Not to toot my own horn, but I’m excellent at decision making. I don’t have to sit around and debate pros and cons of something before deciding on what to do. I’m able to look at a situation and quickly determine what the best solution is for me and then carry it out.

Which leads me today and the big decision I made this morning. After Laina blew me off on the phone last night, which I’m going to blame on the fact that I’m pretty sure she was PMSing, I was forced to sit at home by myself and think about my fight with Janice. Too much thinking was giving me a headache so I ended up taking a couple aspirin and calling it a night around ten.

But when I woke up this morning it was suddenly blaringly obvious that I had two options with my relationship with Janice. Either I could continue it or end it. And it only took a couple minutes to come to my decision.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that things aren’t perfect between us. Her clinging is starting to get on my nerves and it seems to only be getting worse with time. She tries to be interested in my life but when I really think about it, we don’t have that much in common. Our tastes in music are different, we hang out with different types of people, and our personality styles are completely opposite in a lot of ways. Not to mention the fact that a lot of my friends don’t like her.

Besides, I see no future with her. And I’m too old to just be fooling around all the time. I’m past that shit.

The bell above the door of the coffee shop rings as the door opens and I look up from my cup of coffee to see Janice enter. She looks put together but once she sits down across from me, her bloodshot eyes give her away. I guess she didn’t sleep quite as good as I did last night.

“Hey,” I say, sitting up a bit straighter. “What do you want to drink?”

“Nothing,” she replies. She falls silent and stares at me and…oh man, she has that look to her that she’s expecting me to apologize or something. She’s either in complete denial about the state of our relationship or more oblivious than I thought.

I take a sip of my cooling coffee and then set it back on the table. “So,” I start and clear my throat. “We need to talk.”

“Are you going to be a complete ass to me again?” she asks, folding her arms over her chest.

I don’t deny it or get upset at her words because the fact of the matter is that I was an ass to her yesterday. It was to prove a point to myself but I was still an asshole. “No, I’m not.” I drum my fingers on the table for a brief moment, trying to find the right way to say this. Finally I decide to just got with the most direct way as possible. “Janice, I need to be single.”

The look on her face tells me that it’s not what she’s expecting to hear. She stares at me for a minute with no expression in her eyes before answering with a quiet, “What?”

“I want to be single.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to date you anymore.”

She begins to smile a bit as if she thinks I’m joking but a serious look quickly replaces it. “Is this about last night?”

“It’s not just last night. It’s every night. It’s every night and every day and every moment.” A hurt look is starting to come over her face and I quickly go on. “Stuff isn’t horrible with you, Janice, but it’s not right. We’re not right for each other. You can see that as much as I can.”

“Relationships take work,” she responds but there’s not much conviction in her voice. “You can’t just give up whenever things aren’t perfect.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” I sigh and bring up a hand to rub my temples. “Look, I had fun with you and you’re a great person but we aren’t right for each other at all. It’s going no where and I just want it to end before it gets really messy. I just want to be single.”

Even as I finish that little speech, I’m saying a silent prayer that she’ll be a grownup about this whole thing and just accept what I’m saying. I want to end this as civilly as possible. The last thing I need is breakup drama in my life.

Janice is quiet for a really long time and I just want to end this and leave but I’m smart enough to know that pushing words out of her is a bad idea. So I simply sit there and try not to feel too bad about the tears I can see welling up in her eyes. Janice is an emotional person in general and I’ve seen her cry plenty of times before. I can’t let myself feel horrible about her crying now and break my resolve. I can think of five different people who would kick my ass if I did.

After a good three minutes of silence, she finally raises her eyes to meet mine and speaks, her voice quiet. “Do you want to be single, Justin, or do you want to be with Laina again?”

Her question shocks me a bit because it was the last thing I expected to come from her mouth. I had prepared myself for her to bitch at me or simply try and make me feel bad. I hadn’t prepared myself for her to call me on something that I had been pushing back in my mind for a while now.

“Pardon?” I ask with a little laugh to mask my surprise to her blunt question.

“Can you honestly say that if Laina didn’t break up with Wes tomorrow and want to get back together with you that you wouldn’t do it? Even though you ‘want to be single’?”

I take a sip of my coffee to buy a bit of time to answer this question. Her eyes are drilling into me and I can’t put off answering for too long. “That’s ridiculous, Janice.”

My answer doesn’t seem to satisfy her the least bit and she abruptly pushes back her chair and grabs her purse. I quickly stand up as well.

“Don’t just leave if you’re mad. I don’t want to end this on a bad note.”

