Three
Shane
Same day
What the hell is wrong with me?
A gorgeous, genius, poised, graceful, and funny woman actually shows an interest in me and I blow her off?
I seriously need my head examined. Then cross-examined. Then I need someone to whack me upside the head with a bat or something.
Seriously, how the fuck did I get in this position?
A good portion of my time has been spent thinking my life could've different if only my ex-wife Miranda had continued to stay on the sober path. False promises to cure her disease or at least ease the pain.
I had a rewarding job, great friends, and a solid family base, but it was never enough to keep her on the straight and narrow instead of at the bottom of the bottle.
The fact that I still let these thoughts consume me is problematic itself.
I swore to myself that I would move on after trying so hard to make my marriage work, but I ended up making my life a short term mess. I took advantage of the frivolousness that some of my actor clients partook in and lived the bachelor high life for a little while, until solitude became preferable. I found myself hiding in my office more often than not to avoid the crazy parties and flirtation attempts by any of the young interns, paralegals, and even some of our clients whenever I actually ventured out from behind my lawyer lair.
The one relationship I tried to have with a fellow lawyer from another firm that I met at a required gala was squashed a few months later when she took a transfer to a firm in Los Angeles. Sure, I could've transferred to our Los Angeles office as well, but I didn't feel about her the way one should to follow someone across the country.
To make matters even worse, any woman who claimed to know me through a friend of a friend that I felt guilty enough to ask out usually expected a five star restaurant first date or an invite to some celebrity's party based on my status and net worth. Like I told Melanie, women think they can handle my life until I leave the date for a work emergency or take her to a place that doesn't need a reservation six months in advance.
All that logic and reason of my past has completely gone out the window.
Today, should have never happened. I should not have gotten that close to her whatsoever in any case. I work closely with plenty of our female staff at the firm, but my dick had different reactions to Melanie Cromwell.
I was in on the vetting process when we hired her two years ago, but I immediately told the partners I was fine with the junior staffers I had and to pass her off to my colleagues. We tape all of our interviews and when I continued to watch her tape after the initial interview, a part of me I closed off opened without my permission.
She was eloquent, slightly sarcastic, tough, and yet appreciative of the opportunities arising in front of her. Her recommendations from her professors for her attention to detail was no doubt one of the reasons for her to be added to our firm.
But for the life of me, my imagination was running wild.
All I could think about was grabbing a fist full of her golden hair and ravaging her neck with my lips to the point where she begged me to lavish the rest of her body. I'd happily oblige any inch of that creamy, delicious, tantalizing skin with my own body on top of hers.
This could be some serious trouble from now on knowing that her attraction matches my own.
What the hell am I supposed to do going forward?
I leave work with a renewed sense of purpose to help Melanie through her career. Toss more projects her way. Maybe if I keep her busy enough, my mind and body won't be so constantly focused on that tight ass that's constantly hugged in skirts and dresses.
That woman has absolutely no clue of the affect she has on people. Where most newbies get ignored, she emanates both academic intellect and common sense.
I take the elevator down from the intensity of the day. The polluted New York City scent hits my nose making my stomach churn. I know its really not the smell that's doing it, but I need an excuse for the moment before I try to get my own feelings in order. What a fucking emotional clusterfuck in such a short amount of time. I barely even hear my driver call my name, but I quickly reply he has the night off and I'm just going to walk home.
It's gonna be a damn long walk, but I need it.
The more I walk, the more pissed off I get at myself and the situation. I'm so much more messed up still than I thought I was. I guess I need to do some kind of life reflection to see where I went wrong and how I can move forward.
When I met Miranda, I was still a second year law student and she was from an affluent family here in New York City. There was no case of rags to riches for us, her family approved of me from the get-go. When I graduated law school and passed the bar, I proposed. Everything was going great for a few years until I wanted to start a family and she kept making excuses. I was so blinded by having this amazing woman by my side and a great career that I didn't notice the little things.
The first red flag was how she managed to finish off a minimum of one bottle of wine a day. The second was whenever she'd make a beeline for the bar at every event we went to with her family. She said it was just how she was raised at these events and it was second nature to her. I made excuse after excuse for her when she would do nothing but whine and complain about how bored she was with her life and how I was never home.
When she first told me she was pregnant, I was elated. I was so ready to be a father and I had a great role model with my own. The biggest red flag I saw was that the drinking didn't stop. She'd claim that the doctor said one is fine with dinner every so often. It ended up being only "one" that I could see. During her second trimester, Miranda miscarried. The doctor's took her blood for some testing only to come back with the results that her blood alcohol levels were almost triple the legal limit. She was extremely lucky we had a car service or else I probably would have started to yell at her for drinking and potentially driving.
I felt a small wall start to build towards Miranda when she was upset for one day about the miscarriage. I get everyone grieves differently, but a part of me was hoping this would be a wake up call for her. If anything, the drinking got worse. After a few months of switching between begging and tough love for her to give up the drinking, I finally got her parents involved.
She made the promises that I now know were empty and everything was fine for a while. When we found out that we were pregnant once again, which came as a shock to me because I had put that dream on the back burner to focus on Miranda.
Another turn through Central Park has me watching all of the families and another memory hits. No sooner did we find out that she was pregnant did she start to change again. She was focusing entirely on the baby, but something was off. She was almost too excited.
We had made it long enough to find out the sex of the baby and started to decorate the nursery. I ended up having to go on a weeklong business trip to Los Angeles to shadow a partner and when I got back, I found up to fifteen bottles of wine in our recycling bin.
At first, I thought maybe she had poured everything out. But when I found her slurring and stumbling in the nursery screaming she couldn't be a mother, she turned on me and lost it. She had drunk so much that week and started yelling at me that I pressured her too much to have a baby and she had another miscarriage.
She never called me so I got angry that she left me out of the loop. We got into this huge screaming match and she ended up going to her parents penthouse for the night.
The next day, she came back, and said her parents convinced her to go to a rehab facility in the Hamptons. I was glad she was making a change, but yet another wall had gone up.
When the three month stay was up, we had barely spoken. We had done a little marriage counseling and what we came down to was that she didn't want the responsibility of being a mother. She had wanted to appease my family and me by saying she did because she was at the age when everyone expected her to marry when I met her. There was no chance I could stay in a marriage that was essentially built on a lie. Wrap in everything else that had happened and my walls had been set.
I can't let Melanie in my head. I can't allow to be played again.