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***
Donna tries to hold his gaze but his eyes dart down as soon as she enters the elevator. So instead she fixates on a piece of floating dust and awkwardly shifts the heavy cardboard box in her arms. She watches as the dust flickers its way in and out of the light on its lazy journey to the ground.
Her chest isn’t quite sinking in, and the floor isn’t exactly dropping out from below, and he isn’t coming after her.
The dust finally lands on the floor and she steps on it with her shoe, extinguishing it like a cigarette with a sharp twist of her heel.
She doesn’t consider calling anyone. Mike would just stutter awkwardly and accusingly, a child caught between two parents. Rachel would be uncomfortably trying to hide her dismay that Donna isn’t infallible. And Donna doesn’t want to head upstate, where she’d see only sympathy on her mother’s face and hear only disappointment in Harvey in her father’s voice –All this accompanied by her brother’s shuffling feet and self-conscious pats on the arm.
There is a tingle at the back of her neck at the thought of all that hugging, the touching, the constant emoting.
She reaches the lobby and lets the elevator doors open and shut twice before she finally makes it out. Of course there are no cabs to be found and she can’t handle the thought that Ray’s eyes might not be able to meet hers. So she walks two blocks before she puts the box down and rests against the wall of a nearby alley.
She’s trying not to lose it but the cold brick is making her aware of the clamminess of her skin and she can’t fucking believe Harvey had Jessica do his dirty work.
She takes a deep breath and lets out a series of small sighs, stopping only when she realizes the shadows had hidden a couple making out across the way. They’re staring at her with matching looks of alarm.
“Sorry,” Donna scowls, “A bug was on me. A large bu -oh, just fuck off."
She pulls at her skirt as she picks up the box and begins to walk away, before turning back with an imperious frown, “Do you even know how many diseases you can catch from exposing your delicate parts out here? Rats can jump up to ten feet in the air –It’s true. And they’ve been known to bite dicks off. So, one could come up and take a great, huge hunk off of your little johnson and you wouldn’t even notice until,” she makes a slashing motion, “no more baby nightwalkers for you and your little night-time companion here. And that’s not even to mention how my great aunt Tallulah died from that infection– Don’t walk away from me!”
She can already hear the echoes of their footsteps from around the corner.
The exchange has brightened her spirits so she resumes her efforts to find a cab, determined to make eye contact with anyone she passes. When she finally slips into a taxi she slides off her shoes and throws them in the box, right on top of the can opener.
They’re stuck at a red light when she has a sudden flashback of the way his face looked years ago, that first time he thought he’d have to fire someone. He’d practiced on her then, late one night with their shoes kicked off. She’d made increasingly silly faces until finally he’d cracked, throwing his favorite pen at her in frustration but laughing the whole time.
The two of them had eaten Italian food that night and Donna had solemnly promised to always mock him when he had someone to fire. Though of course, she’d added pointedly, he’d never be firing her, since she was the greatest legal mind to ever walk the earth without a law degree.
He’d silently agreed with rolled eyes and a smile, and the delicate clink of his glass of scotch against hers.
Now as the taxi drops her off she’s hit with a wave of awareness that she’s been a legal secretary, Harvey’s legal secretary, for almost fourteen years –nearly all of her adult life. And all she has to show for it is a little cardboard box.
So while his parting silence weighs heavily, it’s holding so much of her identity in her arms (packed up in a box like a parting gift) that finally breaks her.
When she gets home, the glass spaghetti jar also currently known as her favorite wine glass crashes onto the floor, almost as if she just accidentally dropped it.
***
Donna gives herself seventy-two hours to wallow. More and she runs the risk of becoming something chronically unshowered and pitiful.
Donna Paulsen does not do pitiful.
But any less and she won’t have sufficient time to finish her newly purchased handle of gin, and the two bottles of ridiculously expensive wine he had already sent over by the time she got home from the office.
But her wallowing is impaired by the fact that the air conditioner has been broken for three weeks. She’s been meaning to get it fixed but her landlord refuses to do a thing about it and the repairman had always wanted to come on weekdays, between 1pm and 6pm. For obvious reasons, that hadn’t happened.
She calls them the first morning after and the woman on the phone tells her that because of the heat wave the repairman can’t come out for another two weeks. Donna tries sobbing hysterically, then she tries cursing and then she abruptly switches to flirting, which almost seems to be getting her somewhere. But the end result is still a broken air conditioner and a repair date that is now three weeks away.
So she finds herself in exile in 600 square feet of muggy stillness, the thick air of her small apartment settling damply on her skin.
Her miniature spider plant, the only living thing in her apartment, has actually been dead for weeks, but she leaves it hanging in the window and keeps watering it anyway.
The fact that it’s a brutally hot summer means she spends most of the time walking around the apartment in faded boxer shorts with shameful bunny slippers on her feet, vanity briefly forgotten with her hair in constant disarray, red wisps and limp waves stuck to her neck and face.
The first day home she briefly slips on a man’s white undershirt. It’s a specific man’s white undershirt and it’s been in her house since that one night. There’s no reason why he didn’t take it with him. There was barely a reason for him to take it off.
So there’s really no reason why she still has it and he doesn’t, other than the fact that returning it would mean they’d both have to acknowledge something that’s never been directly mentioned since he left her apartment at 2am seven years ago.
