PRETTY ON PINK

INDIA MASTERS
© 2008 India Masters, All Rights Reserved

Carli Shepard greeted her attorney with a watery smile. Obligatory pleasant greeting completed, he ushered her into the conference room where she took a seat across the table from her soon to be ex-husband, David. With a perfunctory nod, she settled into her chair for the final negotiations that would end their brief five-year marriage.

They’d met in college, both of them struggling to make ends meet while completing their senior year. Carli was clerking for Superior Court Judge, Allen Binder when David contracted with the county to set up a new computer network and design their web page. They’d hit if off immediately and before long were sharing his tiny one bedroom apartment in the east village.

She’d passed the bar her first time out and accepted a position with Collin, Wilkins, and Strand, specializing in entertainment law. She’d moved up quickly in the firm and expected to make partner any time. Of course, working toward partnership had meant sacrifices - long hours in negotiations, travel to the west coast, and parties with shallow, famous people who rarely remembered her name from one phone call to the next.

In the meantime, David’s career had taken off, too, and he soon opened his own networking and web design business. As his business expanded, he’d had to hire several new employees, including Amanda Price, a young, sexy graphic designer who specialized in animation and played around with designing video games. She was pretty, and blond; with a body that could stop traffic on any busy New York street.

She should have seen it coming, Carli told herself over and over again. The long hours she put in at the firm, the business trips, and David’s commitments to his career. Their sex life became predictable and hurried and eventually dwindled to an obligatory once a week just so they could say they did it. Was it any wonder he’d turned to Amanda Price with her blond hair and cheerleader’s body?

“Is Sunday all right with you?” David’s attorney asked her.

Carli looked up, embarrassed at being caught woolgathering. “I’m sorry. My mind was elsewhere, what was that?”

David looked at his attorney and rolled his eyes, as if to say her behavior was typical. Which, if she were to be honest, it was. (more…)