It Was Only Just A Dream

And somewhere between the Wedding Crashers and Hil's return from her babysitting gig, I put my little wine-filled head down on a sofa pillow, made a note to vacuum the cat hair off of it the next day, and fell asleep. A troubled sleep filled with weird dreams about driving through a toll booth naked and being at a party and my teeth falling out the moment I go to speak.  Thankfully it didn't last long. I was awakened by the dinging sound my phone makes when I get a text.

Please be Craig please be Craig please be Craig.

No. And it isn't Hil saying she's on her way home, and it's not Pat saying he needs an allergy pill from the cabinet in the kitchen, and it is not Scott telling me that at last his ordeal as a tag along has finally ended.

It is Mac.

Rude, cheapskate, utterly without charm, Mac.

"Hi."

Seriously?  It's 10:44 on a Friday night a week after all his warts came out and he thinks "Hi," is going to win me over?  Flowers and an Elvis impersonator singing telegram would be a gesture more on scale but even then, I am so not interested in anything he might have to say. 

And then he writes that he's sorry he vanished the week before. Makes an excuse about work being so grueling.

I am sorry. Lots and lots of people carry on very successful social lives and very stressful and consuming careers.  There is no excuse for crappy behavior.  Don't make commitments you have no intention of keeping and don't blame work.  Loser.

And he's apologizing for vanishing? The joke is totally on him.  I am the one who has vanished.  I will never take his call, respond to a text or give him one second of my attention ever again. Even to tell him to go to Hell. He's so not worth the effort it would take to formulate a truly insulting string of comments and a few unmistakable hand gestures to go with them.  Ignoring him is so much more fitting.

And now that I am wide awake, I am thinking again.

About Scott's vanishing act.  As much as I don't want to know the reasons and the motivations, his comment tonight has me thinking.

What is it about me that made him do it?  And what made him choose to do it the way he did?  What made him choose to simply turn his back and walk away from me and the commitments we'd made without so much as a sentence to tell me he was leaving?  What is it about me that invited that kind of cruelty from an otherwise very nice and good man?

Hil schleps in looking tired. I turn off the TV and give her a squeeze. She wants to sleep in my bed tonight. And after tonight, it's okay with me that she does.