I’m struggling when I get off the elevator, trying to hold my coffee, hitching up my briefcase over my shoulder, and tottering in four-inch heels and a skirt that doesn’t do more than let me shimmy around. Add on to that the fact I haven’t gotten any sleep this week, and I’m in a poor to piss-poor mood.
If you’re counting, that means I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in exactly six days. Not since I told Matt that this was over, and he implied that he was heading back to One Night Only.
Bea watches me walk in, her face grim and full of doom. My stomach drops. “What is he?”
“I’d say about a fifteen?”
“A fifteen?” I ask in shock.
“Yup. It’s bad.”
Turning to look back longingly at the elevator, I briefly consider just heading home and having a sick day. I can’t take another day like this. I wonder if Matt’s bad mood is because he’s not getting his regular sex fix from me, but then I shake that thought away. He’s getting it… just not from me, so that can’t be the reason.
You see, each day Bea and I have taken to a ranking system to judge Matt’s mood. It’s becoming increasingly fouler every day. It’s a simple one-to-ten scale, and he had topped out at a ten yesterday when he yelled at a secretary, causing her to run from the office in tears with Miss Anders hot on her heels, trying to comfort her.
But today… Bea says he’s a fifteen, and that is probably bordering on a nuclear explosion.
My plan? Keep my head down and stay buried in my office, only surfacing to make a mad dash to the bathroom to pee. But if I don’t drink any coffee or water, I can probably go all day without having to leave the sanctity of my office and risking a run in with Matt.
I’d like to tell you every day away from Matt is easier, but it’s not. I miss him, plain and simple. Yes, of course I miss the sex. Hello… have you read what we’ve done so far? But it is more than that. I miss his wit, his intellect, and his charm. When he’s operating at a fifteen though, it’s guaranteed I won’t be seeing that any time in the near future.
When I get to my office, I log on to my computer and check my email. My eyes go immediately to the one that is flagged in red from Matt. It says, “Jackson Case - Urgent - see me when you get in.”
That’s it… nothing else, no indication of what’s wrong. And now I have to go into the bear’s den when he’s at a fifteen. This is shaping up to be a spectacular day.
Matt grunts out a terse, “Come in,” when I knock on his door. For once, he’s not on the phone but sitting behind his desk, reading a file. When I sit down, he pushes the file aside, reaches across his desk to grab a thick document, and then hands it across to me.
At a glance, I can see it is the rough draft of the Answers to Interrogatories I prepared in the Jackson case for him to review. Seeing as how it was the first set I had ever done, I needed him to review them for legal accuracy. What stands out the most to me, is the red ink that spreads across the top sheet. Flipping briefly through the pages, I see more red ink… slashes and slashes of it, marking up my words, and mauling my legalese. It looks like Lizzie Borden got ahold of it… a freakin’ blood bath.
When I look up at Matt, his face is hard and his eyes icy. “I’m disappointed in you, McKayla. The draft you handed in to me was sub-standard at best. A first-year law student could have done better.”