She has no idea why she dug it out of the recesses of her closet and put it on because staring at the worn fabric makes her vaguely nauseated.
After wearing it for three hours she ends up ripping it off and throwing it under the bed, where it lasts for fifteen minutes before she retrieves it and hacks it up with a pair of scissors.
She turns the shirt into dishrags she’ll never use and spends the rest of the afternoon reading magazines in her favorite purple sports bra.
***
At first, Donna rarely leaves the house for anything other than yoga and meetings with her new lawyers. And when she gets home from the latter her fingers are always twitchy. She’s still so used to typing and filing and stapling. She only lasts through the first day and a half before she tries to take up smoking again.
It’s a habit she gave up seven years ago –A pact they made with one another soon after that night, binding them together in a way that reassured Donna at a time when she would still occasionally close her eyes and be surprised to feel the ghosts of his fingers skimming her collarbone, see the curve of his lips as they followed the same path.
She and Harvey would celebrate each non-smoking day like they’d made it through a month. After the first few weeks, their gazes could hold just as long as they could before, and their relief at the return of the familiar eclipsed any tinges of regret.
He’d bought her a set of new wine glasses when they’d made it six months smoke-free. And those had lasted, for a while.
But now, these days, she can’t sit still and she sucks at arts and crafts and her gin would taste so much better with something in her other hand.
She sits on the fire escape, ice cubes clinking in the glass, and stares at the woman in the apartment across the way watering her (still-living) plants.
After the first few drags, Donna realizes she just doesn’t have it in her to become a real smoker again, but she still likes to watch the smoke swirl around.
So she starts spending some time every afternoon perched on the fire escape, watching as the smoke slowly meanders its way around her in soft strands.
She practices using different voices as she repeats, “I decline to answer."
She can’t tell if it’s the gin, the cigarette, or the way she’s muttering to herself but no matter how many times Donna waves to that woman across the way, she never waves back.
Donna names her Camille and starts a running commentary on her outfits and tries to judge whether her husband is faithful based on the positioning of Camille’s hair barrettes.
Her fire escape faces an alley so there isn’t much else to see, but it’s something.
***
She almost doesn’t bother checking her phone when it chimes.
Her period of mourning is over and for days she’s been bombarded with messages from Mike, Rachel, Louis, and Harvey’s new assistant. She’s barely responded to anyone but she can guess by now what each message might possibly say.
If Louis, it will be something about how she’s beautiful and strong and amazing –and he has tickets to tonight’s performance at Lincoln Center, if she wants company.
If Rachel, it will be devoid of exclamation marks and emoticons, but the sentiments will be so weird and encouraging that somehow it still reads the same.
If Mike, it will be somewhat belligerent, vaguely comforting, and a little petulant, all wrapped in a mention about how much this has destroyed Harvey.
If it’s Harvey’s pathetic new temp it will be a whiny mess, an over-long message about how, “Mr. Specter really really needs you to return his call. Really. He would like to know whether you are okay. Also, do you know how he likes his coffee? He keeps dumping mine out and he didn’t seem to appreciate the color-colored coffee-sampler I gave him this morning. Thanks –Oh, this is Mr. Specter’s new assistant by the way. Please return this call. He seems agitated and won’t look at the rest of his messages and the yellow ones are piling up and there are quite a few orange ones as well. I mean, I’m on top of it, but, anyway, hope to hear from you soon."
If asked, she’d say that she has no idea why she keeps listening to his messages. But if pressed she’d confess it’s for the perverse pleasure she gets out of how his voice always gets slightly squeaky and desperate near the end.
Donna takes knowing that Harvey must hate him, or at least barely tolerate him, as some kind of consolation prize. For what, exactly, she’s not sure. But the thought makes her just a little bit bouncy.
Twice Norma has called with an idiotic question about the Boerson case. And once she had a text from Harold, awkwardly asking her out because “ur hair is really red and ur almost nice and since u don’t work here it won’t b weird. I should have called? I should have called. I’m sry don’t b mad.”
She has no idea how the hell he got her number so she figures he deserves the vaguely threatening response he receives from a self-proclaimed judo-expert named Bruno.
When she finally glances over at her phone an hour later she frowns when she see his name on the little viewscreen.
“Are we ok"
She scowls, an unappreciated sense of something akin to embarrassment very briefly tinting her frustration. She was prepared for almost every possible scenario.
This is a surprise.
Considering she can usually read his mood by the direction his hair has been gelled, he’s been surprising her a whole fucking lot lately. When she tallies it up, this hasn’t worked out in her favor.
Donna shoves the thought away and instead focuses on the fact that he couldn’t even spare her some punctuation; His personal communication skills have always been so half-assed for someone with suits so crisply pressed.
She throws her phone on the coffee table and takes a long shower
She tries to wash away the small part of her that understands why he couldn’t be the one to face her, why he couldn’t be the one to let her go.
She’d never call him a coward, but he doesn’t like people to see him break.
Sometimes, not even her.
And he would have
Of this, at least, she is certain
***
It’s two hours later when he tries again, much to her surprise.
“So we aren’t ok. I really need us to be ok”
It’s another twenty minutes until Donna finally hits send, “We’re ok.”
His response is immediate, “Then you owe me a real apology at some point”
Any warmth toward him immediately dissipates and she allows herself five minutes to rage, spewing out the bitchiest possible retorts while she stomps around in circles and throws pillows at the wall.
