All fucking day.
Shaking my head, I focus back on my computer monitor. With a sigh, I poise my fingers to type but my cell phone rings, interrupting my one true effort at doing some actual work.
It’s Cal calling. For a moment I consider not answering, because he’ll know something’s wrong. He’ll dig and push at me until I spill my guts, and then I can sit on the phone and just imagine all the ways that he pities me. But it could be something important about our new firm, so I answer and try to sound as joyful as I can.
“If this about you wanting to lease that high-tech, super-duper copier, you can forget it. I won’t change my mind,” I joke with him as soon as I connect the call.
“You are not going to fucking believe this,” he practically shouts into the phone with excitement.
“What?” I ask, thinking he just landed a multi-million dollar case to add to our pathetically small caseload of one.
“Matt just left my office.”
“As in he had some type of meeting set over at your firm?”
“No, as in he showed up here at my firm and asked to see me… to talk to me.”
“About what?” I ask.
“He wanted to talk to me about the night that… well, you know… the night Marissa and me…”
Cal’s voice trails off in embarrassment, and my heartstrings start playing a sad tune for him.
“What did he say?” I ask, completely blown away that Matt would even approach Cal for something personal, much less give him an opportunity to talk about what happened.
“He told me straight up that you had told him some of the details, and that you had urged him to learn the entire truth and see if he had it in his heart to forgive me.”
“Matt said all of that?”
“Word for word.”
Oh my gosh. I can’t believe Matt actually did that.
“So tell me everything that happened. Spare me no detail,” I urge him.
Cal proceeds to lay out the entire story. He says Matt listened without any comment and no snide remarks as Cal embarrassingly recounted what happened that night. Cal says he didn’t pull any punches with Matt, including telling him that he was drunk and that contributed to what happened, but it was no excuse and all the fault lay with him. He made sure Matt understood that he didn’t “finish the job,” but that he knew that didn’t make it any better. Cal finished off by telling Matt that he could never begin to tell him how sorry he was, and although he really doesn’t deserve it, he would do just about anything to get Matt’s forgiveness.
“Then what happened?” I asked with bated breath. This was better than any Hallmark or Lifetime movie.
“Matt simply told me that he forgave me. He said that he had been doing a lot of soul searching, and he felt that he was not the man he had the potential to be if he was carrying around all of that bitterness. He also said he forgave Marissa, although that would be another conversation he’d have to have with her.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper, my heart swelling with joy that Matt opened himself up to forgiveness. “I just can’t believe it. How do you feel?”
“I feel light, Mac. I feel fucking light. The weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I know Matt will still never be anything more to me than a professional acquaintance. The loss of his friendship will be the cross I’ll always bear. But knowing that he’s telling me to let it go… that means the fucking world.”
Tears well up in my eyes because I’m so happy for Cal and so very damn proud of Matt. I wish he were here right this very moment, so I could give him a huge hug.
“So, there was one other thing,” Cal says, interrupting my very own Hallmark moment. “Remember when I said I told Matt I’d do just about anything to get his forgiveness?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he already called that chip in.”
Dread wells up inside of me. “What does he want you to do?”