She, Myself & I by Whitney Gaskell

in front of one of the harried, tattooed waitresses if you wanted to place your order.
    “A tall stack of blueberry pancakes, two eggs scrambled, bacon, coffee, and orange juice,” Zack said definitively.
    “That sounds amazing. I’ll have exactly the same,” I said, surprising myself
    Normally, I’m pretty incorruptible when it comes to breakfast—it has to be high fiber and low fat. I really did have to get this guy out of my system, I thought. If nothing else, whenever I was with him, my appetite spiked.
    “I haven’t been here in a while. I know it’s not much to look at, but the pancakes are worth it,” Zack commented, looking around. His eyes caught on something behind me, and his entire face changed. The light blew out of his eyes, and his mouth tightened. I turned and saw a family sitting in the booth behind us. The parents, decked out in sweats, were entertaining a little girl. She had blonde hair caught up in a ponytail and was wearing a purple sweatshirt and pink pajama bottoms, and she was crooning to an Elmo doll clutched in her chubby arms.
    I looked back at Zack. He seemed pensive and distant, and I assumed he was thinking about his stepdaughter. I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never been good at those Hallmark Card, heart-to-heart moments, and this problem seemed particularly complex. I tried to think of something appropriate to say, but then our pancakes arrived, and after accepting the waitress’s offer of additional coffee, we began to eat in silence.
    “These aren’t as good as I remember them being,” Zack said, pushing a piece of pancake around with his fork.
    “Yeah, they’re a little heavy,” I said, already regretting the syrup-laden pancake I’d consumed. Two more sat on my plate untouched, turning into maple-flavored mush. I’d also lost my appetite for the eggs and too-fatty bacon.
    “Sorry, this was a bad call,” Zack said, and he smiled briefly and then reached forward to take my hand. “What are you going to do today?”
    “Work. I have a trial starting tomorrow, and I have to prep for it,” I said, catching the waitress’s eye so that she’d bring us the bill.
    “Trial? I thought you were a divorce attorney. Divorces don’t go to trial anymore, do they?”
    “Sometimes. We’ll probably end up settling, but it can take the threat of court to force both sides into negotiations,” I said.
    “How do you do it? Deal with divorces all day long, I mean. Doesn’t it depress you?”
    This was something I heard all the time. Why aren’t dentists asked this about their job, or doctors, or garbage men? And what about teachers? I’d rather deal with divorcing spouses than take on a class of oversexed ninth graders any day. Every job has its downsides, and you tend to get used to them. No, I didn’t love bearing witness to the ruin of marriages, and yes, the irony that my own marriage had gone down in flames didn’t escape me. But having to defend my choice of careers wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Sunday morning.
    “No, it doesn’t anymore. Friday afternoons are never fun, but I’ve gotten used to dealing with the clients, and it’s better than doing, oh, criminal law, for example. At least I don’t have to go down to the county jail,” I said.
    “What’s wrong with Friday afternoons?”
    “That’s the day that custody changes hands. Moms are angry when they drop off the kids and discover that Dad’s girlfriend is over. Dads get angry when they go to pick up the kids and they aren’t there. Then they call me, as though I’m going to mobilize the Divorce Police to enforce the custody agreement,” I said.
    “So what do you do?” Zack asked.
    “I instruct my secretary to tell anyone who calls that I’m out for the weekend. If there were a serious problem, something we’d need to bring to the attention of the court, the earliest I could file anything would be Monday morning. And in most cases it’s forgotten by then. Or, at least, it’s no