Finally, she gulps down the rest of her wine and takes a few deep breaths. She tries to recognize the fact that yes, she did in fact mess up, in a big way, though her intentions were obviously pure, honorable, and beyond reproach.
She grimaces and perfunctorily types out, “I’m sorry, okay? I made a serious mistake and put you in a difficult position. You?”
“Now we’re mostly ok."
She waits a few minutes for another text until it becomes clear he has no additional message to go with it. She collapses on the couch with a red face, any sense of embarrassment or remorse long since abandoned, “That’s it? You’re a jackass.”
He fires back, “Aww, we really are ok”.
She scowls at her phone for the rest of the night, waiting for some kind of text that might say, “just kidding, I’m sorry too” or “I should have fought for you” or simply “I’m the worst and you are an amazing goddess queen,” but she thinks she knew all along it would never come.
She’s been stuck at home less than a week and she’s down to two spaghetti jars. Or wine glasses. Or whatever.
By the end of the night she’s down to one and the broken glass is becoming harder to pick up off the worn wooden floors.
***
Donna sets her alarm clock for 7am the following morning and is disturbed to realize that she knows all the words to the Justin Bieber song that’s waking her up on Z100. It’s enough to get her out of bed immediately, hand slamming on the radio as she heads to the bathroom.
She’s halfway through brushing her teeth when she slowly walks back into the bedroom and puts the radio back on because whatever, she lives alone.
Today, she’s decided, she’s going to start sorting things out. This means no alcohol before 5pm, no yoga pants unless going to yoga, and most importantly, what the fuck is she going to do with her life now.
By 8am she’s freshly showered, hair blown out, make-up applied, and dressed in her favorite pair of jeans, a linen tank top and cute wedge heels.
She feels exceptionally accomplished.
She’s also sweating her ass off. She can already tell it’s going to be one of those scorching hot New York days when the humidity gets trapped between the buildings, the air tastes metallic, and the sounds of the city seem muted by the haze of the heat.
Her makeup is seeping into her skin and her jeans already feel damp to the touch.
She strips down and pulls out a sundress from the closet but the thought of putting another piece of fabric on her body makes her cringe, so she kicks off her heels instead.
With a furrowed brow, she settles on a new plan: no alcohol before 12pm, no pants, and what the fuck is she going to do with her life.
The answer is, she really doesn’t know. Every few years she has had to update her resume for the firm –Pearson & Hardman likes to keep copies on file– and she’s never been ashamed of hers. It just, it isn’t what she’d planned.
She graduated in the top 10% of her class at Skidmore. She’d wanted to go somewhere farther from home, but she also didn’t want to pay for college herself, or learn to do laundry…so her parents, and Skidmore, had won out.
And she’d loved Skidmore. She double majored in Theater Arts (her choice) and Business (her parents). To her surprise, she liked them both. It was Theater that taught her to read people and respond to cues; It was Business where she put that to good use.
So after graduation she moved to New York City and moved in with a gay couple (both named Josh), also from Skidmore. The apartment was small, terrible, and expensive, and in that useless area on the East Side of Manhattan that people named Murray Hill, but only so residents didn’t feel bad about the fact that it’s mostly a lot of nothing several avenues away from something.
But she had loved it because she could walk to something. And sometimes she could put on a pair of heels (slightly too small) and oversized sunglasses (gifted to her by Josh #1) and strut down Park Avenue like she was the something everyone else was there to see.
The only problem was that by her sixth month she still hadn’t found a job in business and none of her auditions had led to a callback and her parents were becoming increasingly concerned, which meant Donna had a clock ticking to when her bank account became empty. Permanently.
So it was with something approaching desperation that she had turned to temp-ing, viewing it as the only possible way to tether herself to a life she wasn’t yet ready to abandon.
During her second week at the temp agency she had ended up at the D.A’s office, where her ability to cry on command came in handy three times on the first day alone. By Friday, they were asking her to stay.
She never meant it to be permanent; It was just something to get her parents off her case until something else came through. But she was good at it, really really good at it. And it turned out the feeling of success didn’t suck.
So less than a year later she was passing an exam to become an Accredited Legal Secretary, a week after McKinsey & Company Consulting finally responded to the application she had posted nine months earlier.
A couple years after that she followed Harvey to Pearson & Hardman, where he secured her a salary high enough to ensure that she and her first pair of perfectly-fitting Louboutin heels never looked back. Not really, anyway.
Only now her resume registers thirteen years of experience as a legal secretary, two different Advanced Legal certificates, and fluency in legal Spanish and legal French. Well, it also says that in her spare time she teaches children how to read, but that only happened once before the hives kicked in and anyway, that’s not exactly going to help her.
She opens her laptop and pulls up the McKinsey website. When she clicks over to the careers section she goes back and forth between the business trainee program and the openings for experienced professionals. She examines the requirements for both with a trained eye.
It’s immediately obvious that neither exactly fit and the heat invading her apartment has given her such a headache that she tosses her laptop on the foot of her couch and crawls back into bed.
***
It’s been two days since Donna and Harvey’s text message exchange and he, or rather his assistant, has continued to call her non-stop. She has no idea what he wants but given how their text conversation ended, she refuses to even consider picking up the phone.
