I am more than a little drunk when we walk into Vic’s, but I don’t know it yet. Terry is facing the door, talking to someone I don’t know. He has a stupid haircut.

I am about to squeeze his arm as I walk by and give him a “hey buddy” and then I remember in the nick of time, we aren’t talking to each other. I’ve received this beautiful apology from him, only he doesn’t know it, so I keep walking without making eye contact.

If he saw me, I look damn hot. Likely though, he didn’t. He is in this intense conversation with a girl I’ve never seen before, who looks strikingly like his ex-girlfriend and the energy between them is suffocating. I look at her. She isn’t smiling. Terry is too beautiful not to smile when you’re with him. Any interaction where you don’t feel like the luckiest person in the world to be in the presence of someone so beautiful is a waste.

But she is stuck. I can see it. She is stuck in her own intensity, in her own hurt feelings. And I feel both bad for her and relieved for myself at the same time. I am glad he doesn’t have that effect on me.

Then I ask a boy seated at the bar if I can have his soft sweater. And I make a very lousy attempt to flirt with him embarrassingly before I realize it’s time for Raquel to go home.

My friend and I steal a cab and I show her pictures of Terry on Facebook that I wake up to the next morning.