She gives me a frustrated look. “Justin, do you really expect me to just sit here and listen to you bullshit your way around everything? I’m pissed off and hurt and I can’t be around you right now.”

I back off, knowing that pushing her is only going to cause a fight. She can chill off and then we can either have a civil conversation about everything or just let bygones be bygones. “Fair enough.”

She fumbles through her purse for a minute before pulling out her car keys. “I have stuff at your house I need to get.”

“Did you want to come get it now or…”

She quickly shakes her head. “No. I’ll get it later.”

“Okay well just give me a call when you want to come over and get it.”

She gives a short nod and then turns on her heel and leaves the coffee shop. Once she’s gone, I sit back down and let out a large breath of air. I can’t help but feel bad that she’s upset but at the same time, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest. That has to be a good sign.

I only sit in the coffee shop for another couple minutes before tossing my half empty cup in the garbage and leaving. As I’m pulling my car out onto the street to drive home, I dial Trace’s number. There’s a ritual that happens when one of us breaks up with a girlfriend and I know he’s been dying for the moment when Janice and I broke up to do it.

Trace picks up and barely has a ‘hello’ out of his mouth before I cut him off, a smile forming over my lips as I speak.

“Dude, we’re going to get drunk tonight.”

* * *

Mornings after I go out with Trace are usually particularly brutal. My head feels like it’s about to burst open and my eyes feel glued shut. The worst taste in the world is in my mouth and all I want to do is go to the bathroom and rinse my mouth out but I’m pretty sure that any movement is just going to result in my throwing up.

I’m sure that given a few more hours of unconsciousness in bed would make me feel a hundred times better but I’m not granted that luxury today. After only being awake for ten minutes, I can hear Trace’s voice and Bella barking. I hate that he never gets hungover regardless of how much he drinks. Of course I think I hate him a bit more for the fact that he’s getting my dog riled up after a night of drinking.

I’d so much rather just stay in bed but with all the noise coming from downstairs, it’s better to just get up and go see if I can get them to both shut up at least until I get some aspirin into my system.

I need to never drink ever again. Going to a strip club and getting shit faced seemed like a great way to celebrate a break up. But whatever Trace was giving me knocked me out completely. This is going to be a long ass day.

“Shut the hell up,” I mumble when I stumble into the kitchen where Trace and Bella are. Bella immediately runs over to me but I push her away before she can jump up on me. I can’t deal with an overeager dog right now.

“It’s almost noon,” Trace comments as though I should have been up at the crack of dawn after being out until three in the morning.

“Thanks for the update,” I reply, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. The sunlight coming in through the windows in the kitchen is only intensifying my headache and I open the bottle of aspirin sitting on the counter. After swallowing more pills than I probably should, I take a couple more large swigs of water and then drop into a chair at the table. “I’m never doing something like last night again.”

Trace laughs and I’m finding it harder and harder to appreciate his presence. “You sure seemed to be having a good time last night.”

“That’s because I was drunk off my ass,” I reply, dropping my head down. I run my hands over the top of my hair a few times and wrinkle my nose at the smell of alcohol and stale cigarettes radiating off me. I need to seriously shower. “I don’t remember anything that happened after about half an hour there.”

Trace is silent for a minute and when I look up to see what his problem is, I find him staring at me. “You don’t remember anything?” he questions.

A bad feeling goes through me. Great. What stupid shit did I pull last night? “Why?”

“You called Laina.”

The bad feeling intensifies. “What?”

He shrugs. “Around one I left to go to the bathroom and when I came back you were on the phone leaving a message on her answering machine.”

My head drops again. “Shit. What did I say?”

“I just caught the end of it. Something about how you still loved her.”

My head jerks up at his words and pain immediately courses through my head, making me stop for a second before I ask, “Why the hell didn’t you stop me?”

Trace looks amused and it’s making me want to punch him in the face. “I did. I took your phone away. I didn’t realize you were going to start drunk dialing the minute I wasn’t there.”

Letting out a stream of mumbled curses, I drop my head into my hands. I can’t believe I called Laina last night while I was drunk. I can’t believe I told her I still loved her. Not because that’s unnecessarily untrue, but it wasn’t exactly something I wanted to throw out there.

“Hey, man, it could have been worse,” Trace says. “You could have called Janice and tried to reconcile things.”

I shake my head. “I would hope that even with all the alcohol in the world I wouldn’t try to reconcile things with her.”

“You and me both.”

I lift my head so I can take another drink of water. “I wonder if I should call Laina and find out what I said on that message.”

“I think you should go over there before you call her. If you said something to piss her off she’s probably not going to answer your call.”