She finds out about the trial run when Barbara calls. She’s twenty years Donna’s senior and works down in payroll. She’s not quite a friend but something almost like. But also, over the years, she’d become Donna’s third most valuable asset in acquiring company gossip.
Donna taps her fingers along the counter and lets Barbara spend ten minutes rambling on about how two of the partners failed to bill properly last month, how Elizabeth Schift seems to have stolen a major client from Matthew Janis without his realizing, and how one of the fifth year associates keeps taking suspiciously long weekends.
She tries to listen patiently but there is no avoiding the fact that she just doesn’t need to know these things anymore. Still, she can’t keep her brain from whirling, filing these tidbits away for use in a future that isn’t going to come. Her right hand is jangling her keys in her pocket and she’s desperate to just hang up.
“Barbara,” she finally interrupts, “I’m sorry, but I really have to run. I have a meeting.”
The older woman pauses, “A meeting?” she asks.
Donna runs her hands through her hair, “Yeah, with my lawyers, you know. Save Donna! And all that... And then I’ve got yogalates. Gwyneth Paltrow does it and that evil bitch has a tight bod so I’m going to go and love it. Or I’m going to destroy it.”
“Right, of course!” She can hear Barbara nodding through the phone. Barbara clears her throat, “But your meeting with the lawyers, will this affect your ability to participate in the trial run?”
Donna jerks her head up sharply, “What now?”
“The trial run? Didn’t someone tell you about it? I just assumed you’d be there, given your involvement.”
“Well, Barbara, no one’s told me so please, come on down.”
“The firm is putting Harvey on trial, as practice for when this whole case with Travis Tanner goes forward. He’s got Jessica defending him, and Louis is prosecuting. The whole place is madness. It’s a bit exciting, to be honest. I just assumed they would call you in to take part. And Donna, I really am sorry about everything. I still can’t believe Harvey didn’t go after you! You know, I’m pretty sure I saw him wearing mismatched socks yesterday. One was argyle! And I think the other paisley! And he was missing a pocket square! I know what you’ve said about what it means when he’s missing a pocket square. Donna, seriously, he’s so terrible to his new assistant. And I don’t think he’s eating. Oh that man, after all you’ve–"
Donna interrupts Barbara with a sharp laugh. “Yup, okay. Great. Thanks Barbara! Lovely to chat! And by the way, Janis doesn’t care that Schift stole his client because they’ve been badoink-a-doinking for months. Trust me, use hand sanitizer generously if you have to enter Conference Room F.”
“Ba-doink-a-what?”
“Bye bye!” She exclaims, hanging up abruptly.
Her apartment is silent for long moment before the piercing notes of a Flock of Seagulls song start blaring from her phone. She glances at it to see who’s calling and sees it’s Harvey’s office number. Again.
When it finally stops ringing she picks up the phone and sends a short message to Harvey’s cell phone, “I have not and will not ever pick up the phone for that imbecile. Handle your own business. I have nothing else to say.”
She walks out the front door and leaves her phone behind.
**
She probably shouldn’t be surprised to find him waiting outside her door the next morning. Her last message was essentially a gauntlet thrown and she should have known he’d show up eventually. But the sight of him calmly leaning against the black car still catches her by surprise.
She immediately glances down to see if his socks match and is exceptionally irritated to realize that she can’t tell. But he’s missing a pocket square, even though he usually wears one with that suit. Also, the sides of his hair are gelled too aggressively, in that way he does when he’s agitated and hasn’t slept much. He’s wearing one of the ties that she once tried to outlaw after a shopping trip to Bergdorf’s. The color of it makes him look sallow. A small smile escapes her lips.
He’s been waiting for her awhile. She can tell because there are tiny drops of sweat across his brow, and a few more winding down the side of his throat. The heat has made the smell of his after-shave more pronounced. He’s wearing the one from the blue bottle, Zegna, she thinks. It’s always been her favorite.
She’s still cataloging these findings when his brow furrows just so and she realizes: he’s not just there to see her.
“You came to get me to do the trial run.”
He’s staring at her carefully and she could reach out and trace the lines of tension on his face with her eyes closed.
She fucked up. Everyone knows she fucked up –she knows she fucked up. But it’s the slightly patronizing lilt of his voice as he says, “You did screw up,” and “I did fight for you,” that makes her think maybe he’ll never really understand.
The thought makes her sick, which pisses her off, and makes her walk away from him even faster.
She knows everything about this man, still. And maybe that’s the hardest part.
She looks back once as she is walking away and the look on his face almost makes her turn around. She thinks he would reach out to stop her, maybe catch her arm, if they were the kind of people who still touched.
Instead she can hear his voice cracking as he yells after her. She abruptly turns into that stupid Duane Reid on the corner, the one that now doubles as a bar. She glares at all the patrons and mutters, “what kind of fucking pharmacy serves beer?"
Ignored, she ends up shoplifting a cheap lipstick like she’s fourteen again and doesn’t return home until after dark.
Everything in her apartment feels warm to the touch so she’s wide-awake when her phone chimes at midnight.
The newest message simply reads,
“Please”
She doesn’t respond.
***
The next morning she decides to get new head shots. She'd fucking rock in business but given her age and resume, it looks like it may take the business world a while to figure that out. Plus all the required traveling would be exhausting and jet lag makes her look old. So she figures maybe it wouldn't hurt to give acting one more shot. She's done some casual theater over the years but she's never really had the time to commit to anything, so her theater resume is sort of crap as well.
