Trial & Error ✓

29 | trial & error

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trial & error

—

A RUDE AWAKENING.

That was what I got when I woke up the next morning. As soon as I got home from quitting my job, I made sure Louisa was safe and sound — in all of my preoccupation the night of the party, forgot to take her with me when I left, but she thankfully called a cab — and I left Caleb some candy and an apologetic note in front of his door. After that, I had collapsed into a deep sleep in my living room with the television on, a strange romantic comedy movie playing softly in the background.

When I did wake up, I realized two things that made uneasiness settle in the pit of my stomach: it was night time and not the morning, and Kevin and Delaney were back and they had serious looks on their faces that I wasn't ready to deal with.

That was because they had found out everything that happened in the week while they were gone from Louisa who had a rather uninformed perspective of my personal story. In her words, I had brought some strange but handsome man over and slept with him (completely true, but not in the way she had explained it to them), took her to work with me (which was said in an almost accusatory way, as if I had made her help me with my work), broke Caleb's heart at a work party (he totally didn't think of me in that way, therefore no heart was broken but the heart of the Marilyn from a month ago who would've thrown herself on a sword because Caleb wasn't into her), and other reckless shenanigans that she seemed to have filled in the blanks for because I definitely hadn't.

Thankfully, despite how wise and brilliant teenagers were, Laney and Kevin understood that my side of the story was definitely the most true one. Or they were just ready to forgive me for whatever sins they were assuming I had committed because they missed me and had so much to tell me.

And very easily, I found out it was the latter option. They quickly roused me from whatever hold my sleepiness still had over me so I could be force-fed every detail from their New Jersey trip that I could possibly handle.

"Oh, we had the best time on Morey's Piers, walking hand in hand with each other and breathing in the summer air," Laney said as if she was fighting to hold that in.

"Marilyn, you should've seen the Cape May Lighthouse!" Kevin told me, his excitement beyond level ten and I really would've appreciated it if he could tone it down.

"Oh, and we got engaged too," she threw out their, trying to seem all cool and collected. She was one of my best and closest friends, I knew easily how much she was fighting against lifting up me up on my so we could grab each other's hands and squeal with excitement as we bounce around in a circle. Kevin used to think that was so annoying when we did it over things like getting a promotion or what new type of trendy ethnic food restaurant opened up across the street. But this was their engagement for Christ's sake, he could be a little annoyed now since they're going to annoy the hell out of each other once they're married.

So we did it, jumping and screaming over the good news, Kevin with his hands covering his ears in pain. And everything felt good in the world, even when it wasn't.

—

TEDDY HAD NOTICED.

As ignorant as he was about how I felt towards breaking up the Gates family, he could at least tell when a girl was sad which I guess was something. Over the past few days, I went to work at Burke & Associates as what I could call a glorified intern. I sat in counsel meetings with Teddy and his clients (who happened to be the ones connected to the Gates lawsuit that was set to be filed) for about five hours a day as I took notes for him, and in the afternoon, Teddy tried to teach me more about the legal system and grooming me for the day when I could go back to school and then join him at the firm as a junior partner.