RomCom Cliché

Chapter Twenty-Seven

July bled into August and the heat didn't let up, the pavement hot enough to distort the horizon each morning that Rebecca left for work, following the route to the office space West had rented out. 

It was starting to feel like a real business now, with clients coming and going, meetings with attorneys and witnesses, and interviews with prospective interns to help with the grunt work while they finish off law school.

The office accumulated a mass of boxes with old textbooks and public case files, financial records and receipts and every transcript and email that came through to them, meticulously filed away by their new receptionist, who fielded calls and made appointments for them as they garnered enough business to start making a profit. 

Rebecca won her first two trials under West's employment, and clinched a settlement for a third case before it went that far, the legal fees she raked in feeling more victorious than any win under Dawson and Don. 

She knew it was just the newness of it, the excitement of a change but Rebecca also enjoyed being higher up on the ladder at the firm, an equal despite the experience West had on her.

In barely half a year, things had turned around so much for her that Rebecca was buoyed by her happiness. 

She was in a stable relationship, had a new job that provided a better opportunity for her to help people without the constraints of doing it for maximum profit, and her friends were happy, which made her happy.

Nam's due date was rapidly approaching and Rebecca spent any spare time not at work or with Freen with her friend. 

She still hadn't quite managed to process that Nam was about to have a baby, that the rapidly growing stomach that couldn't be concealed by clothes anymore was a reality, but Rebecca did what she did best and bought baby books and researched reviews for the best products, spending movie nights with Freen highlighting passages and dog-earing pages and taking notes to pass on to her friend. 

More than once, there was a joke about Rebecca being the expectant mother but she just rolled her eyes at her friends and diligently did her best to help.

One thing that always tied her so tightly to Nam was their bad relationships with their mothers and the relative isolation of boarding school exacerbating the rift between them and their respective families. 

Sure, Nam had her father, but he was in Argentina, he wasn't here reminding her to take folic acid pills and making her add kombucha and kimchi and other probiotic foods to help with her gut health, help with the baby's health. 

Rebecca was her family, and knowing what it was like to have a shit one, she was damn well going to make sure she was the best family Nam could wish for.

Still, when Nam went into early labour at the end of August, two weeks before she was due, Rebecca felt woefully unprepared to help her friend through it. 

She'd been on her third strawberry daiquiri, on a sunbed in the shade of her back garden, drying off after a swim in the pool as Freen fussed over the barbecue she'd suggested for dinner, enjoying the task of grilling in the sunshine. 

They'd hosted a few barbecues that summer, a mixture of both of their friends filling the garden, splashing in the pool, drinking too much gin and tequila in the heat, inhaling smoke from the grill and sharing cigarettes and laughing loudly. 

It was some of the best days Rebecca could remember.

When Heng called, his polished accent slurring together in an indecipherable frantic torrent, Rebecca had managed to parse the meaning after a bewildered moment of coaxing the words out slowly.