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Kelly swaggers in the pub trailed by two good friends. I haven’t seen her in at least a year or two, since around the time of M. Turns out she’s been traveling a bunch, lives in Tahoe, and was just out hanging with two friends for birthday debauchery. She notes that M is doing well – cleaned up, got a boy, kids coming if I recall correctly.

It’s a dead Monday night, as they always are, and the reason I come in. Both of Kelly’s friends are cute, but one is just plain gorgeous. One of the off-duty employees and I end up talking with the three of them until after the bar closed (early on this Monday night, but still past my bedtime.) I was drawn to Jessica.

She complements my clothes. She uses the words ‘necrophilia,’ ‘impoverishing,’ ‘rhetoric,’ and ‘narcissistic’ in casual conversation. She tells amusing and interesting stories, and has unique perspectives on everyday life. We bantered and there was much laughing, and playful offenses.

When it’s time to go, we hug, but she won’t give me her number, or accept mine. She says she’d like to hang out again, but she doesn’t give out her digits and won’t end up calling me if I give her mine.

“But you know, if we run into each other again, awesome.”

“So you’re kind of into that serendipity thing, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So now I have to start stalking you?”

She laughs, punches me on the shoulder and dances off to her friends. I watch her float down the street, half disappointed and half excited, thinking about her the entire drive home. I plop into bed around 1am, too late for my schedule, but try to read a few pages to calm my mind. I drift off, the final paragraph wafting me into dreamland:

”Careful with that ‘we,’ ” Roger Mexico distracted today by a hundred things, chi-square fittings that refuse to jibe, textbooks lost, Jessica’s absence….