It's an absurd twist of luck that a friend's friend's friend knows a guy who needs unpaid extras to be in the background of some movie that afternoon in Central Park. Even better, if they pick her and this becomes a thing for the duration of the movie she can get a SAG card out of it. Which means, hello, doors open everywhere. She whips out her oversized sunglasses and high heels and flounces all the way to the Park.
When she gets there, it's game face on. She's polite, for some reason with a Midwest accent, and is being so incredibly charming and so naturally charismatic that she's certain everyone and their mothers will want her in their films for the next thirty years.
But they want her to play the mother of a 22 year old.
She's displeased.
Then they don't appreciate her ad-libbing.
Also, it's hot out.
Obviously she leaves after two hours.
***
That night she's still cranky when she runs right into Mike, who is taking his turn at the "Let's tell Donna how much she sucks at life" game. Unfortunately, the little shit is pretty effective. Harvey would be proud, if not a little pissed at Mike's success in guilting her about the trial run. Because Mike walks away and she feels worse than she's felt since the day she first left the office.
Even more frustrating, she feels less mad at Harvey than she has in days, and that's really fucking annoying. The anger had been comforting.
It's 103 degrees out so she can't bring herself to go home and face the sticky stillness of her apartment and Camille across the alley looking smug and watering her plants to death. Instead she stops at the liquor store for mini bottles and then tries to go see the only foreign film playing in the neighborhood. Which, given her luck of late, is obviously sold out. She examines the rest of her air-conditioned options.
At this time of day, it's pretty much Brave, or Brave. Figures.
The two automatic machines are out of order so she reluctantly drags herself to the ticket counter. The teenaged employee looks up with a smile, "One adult and of course one child to see Brave?"
"What? Seriously? What kind of question is that? Can't a grown woman go see an animated movie that focuses on female empowerment? Isn't this supposed to be one of the best animated movies of the summer? Aren't I allowed to be curious? Are you in the habit of alienating your customers," She peers at his nametag, "Tad? Wait, seriously? Tad?" She sneers with an eyeroll. "God, you would be a Tad."
The scrawny kid selling tickets stammers, "Ma'am –"
"Watch it with the Ma'am, punk."
"I'm sorry!" He squeaks. "I just thought, well the child right behind you looks like– well, sorry." She looks down and, in fact, the redheaded little boy who has snuck up next to her does in fact look a lot like her. Donna looks around and spots what is likely his father distractedly scolding a little girl in pigtails. She is plopped on the floor eating errant pieces of buttered popcorn off the carpet.
Donna looks back at the little boy with a frown.
"Well, thanks for that, kid."
He looks up at her with wide eyes and then scowls.
She scowls back as she walk away and then feels terrible through the previews.
The absurdity of everything starts getting to her during the sappy parts of the movie. It starts with a snort, and then a gurgle, and then she's full out laughing uncontrollably, the parents and children sitting in front of her focusing more on her hysteria than what's going on onscreen.
She's laughed so hard her eyes are moist and she has to wipe them on the sleeve of the cashmere hoodie she'd kept in her yoga bag, the one Harvey once gave her. She smudges some mascara on the sleeve and then drains her Sprite and the gin she'd slipped into it in one long gulp, and leaves the movie before the final credits start rolling.
***
When she wakes up on the morning of the trial she has her yoga bag packed and set to the left of her bed, a blue dress fresh from the cleaners on the right.
Her alarm clock radio is blaring a song from two summers ago that vaguely sounds like her brother's old Nintendo game. With her arms folded across her chest, she genuinely can't move.
This time, I'll be Bulletproof.
It feels a little heavy handed, but all the same, it gets her out of bed and into her heels.
On paper, the reasons she is going to the trial are eighty percent Mike's lecture and twenty percent that whole female empowerment thing in that stupid movie.
But as she takes the elevator journey up to the fiftieth floor all she can think about is the taste of the pastries she and Harvey once shared in celebration of his partnership.
She can't remember the exact flavor but they sat in Battery Park Gardens and it was sunny and the pastries were warm and they were sweet and they'd split the last pastry right down the center as he toasted her for being the best damn legal secretary in the world.
***
Before she knows it, her part in the trial is over. Because she's always been quick on her feet but for the first time, she's not quick enough. That alone seems to be an answer for everyone in the room. He's staring at her intently from behind the defendant's table with a bewildered look she hasn't seen in seven years. It's somehow familiar and unfamiliar all at once. The combination is unsettling.
She wants to explain more, make everyone understand, but her heart is still racing and her mouth is still aimlessly trying to form words and she's not even sure what would come out if it were to succeed.
This time, he holds her gaze until the elevator door closes.
His eyes are fixed on hers, his hair is slightly mussed and his face is completely open, equal measures panic, guilt, and frustration.
But there's a trace of something else across his face and it looks like either confusion or recognition.
She suspects her face looks the same.
She sees him quietly murmur, "Donna…" and step toward her, like this time he might not let her walk away.
It's that which makes her slam the "close door" button repeatedly, locking him on the other side of the elevator door
***
After running into Mike and listening to his half-assed apology (seriously, she's glad she gave him some epiphany about people being who they are but she deserves at least twenty more minutes of groveling. and presents), she heads into the bar across the street from her house. By the time Rachel finds her, she's surrounded by five men of various ages. She's introducing herself as Debby Ann and she's assumed a pronounced Southern accent. Rachel eyes her tentatively and she grins at her widely, gesturing at the bartender for another round of shots.