He’s right. “Think she’s home today?”

“It’s Saturday so she should be. You probably shouldn’t going over looking like that though. You look like shit.”

He’s pointing out the obvious at this point. “Yeah I know,” I say, pushing back my chair to stand. I give Trace instructions to walk Bella, not that I think he’ll actually do it, and then trudge back upstairs. I still feel like crap but after an incredibly long and incredibly hot shower, I feel halfway human again. Human enough to go over to Laina’s and grovel if necessary. Maybe I’ll luck out and her answering machine malfunctioned. Or maybe she hasn’t even heard it yet and I’ll be able to delete it before she does. I have no idea of the extent of what I said but I do know that it couldn’t have been anything that’s not going to make things completely awkward.

I can’t help but shake my head when I’m able to walk right into her apartment building. As if this place wasn’t unsafe enough, now the lock on the front door is broken and anyone can walk right in. If I didn’t think that she’d kick my ass, I’d give her money for a hotel room until at least the lock is fixed. She could at least just stay with Wes. He’s got to live in a safer neighborhood than this.

I try and steer clear of touching the staircase railing on my way up the stairs to the third floor of the building. I’m not a complete germaphobe but I can almost see the germs and bacteria crawling all over this place. You could probably catch syphilis from touching the wall.

I have to build up a bit of courage before knocking on Laina’s door. I can hope all I want that she didn’t hear whatever message I left last night but the fact of the matter is that she probably did. I’m just hoping that she can take it as me being drunk and going off on something that I shouldn’t have.

The door swings open soon after I knock on it and all hopes that Laina didn’t hear the message fly out the window when I see her angry face.

“Hey, just listen to me for a second,” I say, stopping her from shutting the door by sticking my foot in her apartment.

She lets go of the door and folds her arms over her chest. “I’m really pissed off at you right now, Justin. Are you sure you want to say another word to me?”

I manage to push my way into her apartment and shut the door behind me. “Look last night I was really drunk and apparently I phoned you and said some stupid stuff.”

“Some stupid stuff?” she asks in a loud voice. “You said that we never should have broken up and you’re still in love with me!”

I cringe a bit but shrug. “Okay so I said some stupid stuff,” I repeat. “But let’s just chalk it off to the fact that I was drunk. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It was a big deal!” she yells and I stumble back a bit when she plants both hands on my chest and gives me a shove. “Wes was here and he heard it!”

Okay so this is worse than I thought. “Lainey, I’m sorry,” I try, but I’m only met with another shove. This time my back hits the door behind me.

“No, you don’t get to just say you’re sorry and think that’ll fix everything! What the hell were you thinking calling me and saying those things!”

I shrug helplessly and say my next words carefully. I’m not putting it past Laina to punch me in the face. “I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Is it your goal to cause trouble between Wes and I?” she asks angrily, jabbing her finger into my chest. It hurts but I don’t make any move to push her hand away. I kind of deserve some abuse. “We finally have a night where I get him away from work and everything is going great and then you call and spout off this whole thing about you wanting me back and how I should dump Wes!”

“Okay but he shouldn’t get mad at you about that,” I say. “You don’t control what I do.”

“But you constantly force me to be the one to explain your idiotic behavior. You can’t do shit like this, Justin! You can’t just expect everyone to just look past you doing all these stupid things!”

“Okay so what should I do?” I ask, hoping there is something I can say that will make her less mad at me. “Should I call Wes?”

“No! Don’t be a complete moron. You are the last person he wants to hear from right now.” She gives me a look that makes me think she’s going to hit or shove me again but then she backs away and stalks a few feet away. “What about Janice?” she asks, abruptly spinning around to face me.

I rub my chest where she had been poking me. I’ll probably have a bruise. “I broke up with her yesterday.”

“And I guess that just means now that you’re single you can just go after any person you like, huh? And I just happened to be the first number you called?”

I don’t want to cause more drama and tell her that there may be some truth behind what I said so I force myself to nod apologetically. “I’m sorry. What can I do to make this better?”

She stares at me for a long moment before speaking, her voice quiet. “You can go away.”

My eyebrows draw together. “Away?”

“Just leave. Let me get things right with Wes again. I’ll call you when that happens. Until then just leave me alone, alright?”

I hate that she’s asking me to do this but I have to respect it. “Okay.” I continue standing there until she gives me a pointed look and gestures to her door. With reluctance, I open the door. I offer one more apology over my shoulder before leaving her apartment, shutting the door behind me. The entire way back to my car all I can do is pray that I haven’t just ruined everything with one drunk phone call.