Confessions of a Litigation God

I’m sorry for treating her like just a f**k toy.

I’m sorry for showing her care and tenderness, then pulling that away from her.

I’m sorry for being an ass and intentionally hurting her feelings.

I start to type a response, but I’ve never been a good texter and when you’re drunk, it makes it exponentially harder, especially when you’re trying to be quick.

So I go with direct and simple, typing Fot ebwryrhing, and then hit “Send”.

I wait for her response, and I get it.

?????

Why the question marks? Does she not understand my apology?

Then I see my texting skills truly do suck, and she has no clue what I just said. I quickly type back and hit “Send”, and only after the message flies off into the internet universe, do I realize it was no better.

For evwtthimf

Shit. I quickly text her again, Fuck, and hope she bears with me.

I try to slow down my fingers, and attempt one more time to apologize “For Everything”, but it just comes out as word salad again.

Fuck it.

I pull up my Contacts and hit Mac’s phone number. She answers on the second ring.

“Matt?”

“H-e-e-e-e-y Mac,” I drawl in what I hope is not too drunk of a voice. God, she sounds fantastic, and I never realized before just how much I love her voice until I had not heard it for a few days. “Didja get my text?”

“Are you drunk?” she asks with suspicion.

/> “Abso-fucking-lutely,” I tell her truthfully, because when you have as much alcohol in your system as I do, then you tend to say the truth. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice one of the dude’s darts flip end over end and thud against the dartboard, dropping to the floor. “You missed… drink, motherfucker. ”

The guy turns, gives me a sloppy grin, and everyone laughs. I’m so loving my new buds and grin happily back at them.

“I don’t have time for this shit,” Mac sneers, and my attention is jerked back to her. “Call me when you’re sober. ”

“Wait!” I practically yell, panicked, into the phone. “I need to tell you something. ”

“What?” she asks, and I’m not drunk enough to miss the annoyance in her voice. This so isn’t going how I had planned it.

Oh, who was I kidding. I hadn’t planned anything. “I just… it’s just… Aw, f**k. I just miss you, McKayla. ”

She’s quiet for a moment, and I wait anxiously for her to say something. When she does, it’s not what I wanted. “I’m hanging up, Matt. Don’t call back. ”

I turn on my barstool, putting my back to the noise of the rowdy dart game, and lower my voice to almost a whisper. “I lied, McKayla. ”

I hear someone in the background—Macy I assume—say “Hang up… you don’t need to listen to his bullshit. ”

I cringe, because Macy’s right and there’s no reason why Mac wouldn’t call “bullshit” on me.

Thankfully, she doesn’t hang up. “What did you lie about?”

I sigh in relief that she’s still listening to me. I hope she understands that I am laying the absolute truth out to her. “I didn’t use One Night Only again. I just couldn’t go through with it. ”

“Why not?” she whispers, with what I think is hope in her voice. Maybe she hasn’t given up on me completely.

“Because I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re all I want. ” That is the absolute f**king truth too, and it doesn’t hurt as much to admit it as I thought it would. But that still doesn’t mean I’m not scared… and I’m not drunk. I am, in fact, both of these things, so I clarify to her, “It’s why I left work at two o’clock today and hit a bar to get shitfaced. So I could drown you out of my mind… even if only briefly. You’re a blessing, Mac… but you’re also my curse. ”

Then I hang up, but not before I hear her gasp of dismay.

I hurt her again, and the only way to drown the guilt of that out is to continue drinking.

I repeat the same routine Saturday night, except I don’t go out and I don’t text or call Mac. I stay in my apartment and finish off the other half of the Macallan.

Chapter 23

It’s Sunday morning and just within the last forty minutes, I’ve gone from waking up on my bathroom floor with the taste of puke in my mouth to standing at Mac’s apartment door. Within that forty minutes, I showered, popped two Excedrin, brushed my teeth three times, and caught a cab to Mac’s place. Also within that forty minutes, I came up with what I wanted to say to her. It was going to be the most important closing argument of my career.

While this morning’s journey only took forty minutes, it actually took me a few days to come to the realization that this whole f**ked-up situation with Mac did not turn out the way I wanted. I bemoaned my fate for several days, some of which I spent drunk, before I finally got my head out of my ass and decided to take back control of my life.

When Mac walked out of my office five days ago, I was hurt and angry, just as I knew she was. But I was selfish, believing my hurt and anger was the only thing that was important.

By the time Saturday night rolled around, I really started thinking about risk and reward. I took stock of all the ways in which I have been happy and fulfilled since I’ve met Mac, and I really made myself consider whether this was something important enough for me to fight for.

It started to become very simple. I weighed how I was feeling at that very moment against how I was feeling when Mac and I were together. It sort of became a no brainer to me. That if my life is shitty right now, it’s really my own doing, because I clearly had someone that was making me happy.