Chapter 7

The next 2 weeks went by quickly. School was starting to get to the point where you're busy doing homework or studying for the next test. Work was also getting quite busy as well. One of the guys was going on vacation leaving us a person short. It did serve to distract me and let the guilt lessen most of the time. I couldn't feel guilty when I didn't have time to think about what happened.

Melanie's strange hours were helping that as well. I was barely seeing her most of the time. I would walk in the door just in time to see her leave for work. Not having to face her also allowed me to not deal with the guilt. I was still trying to decide what to tell Melanie and when to tell her as well. I knew this wasn't going to be easy or pleasant. But it was going to be needed.

Before I knew it, I was back at the lounge waiting for Julie to work on the next project. It had been 4 weeks since that fateful afternoon. I still was trying to come to grips with it. I also had still been taking great pains at trying to avoid Julie as often as possible. These projects made that impossible once every 2 weeks. That was still better than that plus the three days a week we were in class together.

As usual, Julie is running late yet again. When she finally arrived she didn't look like herself. Her hair was disheveled and her clothes were wrinkled. She also looked like she had been skipping quite a bit of sleep.

"Hello. Late again I see. Do you go to your classes 15 minutes late as well?"

"Hello to you as well. Do you always greet people with such animosity?"

"Only those who regularly waste my time. Are you ok? Quite frankly, you look like hell."

"Yeah, well my classes have been keeping me very busy lately."

"Ok, I'll give you that one. Mine have been keeping me busy as well. So how much of this project have you gotten to?"

"I have done a bit better this time. I do have some of the program working. A few of the options are failing still though."

"Then let's go to the lab and see what you have."

We moved to the computer lab and logged onto the system. She pulled up the code she had worked on and demonstrated what was and was not working. She had done pretty well this time. Many of the features needed were working. I looked the source code over and found a few areas where she left some bad code. I made the needed changes and in 15 minutes, we were done.

"I'm impressed. This is certainly the best work I have seen code."

"Thanks. I'm not in your league though."

"No, but you also haven't been working with C for the last 10 years either."

"No I haven't. I guess that would make a big difference."

"Believe me, it does. We better discuss the next project now."

"Why? We haven't even gotten the assignment yet."

"In 2 weeks is the Thanksgiving holiday. I would prefer to have it done before then so we don't have to worry about it."

"I forgot about that. I won't even be here since I'm going home to be with my family. I guess that does make sense."

"So I'll see you next weekend here then."

"Sure. Not being there would screw my holiday up. I'm not about to do that."

"Good. I'll see you next week then."

We said our goodbyes and headed our separate ways. I still had homework to work on. I also had to find time to talk to Melanie. Whenever that was going to be.

I spent the weekend doing homework and enjoying my kids. My wife was still being very elusive. This weekend she decided to do some Christmas Shopping. Her friend Christy had come over to pick her up.

Christy had been Melanie's best friend for the last 3 years. Melanie started by helping her out with her 3 little girls. The girls had been overwhelming Christy. The oldest was 7 and was the instigator. The other 2 were 5 year-old twins. The combination of the 3 normally would cause their parents major headaches.

The shopping trip was really an excuse for Christy to get away from the girls for a few hours. She had been a stay at home mom and looked forward to any time that she could get away from them.

That did serve to yet again delay my chance to talk to Melanie. I was able to keep myself busy for much of the weekend with homework so I didn't have time to think about feeling guilty. I had been getting quite good at that lately. When I ran out of homework, I enjoyed quality time with my kids. I was looking forward to Thanksgiving. It would give me 5 days away from school and 4 away from work. That's certainly going to give me some quality time with my family.

The week before Thanksgiving was busy. School was starting to close in on the end of the semester. Customers at work seemed to be worried about the fact that they had to get things done before Christmas. The week went by fast due to the work I had to do. Melanie was still doing the overnight shifts in place of Jen, so I was not even getting time to see her. I was really beginning to miss her, though I knew that once we did get time for each other, I needed to tell her some bad news. I didn't know which I would rather have, work and not Mel, or time with and a pissed off Mel. I didn't really like either option.

When I arrived at the lounge on Saturday, I found myself waiting for Julie again. I decided to not wait for her to get started. I looked at the project and started to map out what needed to be done. It was almost 45 minutes later that Julie made her entrance. The later into the school year, the worse she was looking. I don't think I ever saw her looking this horrible. Her hair and her clothes looked like a total mess. This was not the Julie I have even seen last week.

"Julie, are you ok? You look horrible."

"I haven't been sleeping well. Coffee is not even helping me anymore. I also haven't been feeling well. I have been up late many nights working on homework."

"I know that feeling. Were you able to start work on the project."

"Only a little. I would have like to done more. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. We are working on a bit more restricted time frame for this one. I started to map out what we needed to get done."

I showed her what functions we were going to need. I decided that today was a good day to start working separately toward the same goal. I gave her a list of functions that she should work on, and I took the rest. I was careful to keep her list to many of the functions we had already created in previous projects. I had not explained that many times, you could reuse a function in different programs. Today was the day I showed her that.

We worked for about 4 hours on this. Julie was raiding our other projects for the functions that she needed. I was busy coding the newer functions. When we put them all together.

Julie made the comment, "It don't look right."

"You're right. We haven't coded the main block yet."

"Duh, I knew that."

"I know you did."

"How did you know?"

"Duh, you did mention that something didn't look right. You wouldn't have said that if you didn't."

"Oh, yeah. I guess you're right there."

We finished the main block and gave the program a test. We had just a few bugs to work out. Once we did, voila, we had working code.

"Oh good. Another one completed. Only 1 more project to go."

I was thinking the same thing.

We both had to get moving today. It was getting close to 8pm, and I still had to deal with my kids at home. Julie indicated that she needed to find some dinner and finish her thesis for one of her classes. We gathered our stuff and headed off in our different directions.

I was not sure how I still felt about her. On one hand, I liked her as a friend. She seems like someone that you could enjoy being around. On the other, after the tryst 5 weeks ago, I was not sure I could trust her or even myself around her. I still was not happy about what happened, but I knew that I needed to be in better control. That was the first loss of control I had ever had. I was still feeling pretty bad out it too.

The next day the boys and I went over to a friend's house to enjoy the football game. I wanted to let Melanie sleep, since she had yet again, worked all night. The Bills did their usual; they found a way to lose. It was a good game though.

When we got home, Melanie was getting ready to help Christy yet again.

"Hey, are you ever going to stay home when I'm home?"

"Sorry, but she needs my help. The girls need somebody to watch them while Christy is in the store."