I told myself that I'd stopped thinking of you...

[tenebrarius]

Wherever Adam Parrish went, no matter where his ambition took him or how hard he fought to get what he wanted, everyone he met seemed to immediately know that he was poor. Even now that he had his law degree and a position as a junior member of a law firm, in his second-hand suit with the stain on the elbow, clients and coworkers alike treated him like he was a second-class citizen.

Adam kept his head down and worked hard, pulling twice the hours of anyone else on the staff. Whenever the rest of them went out to two-hour lunches and came back smashed and laughing, Adam stayed, and worked, and excelled, and they still only ever gave him the cases that no one else wanted. He'd been a "junior" member for two years longer than any of the other junior attorneys, with their shining smiles and their complete lack of student debt. But he still had a job, and every day he was grateful to be out of Henrietta and away from the hell of his childhood. It was fine. It was his life, and one day, somehow, somehow, he would finally belong in it.

Or, at least, that was what he told himself, until the day that the Ganseys walked in through the doors of the law firm. The whole family, golden and laughing, with their impossibly easy companionship, and Adam almost didn't recognize them until he heard Gansey laugh.

Making a sharp right turn down a side hallway before they could see him, Adam ducked into the men's bathroom. It was the only place with proper walls in the gleaming glass and chrome office. The only place he could hide.

They were probably here on something mundane and glorious, seeking new legal representation--or had Adam always been working for their lawyers and he'd been so oblivious that he'd simply never seen their name on the list of clients on retainer?--to fix a minor legal loophole keeping them from some new golf course.

Adam's head spun, remembering and regretting everything about his friendship with Gansey, all the fights, and the last one most of all. He wished he could take back everything he'd said.

But he couldn't, and it wouldn't matter. Gansey's life was no doubt better without him in it. He was probably married by now. Maybe he'd even married Blue.

Adam had just resigned himself, yet again, to the fact that he was out of Gansey's life forever, when Richard Gansey III walked through the bathroom door. Caught standing in plain sight by the sinks, Adam froze, staring at Gansey and praying that his old friend wouldn't recognize him.