Well, that was interesting, anyway. It might have been nicer to duct-tape me to a bed and play Freebird on a loop.
Remember a while back I mentioned Joel was having some career issues? There was an internal review, and among other things, he had blurred some lines between being my psychoanalyst and my friend. We had pretty much picked up the latter before dropping the former and it wasn't exactly cool to do so. The lines remained blurred for the last ten months as he dispensed free therapy and pills and offered to marry me to keep me away from demons.
Needless to say, he was offered a lateral move to keep his job, working on the courts side of things so that he has less chance to fall for young widows and mess up on the job.
Joel declined the forensic position and destroyed our friendship in one go. Want to know how? By accepting an offer to go and work for Caleb's firm doing in-house counseling and resolving management disputes. A lovely high-paying white-collar gig that is about as redundant as the last seven inches of my hair. Good, go. Have fun in hot potato town.
In all opinions, this is for the best. Only with a ten-month old friendship I see no need and have no impetus to try and salvage anything. We have no history to soften this betrayal.
Ben says good, Dr. Perfect needed to go, baby.
Let's just countdown to the first time Caleb pulls out his happy pack and Joel gives up every last nugget of Bridget-lore that he keeps inside, shall we? Sure, I'm 'legally' protected, and if you believe that I have a Bridget I can sell you. Because this is nothing but another attempt by my brother in law to hit me where it hurts while he soothingly tells me we're even. I'm sad that Joel chose this. He used to sit with me, always hunched down into his shirt collars and slid-down in his seat and tell me that some people were incredibly skilled in manipulation and now he's been manipulated too.
The downside of Caleb checkmating me is that in order to use what I have against him I'll be subjected to the mother of all premiere screenings and I'd really like to avoid that so I wind up squished once again between the brick wall and concrete one, because over the past while I've decided I do care if my friends see that movie. I'd really rather they didn't.