"This is my friend Rebecca," she introduces Rachel to the group dramatically.
"Hi y'all," Rachel drawls. Donna frowns. Rachel's accent is really terrible. She need to help her with that.
The boys grin lasciviously anyway.
Rachel flicks her hair off her shoulder and gives a huge smile to the group, "I would just love a," She peers up at Donna questioningly, "A sloe gin fizz?"
She nods her head approvingly. "Rebecca! What an excellent choice. Only Yankees drink those fancy martinis."
Rachel raises an eyebrow. "Of course. Damn those Yankees. Damn them back to, um, back to England." She swivels around in her bar stool so that she's briefly facing only Donna and mouths, "What the fuck?" She gives Donna a gleeful grin. She smirks back.
An hour later and the guys have briefly dispersed to fetch drinks and secure one of the tables near the bar. For a moment, it's just Donna and Rachel. The latter suddenly seems awkward, shifting in her seat and fidgeting with her hair.
"Rachel, just ask it if you are going to."
Rachel looks up with a guilty expression. "No, it's none of my business," she says, resolutely.
Donna smiles gratefully, "No, it really isn't."
There is silence between the two for a long moment before Donna clears her throat. "I'm not in love with him. But I do care about him a lot. Of course I do. We're like brother and sister. I love him in that way. I would have explained that, if Louis –and if Harvey– had let me. Honestly."
Rachel nods, staring down at her hands. She looks up at the mirror behind the bar where she catches Donna's eyes.
"Do you really mean that?" She asks softly.
Donna squints and start laughing. "Fuck. Seriously, Rachel. Now the whole goddamn office thinks I'm in love with him? Pompous dickhead had to get involved. Like I couldn't rip Louis apart if I just had another second to collect myself. I mean, I'm Donna Paulsen. I'm pretty sure Louis sleeps with a picture of me on his ceiling and even if he doesn't, I know what he has in his left desk drawer. I would have been fine. God, I'm so happy –no, I'm so relieved I don't have to deal with Harvey and pretentious overbearing ass anymore."
Rachel raises an eyebrow.
"No, really. Do you know how many times I've had to eat crappy Indian food on that couch in his office because he just had to have me there while he finished reviewing something that in no way required my presence? Or how many times he's shown up on one of my dates just to see how it's going? And god, don't get me started on the things he said to my parents at dinner last time they stayed at his apartment. I still haven't lived it down. Or seriously, Rachel, the man got us kicked out of the MoMa, the Met, the Frick, and the Union Square Farmers Market –just in the last year! Well, the farmers market thing was more my fault, but he instigated it! He knows how I feel about overripe citrus. Seriously, we are so much better off removed from each other's lives."
She keeps laughing to herself as she drops her eyes to the condensation building on her drink. Her breathing stays even as she runs her finger around the edge of the glass. It's cold to the touch. She wipes her hands on the skirt of her dress and looks back up.
Rachel is staring at her with an inscrutable expression.
"What?"
Rachel shrugs, hands up in surrender, "Okay. Got it. Not in love with Harvey. No one thinks that anyway, I'm sure. And surprise! This just in, Louis is an asshole. Also, Ryan in accounting smells shoes when he thinks no one is around. Like full-on nose shoved in the insole sniffing. The office has bigger concerns, I swear."
She leaves soon after, muttering something about early meetings, Louis and a broken fax machine. She leans in close to say goodbye and whispers, "I really am sorry. I didn't mean to push. But just so you know, he really isn't the same without you."
Donna sighs but Rachel continues, "Which means Mike is a mess. He stapled his tie to his shirt the other day. It took me two minutes to get it out."
She rolls her eyes as Rachel flushes slightly. Rachel rolls her eyes right back and gently nudges her shoulder with Donna's. She turns to walk away and then rocks on her heels and spins back. Rachel hesitates a minute before adding, "And with Harvey, his being a mess, for him it's subtle, yeah, but I don't think it's in a brotherly way. So, there's that."
Rachel crooks a wary half-smile at Donna and then blows an awkward kiss to the men returning to the table and quickly heads out the door.
She's on her eighth drink of the night when she starts thinking about exactly what she said to Rachel, and the way she said it. And she can't stop thinking about it. And this time she can't quite get her breathing right.
Donna ends up having a two-night stand with a performance artist named Alfonzo and she keeps her phone off the entire time. When he asks, she puts her number into his phone with one digit wrong and walks down the streets of New York with her head held high.
When she gets home she opens all her windows, waters the dead spider plant, and takes a long cold shower in an attempt to cool down her apartment.
Finally she turns her phone back on and finds seven missed calls, four of them from him, not his assistant.
Donna keeps picturing his face while she sat there on the stand, Louis pushing and pushing, a room filled with people watching eagerly, the whole while his eyes remaining fixed.
She deletes all of his messages without listening and pulls up the last three. The first is from the career counselor she had called last week, wanting to schedule their appointment. The second is from the HR representative of a law firm she's dealt with in the past. Apparently they received a tip that she is looking for a change and would she be interested in coming in for a chat? The last message is from Barbara. Pearson & Hardman is settling the case. It's all over.
