building was likely full of lawyers who had once had enough gumption to go to law school but whose energetic wagon must have lost a wheel along the way, leaving them stranded in this hellhole of poor people justly or unjustly charged with a wide array of unsavory crimes. I should have known the day that Artemis first assaulted me at Whole Foods that any friendship with her would likely end in this particular disaster—me sitting heartbroken in the parking lot of the Travis County Public Defender’s Office.
“Venus,” I said aloud, “please, please, please help me.” And then I climbed out of the car and went inside.
The receptionist smiled at me and seemed really friendly and competent. “Your attorney, Sam Johnson, is great,” she said.
“He is?” I asked nervously.
“The best,” she gushed. “And he’s a super nice guy. Very caring.” She nattered on as she walked me to a small, windowless room. “If you wait here he’ll be right with you,” she said. I’d remembered to bring in “A Confederacy of Dunces” and was happy for the distraction. I was actually chuckling at Ignatius’s antics with the weenie wagon when the door opened. I looked up. With his tattoo covered by a tailored blue suit and his arms full of file folders, it took me a split second to recognize the man in the doorway. Texas!
I felt out of my body, or as if I’d drifted into another, stranger reality.
“Vet Girl,” Texas said.
“Texas.” Not very witty dialogue on either of our parts, but I think we could both be excused due to the bombshell of a situation. “What are you doing here?”
“I… I guess I’m your attorney.” He sat down across from me. I was used to listening to FAIL BETTER!’s album, used to seeing Texas gazing down at me from the giant FAIL BETTER! poster at Waterloo Video. But having him so close to me again made it hard for me to breathe. “I have to apologize.” He paused as if deciding what tack to take. I held my breath, eager to hear what excuse he could possibly give for ghosting me. “Usually I review cases on my own before I meet with a client. But I had a stack of four land on my desk this morning and I haven’t had time. I was going to—”
Disaster! Not only had I been assigned a completely shit attorney, but he was a completely shit attorney who was distractingly good-looking in a suit and who wouldn’t even acknowledge he’d blown me off after our sort-of date.
“Why didn’t you text me?”
He looked honestly surprised. “I texted you three times. And then you texted me back saying, ‘Stop texting me.’ ”
“WHAT????”
Texas pulled out his phone, scrolled through his messages, and then held the phone out to me. Sure enough, there were three texts from him.
The first text said:
I HAD A GREAT TIME LAST NIGHT. I APOLOGIZE AGAIN FOR HAVING TO LEAVE SO ABRUPTLY. MY FRIEND IS GOING TO BE OKAY.
The second said:
WOULD YOU WANT TO GET TOGETHER AGAIN SOMETIME THIS WEEK?
The last one, which really broke my heart with the thought of what might have been, read:
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY. WANT TO GO TO ZILKER PARK?
And then finally a response:
VET GIRL: STOP TEXTING ME.
“Oh my Goddess! I never sent that.” I thought hard. Had I sent it drunk? Could someone have gotten ahold of my phone? “I didn’t send it!” I felt my voice rising. Then I had an idea. I looked at the number the text had come from. “That’s not my number,” I said, relieved. “My number is 512-555-8792. That’s 8793.” The realization soaked into me slowly. “Which means I accidentally put my number into your phone wrong.”
“Oh, shit,” Texas said. “My feelings were really hurt.”
“Mine too!”
We sat there for a moment as all this sunk in. Finally, Texas broke the silence.
“Let me see,” he said, opening a file folder with my name on it. He scanned the documents inside while I sat there silently, boiling with relief that I hadn’t been ghosted again and discomfort that my former crush was now my public defender. “Um… I think… Can you hang on just one moment?”
“I don’t know what else I would do,” I said, but I was concerned that Texas was more flustered than I was, given I was the one facing possible jail time.
He stood, picked up the folders, and hurried out of the room, closing the door behind him. I sat and sat and sat in the stuffy room, waiting