Chapter 423

“Oh my God,” Sabrina groaned. “We’ve got so much fucking work to doooo.”

You’d said goodbye to Tasha after brunch, each of you giving her a kiss goodbye and you giving her butt a quick squeeze and making her laugh. Now you were back at Sabrina’s and the Mock Trial notes were back out.

“We’ve still got a week, and next weekend,” Gemma said. “We have time.”

“I know,” Sabrina sighed. “But it’s all happening so fast. One week of work, then the week after we do the mock trial. Then there’s one more week before the week you leave!”

“That means we’ve got three more weekends,” you pointed out. “And we want to make the most of them.” You stopped again and sighed, looking over at Gemma as you both sat on the floor of Sabrina’s living room. “It’s going to be so fucking hard to say goodbye, love.”

“Hard for you, horrible for me,” Sabrina said. “You get to go see her for that wedding in December.”

“Sabrina, I- You deserve to-” Gemma started.

“No, shush,” Sabrina waved her off. “It’s fine, I understand. It’s going to be hard to try and explain things and you’d rather not make yourself the spectacle at someone else’s wedding. I get it. Plus, I get him all to myself for the school year and the holidays.”

“I still wish I could make it work to have you both come,” Gemma sighed.

“We’ll be together soon enough, I’ll just miss you so much,” Sabrina said.

The three of you got to work, spending the entirety of the afternoon focused on the trial prep. There were almost a hundred different documents in the mock trial files, including all sorts of interview transcripts, police reports, insurance claims, and medical documents - it felt like someone must have spent a year just putting the thing together as they fabricated all the bits and pieces. And you all knew you needed to have all that information on hand, but that so much of it would be pointless, or set up as red herrings. That was the point of such a high-level mock trial - it wasn’t really about the trial days so much as the prep beforehand.

A great lawyer didn’t just talk the talk, they walked the walk and poured everything into the preparation. The law wasn’t like they made it seem on TV - that was one lesson that Garrison had done a great job of instilling in the three of you.

It wasn’t until dinner, which Sabrina ordered in, that you ended up groaning softly as you let your mind wander.

“What is it, baby?” Sabrina asked.

“I’m thinking of the fact that I need to go back to my place tonight because I have no clean clothes here,” you said. “And that means I need to face Mosche after ... everything.”

“He’s a cheater and a coward,” Gemma said. “And you didn’t do anything until after Tasha broke up with him. There’s nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Easy to say, harder to feel,” you said. “There’s a reason why Bro Code and Girl Code aren’t actually written down - it’s so that people with morals feel guilty and people without morals can pretend they don’t exist. I don’t want to be the second guy.”

“You aren’t,” Sabrina said, shifting over on the couch and sliding to sit on your lap sideways as she looked at you. “You’re a good person, John. This weekend, yeah, you might have gotten some wild sex. But you also helped a woman who had been through the wringer. You helped build her up holistically, every part of her. She deserved it, and so did you.”