Chapters - Episode 10 (The One Where Meg Does Some Laundry and Some Thinking)

"And then he just sighed and said I'd taken it all wrong," Meg said to Emma over the phone.

"Just like that?  'Meg, you've taken it the wrong way'?  Is he deluded?" Emma replied.

"I don't know," Meg said, eying her face in her bathroom mirror.  "I repeated the entire confrontation, beginning to end, just like I did for you.  From the moment Denise walked in the door to the moment she walked out.  I really thought he'd handle it differently."

"I don't know," Emma said, yawning.  "Albie likes to say what he wants, he likes to do what he wants and he also likes to think what he wants.  You should know that by now."

"Yeah, but come on," Meg whined.  "I'm his best friend!  I wouldn't lie to him about his girlfriend's behavior.  I have no reason to."

"Exactly," Emma said, "you have nothing to gain.  Which is why he's being all the more of an idiot for dismissing you."

Meg laughed.  "Whatever.  All I can say is I hope she won't be around for long because I will never go anywhere she's at - I don't care if the entire group goes.  If she's there, I'm out."

"That could prove to be a problem," Emma said.  "I think it will be a little hard to avoid her as long as Albie's dating her."

"Not my problem.  He and I may be seeing a lot less of one another," Meg said stubbornly.

After closing the store that day, Meg locked up and decided to call it an early night.  She drove home angry - angry at the fact that Denise had the audacity to come into her store and try to run the show and angry with Albie for being so passive.

Maybe passive wasn't the word, she thought.  It was more like he just didn't believe her.

After she hung up with Emma, Meg lugged a heavy basket of dirty clothes into her first-floor laundry room and threw a load into the washer then began to clean up the kitchen.  There wasn't much to do.  She had exactly one glass and one fork to wash.  Dinner had been a frozen entree of Chicken Parmesan and spaghetti.  That wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't also been a diet frozen entree.  She was starved and hadn't realized how badly she needed to grocery shop until that evening.

Chapters had been taking up nearly all her time lately and she'd been forced to neglect basic everyday things at her own place.  Her condo was small with just two bedrooms but she loved every inch of it.  She'd been on the real estate hunt for a long time before she found the gem she'd been searching for and she had Albie to thank.  He had a friend who was a seasoned real estate agent and she had been on the constant look-out for a place that fit Meg's specifications.  Once the woman happened upon her current address, she'd called Meg in a panic.  She wanted her to get to the condo as soon as possible so Meg could make a quick decision.  Buying a home didn't particularly fit the list of "quick decisions" she wanted to make in life but once she'd walked through the doors, she just knew the place had to be hers.  And so it was.  Less than two months later, Meg's new furniture had been arranged and her pictures hung.  She'd wasted no time in making the place her own.  And now she couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

The condo had been a good move on her part anyway, given that she'd been single now for almost a year.  Her last boyfriend had up and left her, no warning, no apologies.  She and Cole had dated for three years and Meg had thought he was the one.  No one knew what to say when he'd left her for one of his co-workers the winter before. No one except Emma.

When Meg saw Emma for the first time after the break-up, she'd broken down into uncontrollable sobs.  She had been barely able to put together a concise sentence when Emma gave her the 'talking to' that she'd desperately needed.

"That's what you get for dating a pompous ass with a name like 'Cole'," she'd said, unapologetically.

Emma didn't mince words and she didn't sugar coat the situation.  She'd been very direct and very blunt with Meg about the entire situation.  She didn't make Cole out to be any better or any worse than he'd actually been.  Unfortunately, his bad qualities ended up far outweighing his good.

After the heart-to-heart with Emma, things started to get a little easier for Meg.  She'd finally realized that Cole hadn't been the one for her and she'd been ignoring his bad qualities for too long - one of them being his controlling nature.  After she and Cole broke up, she'd rekindled her close friendship with Albie.  She was thankful that he didn't hold a grudge against her past behavior which had been on the neglectful side.  It wasn't as if she never saw Albie - they'd talked several times a week in fact - but when she was with Cole, it wasn't the same.  It was almost as if Cole felt he'd been in competition with Albie but not over Meg but over the success of their respective careers.

Albie never mentioned the strain Cole put on their friendship out of respect for Meg. 

Until Cole dumped Meg.  That was when Albie let loose about the job - and everything else that had ever bothered him about her boyfriend.  What started out as a simple conversation between Albie and Meg had turned into a drunken bitch session with each of them trying to top the other with creative Cole-insults.  By the end of that long night, Meg knew she was going to be okay.

Now here we are, Meg thought as she sat at her kitchen table, listening to the washer swish and swirl in the next room.  She didn't want to lose her best friend again because of someone else's issues.

Quietly, she picked up her cell phone and dialed Albie's number but she hung up before it even had a chance to ring.

If Albie said she'd misunderstood Denise, then maybe she had.

No.  That wasn't true.

She'd understood Denise just fine.  But maybe the best way to deal with it was to ignore her and see how things played out.  Meg didn't want to alienate herself from Albie and he'd only had a couple of dates with the girl.  There was a good chance they were all getting way ahead of themselves for absolutely no reason.  At least that was what she hoped.