She's trying to absorb all of this as she sheds her clothes and changes into yoga pants. She ends up on the fire escape, last spaghetti jar/wine glass in hand. She's somewhat comforted to see Camille across the alley, watering the plants like she does every day. Though, it occurs to Donna, someone really really needs to talk to that woman about overwatering. This is getting absurd. Donna stares at her intently until suddenly Camille looks up. Donna waves. Camille stares at her for a moment and then resumes watering her plants. Donna frowns and then flicks her off to her back. The heat is rising up from the pavement below and the air is loud with the hum of nearby air conditioners. She can hear someone watching Jeopardy in an apartment upstairs.
And then abruptly she gets up and makes her way to the kitchen, where she finds the nicotine patches she and Harvey bought when they quit together seven years ago. She frowns at the box for a long moment, irritated that she associates nicotine withdrawal with the days she spent trying to forget the way his fingers slid around her waist.
She rolls her eyes at herself and slaps an expired patch on her lower stomach before tossing all but one of her remaining cigarettes in the dumpster behind her building.
Then she goes out and buys a set of real wine glasses because enough is enough.
***
There are ten different ways she would know it's him but this time it's because of the slope of his shoulders.
She considers rushing past him but he has on his second favorite suit so she knows it really isn't worth the effort.
And it isn't, because before she knows it, he's offering her her job back.
She can see it, this time. The choice she's making.
She considers the voicemails on her phone from the four more law firms that have called since word got out that she was available. She thinks about the headshots she never had made, and the McKinsey application she never finished filing.
But she's pretty sure that of all of those possibilities, none would feel as right as this one, standing here on the sidewalk with an impishly joyful expression lighting up Harvey's face as she's reminding him that she is the best damn legal secretary, nay, the best legal mind in the world without a law degree, Mike be damned. She can't stop grinning either, because she's got a ridiculously huge check in her pocket. And she's smiling over the check but she's grinning because he knew.
Suddenly he's reaching up and pushing away an errant piece of her hair but the same hair is back in her eyes so quickly that it may not have happened at all.
"Alright," he abruptly begins walking up First Avenue.
"Where are you going?" She asks after him.
"We're going to get breakfast. I have a lot to do this morning." He stops to look around, "God, this neighborhood is terrible. Why do you live down here again?"
She laughs as she walks towards him. "Don't be a snob. You and I both know where you came from."
He lets out a genuine smile, all pretenses dropped. "Fine. Does Gabriel's Diner on Avenue A still have the best coffee?"
She nods. "We share waffles?"
He shrugs in acquiescence.
"And homefries?" She adds.
"No way," he scowls. "You always end up eating all of mine and then I never get any. Just get your own order."
"Uh, duh. I can't order them, because then I'm actually ordering them. So you have to order them. Why is that so hard to follow? You have a law degree, from Harvard. A real one, even."
"But you are eating them. God, I hate woman logic. How about I just get two orders and you could eat one of those orders?"
She peers up at him for a long moment. "That's so idiotic it just might work. Though," she adds, "Are you sure breakfast is a good idea for you? You look almost like you've been, dare I say, drowning your sorrows in donuts? That suit seems a little Krispy-Kreme tight from where I'm looking."
"Woman, get your eyes off my ass. And don't joke about those things," He pats his stomach absent-mindedly.
"I'm going to let the fact that you just called me woman slide because I did just get to ogle your ass."
He waggles his eyebrows at her.
"Hey, it's not sexual harassment if it's not in the workplace." She raises her hand to give him a high five and he just shakes his head with a bemused smile.
"You know, if you love me like a brother there is something seriously messed up with your family, especially given our sexual histo–"
"Okay, that's enough of that," she chimes, slapping him on the arm.
"I mean, is now the time when I'm supposed to tell you I love you like a sister?" He scratches his cheek, "Because unlike you, I'm not from way upstate. But maybe-"
She interrupts, "Well obviously no, you're different." She raises her eyebrows. Her smile hints at mocking.
"Oh, really?" he asks dryly.
"I mean, you love me," She says dismissively, gesturing down to her body pointedly, "Just look at me. You've loved me for years. I mean, you love yourself more, but of course you love me. And besides," she turns to face him, walking backwards as she slowly drawls out, "'you need me. I'm irreplaceable. You can't be you without me."
He scoffs good-naturedly but for a moment he holds her gaze with a studied look.
His hand is warm on her waist when he steers her into the diner.
Right as she sits down, he leans in and whispers, "I had to quit smoking again too."
She looks up, startled, but he's already sliding into the booth across from her, gesturing for the waitress to bring coffee.
She ends up eating both orders of home fries and he eats all her fruit salad. But the waffles get successfully split right down the center.
That's as good of an apology as either of them will ever get, and they both know it.
***
The night of her first day back Donna's sipping a glass of wine when her phone chimes.
"That night, did you mean what you said?"
For a moment, she tries to pretend she doesn't know what he's talking about.
She's sitting on the couch and she's only been home twenty minutes but the sweat is slick along the back of her neck.
She fiddles with the zipper of the dress she had been about to remove and tries not to think about that night.
But the problem is that she can all too easily remember it, drunkenly stumbling through the door of her apartment with his lips on her neck, one hand pulling the pins out of her hair and the other roughly wrapping strands of red between his fingers. They'd laughed together and she'd teased him as they'd both tripped on a pair of shoes she'd left haphazardly in the entryway, followed by wine glasses crashing to the floor when he pushed her against the counter, the darkness of his eyes at the sound of buttons popping off his shirt.
