind his ease: authority coupled with confidence—and the sense that he’d earned them both.

I should discuss this with Sam. I promised him . . .

“Great!” I said, with genuine enthusiasm that surprised me.

“I’m doing tax work,” the blonde announced, provoking no reaction from Jordan, though she seemed to be waiting for him to tell her she should be doing M&A for him as well.

“So, what year are you now?” I asked Jordan, just to fill the silence. I already knew the answer, but I couldn’t let her writhe in pain any longer.

“Sixth. Hopefully partner in two years. God, I think my wife will divorce me if I don’t make partner. I’ll have spent the past six years not sleeping for no reason.”

“I’m sure you’ll make partner!” she squeaked.

“Nothing’s for sure. There are two other guys my year in M&A also up for it. Thank god though, no women—they’d promote a woman over me for sure.” He paused. “They should promote a woman over me. We have no female partners in the group right now.”

Given how rote he sounded, I almost asked him to explain why having women was a good thing, knowing he likely couldn’t, but thought better of it. “Do you think it’s easier for a woman to make partner than a man?” I asked instead.

Jordan took a bite of steak as if to buy himself time. “The firm recognizes that they need to encourage diversity. They’re not wrong. Clients care. It’s good for business.”

“I heard the new elevator bank is only for the M&A group, and that it goes right to the new fifty-sixth floor,” the blonde said, apropos of nothing.

Jordan smirked. “I still can’t believe Mike Baccard gave in to Matt’s whining to get us our own floor. And express elevator!”

Suddenly a large hand appeared on Jordan’s shoulder. I followed a wedding ring choking a bloated finger up to French cuffs and a chubby, grinning face.

“Don’t listen to a word this one tells you about me.” I took in the interloper, who was in no way handsome—he had dark bags under his lower lashes, and his hair plugs were still growing in—but whose smile and attitude made him somehow adorable.

Jordan laughed and shook the hand over his shoulder. “This is the chair of the M&A group,” he explained to me and the blonde.

“Matt Jaskel,” the man announced, extending his hand toward me.

“Alex Vogel.” I deliberately projected my words through the noisy restaurant.

“Alex, a pleasure.” He turned and extended his hand to my dining mate. “And you are?”

“Nancy Duval,” she whispered.

“Sorry?”

“Nancy Duval,” she repeated, barely louder but with her shoulders back.

He nodded and dropped her hand. “Nancy and Alex, I trust you’re keeping Jordan on his toes,” he said, placing a hand on each of Jordan’s shoulders and massaging them gruffly.

Suddenly I felt another presence approaching from behind my chair. I recognized the sensation immediately. There was never any physical similarity to the men who elicited the tingling sensation at the tip of my spine—the last one was the skinny, bespectacled teaching assistant for my sophomore Modern American Lit class—but they all shared a certain self-assuredness. I didn’t turn immediately, savoring the moment of discovery.

“This is Peter Dunn, who’s also an M&A partner,” Matt said.

When I did turn, I met Peter’s shrewd green eyes, which were set on a tanned and square-jawed face. His gray suit showed off a lean physique, and his thick honey-brown hair made him appear younger than I thought he might be, given his seniority. “How are you finding your time at Klasko so far?” he asked, a rasp in his voice giving it a surprisingly soulful quality.

“Learning a lot. Really enjoying it, thank you,” I answered, keeping his gaze.

I could tell he was assessing my posture, considering my demeanor, evaluating my intellect. I performed despite myself, feeling my body angle toward him. My toes shifted toward his shiny black shoes. Italian leather. I took in his scent. Tom Ford cologne. The blood ran to my head, and my cheeks flushed. The most delicious part of the exchange was that to everybody else at the table, in the restaurant, it was a routine professional introduction.

“We’re going to get Alex here on an M&A deal,” Jordan said, and Peter and Matt nodded in approval as they evaluated our plates. I recalled that whenever my swim team got a new coach, I knew I was being evaluated out of the pool as well. A good coach knew who the strongest swimmers were before ever seeing them in the water.