Page 124 of Perfect Mess

I bunched my eyebrows together. “I’ve heard of loud quitting.”

“Quiet quitting is when you just check out, mentally and emotionally, but you don’t tell anybody.” Ralph resumed reading his magazine.

“Ralph.”

“I’m actually doing it right now.” He never looked up from his magazine.

“Fine. What do you want me to say?”

Ralph wiped a dab of whipped cream off his upper lip. “What else is there to say?” He had a point.

I looked down at the steam rising out of my cup, wishing I could assume some sort of vapor form and drift away into nothingness. I took a slurp despite the heat, scalding my tongue. Perhaps a little taste of hell. A preview for the eternal torment I would most likely and deservedly be banished to.

The micro dose of caffeine did nothing to clear the fog. I had spent the entire night pacing and crying and impotently trying to make phone calls. Janet and Gary must have blocked me. Every call and text I made disappeared into the abyss. Maybe Jack hightailed it back to Cancun for another medical seminar. Even I had to admit that sitting in a conference room listening to lectures about vaginal diseases sounded like a pretty good alternative to facing the reality of what I had done.

The only person who would talk to me was Ralph. He agreed to let me buy him a coffee in exchange for hearing me out. Although apparently hearing me out did not include any return conversation, or pretending that I still existed. While he knew about the plan to break up Janet and Jack, which he agreed with, by the way, he didn’t know my ulterior motive was to steal Jack for myself. So while he was a willing accomplice for half of the plan, he was mad at me for using him for the other half, just like I used everyone else.

“I messed up, okay. Bad. Real bad. I’m sorry. If I could take it all back or change it, I would, but I can’t.” I didn’t bother wiping away the tears from my cheeks.

Ralph took a sip of his latte, then kept reading.

“Please Ralph. I need you to help me figure out how to fix it. Did you talk to Janet?” In the rare circumstances in the past, when Janet and I would get into a fight, a bad one, she always went running to him first.

Finally, Ralph’s eyes flashed over the top of his magazine. He had on his lawyer's face. Like I was a witness on the stand under interrogation, and he was just waiting for me to confess my guilt. “We were on the phone last night for over three hours. I lost a lot of sleep. You know how I need my rest.” Ralph was the kind of person who needed a solid eight hours or he would turn into the Grinch.

Ralph pointed a finger at me. “Here we were thinking Jack was the bad guy in all this. That he was going to be the one to hurt her. But it was you. Janet said that Jack said thatyouwere the one who kissedhim. He told her it was allyourfault.”

That night at the book store, everything that happened was still a bit of a blur. Between the jalapeño lagers and the emotional roller coaster ride, I still wasn’t sure exactly what happened or how it happened.Did I lean in to kiss Jack first? Or did he kiss me?I figured it didn’t matter who started it. I was the one who put all the pieces in place for it to happen.

Ralph shook his head. “I can’t believe you would do that, Mary. Was it really all your fault?”

The lump in my stomach worked its way up into my throat. I took a deep breath and nodded. “It was my fault. Everything was my fault. You’re right, Ralph, he’s not the bad guy. I am.”

If Ralph got any satisfaction from my admission, it didn’t show. If anything, he looked even angrier. I suppose it would have been easier for him if it were Jack’s fault. But it wasn’t Jack’s fault. It was mine.

“Well, Janet must have believed Jack because they’re still together, I guess.” Ralph buried his face back in the magazine, letting me suffer in silence some more. “Despite your best efforts.”

When I was a teenager, for a while my dad thought it was a good idea for me to go to church. So we went, religiously, for almost six months. One time, I even went to confession. Baring my soul in the little wooden booth. I remember sitting there, wearing my saddest, most pathetic, most repentant face. Just in case Father Tom could see me through the little cross shaped holes in the partition.

When he peered over the top edge of his magazine again, I put on that same face for Ralph. It must have worked, because his frown relaxed ever so slightly. “Look Mary, you and Janet have been best friends for too long to let something like this ruin everything. Even if you were a completely terrible friend.”

I kept my eyes glued to my coffee, still making my “choir girl face.” He was right, of course. I was horrible. I was awful. Terrible. Deplorable. And more. But Janet and I had been through tough times in the past too. Some day, when she let me, I would get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness. I would do anything and everything I had to do to win back her trust. Our friendship had endured over thirty years, and one minor, okay, major, mistake wouldn’t ruin everything.Right?

I peeked up from my coffee, bottom lip drooping. “You really think?”

Ralph plopped the magazine down in his lap. “Look, just give Janet time. She’ll come around when she’s ready.” Ralph’s lips twisted into something that was almost a partial version of a smile. “Maybe, when I talk to her next time, I’ll even vouch for how pathetic you looked when you admitted what a terrible friend you were.”

“You will?”

Ralph nodded. But although his words made me feel a little better, my stomach was still doing back flips. The undeniable feeling in my gut that something was still horribly wrong hadn’t gone away. Like the world was about to spin off of its axis and spiral off into a black hole.

That’s when it hit me. Janet wasn’t the one I was really worried about. Before I knew what I was doing, my mouth said, “And what about Gary? Will you also talk to him?”

Ralph’s frown returned. “What about Gary? And what in the world could I, or anyone else, possibly say to him?”

I knew I was pushing my luck, but I went for it, anyway. “Maybe you could ask Karen to ask him to call me?”

Ralph’s eyes narrowed, and his frown returned. “Are you serious right now? Don’t you think you’ve tortured the poor guy enough?”

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