If she closes her eyes, she can probably still conjure up his teeth on her earlobe, his hand grazing her thigh, the vibration of his voice as he repeatedly mumbled her name.
His bewilderment when she finally pushed him away.
She tries to forget drunkenly telling him how badly she wanted him, how if things were different, maybe they could have had…something.
But in this case, she knew they could never go back. She could never go back.
They had sat in silence for an hour after that, his one hand gently cupped around her neck while the other drew lazy circles in her palm.
He brought her coffee and a croissant to work the next morning. She'd snipped that he'd used whole milk and forgotten the whipped cream and he'd responded by loudly telling Louis that she was looking for a ticket to see La Boheme at the Met. She threw a binderclip at him as he disappeared through his door and he'd winked in return.
The sheer normalcy of it all had meant everything was going to be okay. And it was, mostly.
There were fewer late nights and for a while, they virtually stopped discussing their personal lives. And in those first few weeks, eye contact was a battle. She hadn't been sure what she'd see in his face, and she wasn't sure what she'd show in hers. And it seemed like neither was willing to find out.
But they were both so committed to being Donna and Harvey that through sheer force of will, one day they really were just Donna and Harvey again. And every day after that, until the whole thing just seemed like an absurd memory.
It's been ten minutes and she's still staring at her phone thinking about his question. She's typed three variations of "fuck no" before she finally sends, "It was a long-time ago."
Her dress is off and on the floor when a mixture of curiosity and vanity gets the best of her, "Did you want me to?"
A moment later she resends the message, "Do you want me to?"
He doesn't respond but she knows him well enough to guess it's a little from column A, a little from column B.
She finishes her wine with a gulp, places the glass on the counter and just grabs the bottle instead.
When she wakes up the next morning there are two new messages from him, sent at 2am, and then at 3:30am.
"I bought us a new can opener. but I want the old one back. Bring it? "
and then,
"I still remember every second"
***
On her second day back at work she realizes it's finally the day the air conditioning repairman is scheduled to show. Donna could say she's learning to like the heat but honestly, it's hell on her hair.
She's on the phone trying to guilt her neighbor into helping when Harvey beckons her into his office. He nods at her and then informs Mike his assignment for the day is to sit in her apartment and wait.
Mike stares at the two in disbelief when Harvey gives the order. "Seriously? That's what you are going to use me for today? No offense Donna, but Harvey, c'mon. Just give Donna the day off."
Harvey shrugs at Mike, "Kid, I say, you do. No questions."
Mike slumps down, "God, Karate Kid again? That's the third time this month. You're getting old. It's not even fun anymore."
Harvey tilts his head, "Ya know, sometimes I wished people was like dogs, Luke."
"Done that one too," Mike interrupts, glancing over at Donna. "Cool Hand Luke," he explains.
"Um, hello? I know," she scoffs dismissively.
Harvey continues over them both, enunciating his words loudly, "And like dogs, they just did what they were told. So for that, Mike, you can even take some work with you." He looks over at Donna, gesturing with his arms open-wide. "I think that's a generous offer, isn't it? Very magnanimous of me."
She smirks, "Magnanimous? Oh definitely." Her face turns completely serious, "But I swear to god Michael Ross, if you touch even a single item in my apartment, I'll know it. You think I'm kidding, don't you? But I'm not. I'll know if you've opened doors, cabinets, or closets. I'll know if you've touched either my silverware or my pillows in an inappropriate way, so help me God. And my underwear drawer? You cannot even imagine the hell that will rain down on your testicles."
Mike grimaces, "What the hell, Donna? What do you think-"
"Mike, hush. Grown-ups are talking. Do. You. Understand. These. Instructions? And no beautiful-minding with the magnets on my fridge or anything else weird like that."
Mike shakes his head and gives a mock salute before hitching his messenger bag over his shoulder and heading out the door.
She peers at Harvey for a moment. He's staring back at her with an enigmatic half-smile.
"That was nice of you," she pronounces suspiciously.
"I think Mike would disagree," he leans back in his chair slightly.
"No, I meant for me."
He rolls his eyes and turns back to the work on his desk, "Yeah well, as I've said before, I really do worry about how you sleep at night."
Donna pivots on her heels and begins walking out the door, throwing a glance in his direction, "All these years and you still haven't learned that my night-time habits are none of your business?"
He looks up intently, "Maybe I want them to be."
They regard each other for a long moment while she remains framed in the doorway. She keeps waiting for him to look away, to smirk, or even offer her a wink.
He just stares back with that inscrutable expression.
Finally she cocks her head with a smile, "Maybe."
His gaze holds, warm and steady, "Maybe."
"Or," she raises her eyebrow, "Maybe you should be more concerned with your morning habits. There's a wrinkle in your dress shirt. Or wait, god Harvey, is that a coffee stain? What the hell happened to you while I was gone?"
He looks down, hands frantically running over the soft white fabric, "What? Fuck. Where it is?"
By the time he looks back up she's safely situated at her desk. He narrows his eyes at her with a shake of his head but a boyish grin is seeping out.
She shrugs her shoulders with a casual flip of her hair.
He shoots a rubber band at the window between their desks and gives her a quick wink.
But this time it feels like something.
Maybe.
***