I never expected to be a barfly, but it turned out to be a pretty good life choice.

Six-year-old Sarah expected to be a Disney princess. Hell, I looked like one; Snow White, to be specific: black hair, pale complexion, rosy cheeks, ruby lips. My eyes are green, but outside of that? We could have been twins. Unfortunately, my prince turned out to be moonlighting in a whole library of other women's stories.

So there I was, a few months shy of my thirty-first birthday, holding up the bar at Roy’s, my favorite meat market. I know, I know, go on Tinder; it’s easier. Admittedly, that can be fun if all you’re looking for is a random hookup with some guy who thinks that holding up a fish in their profile picture really gets a girl going. But bars are so much richer an experience, a decidedly analog one in a world that’s had a lot of its charm sucked out by the digital.

For the cost of a couple of overpriced drinks, you get an experience you can't really find anywhere else. Want to people-watch? You can see the whole panoply of human experience: desire, despair, delight, drunkenness, debauchery. And that’s just in the D’s! If you want to participate, there’s a whole other layer to the bar scene: are you prey? Hunter? Bystander? Are you sure? 

And then there are folks like me, the old hands. If the hunt is the game, I like to be part of the metagame, someone that directs and redirects others to what they need, rather than what they merely want. Two years in the same bar meant that I was better known and better trusted than some of the staff. The other regulars were my friends; I knew that was kind of a sad statement at the end of my third decade on this planet, but it’s better to have bar friends than no friends at all.

So there I sat on a Thursday night, drink in hand, my second and probably last of the evening. Some people, the young or the rich or the dumb, go to singles bars to get drunk. I drank just enough to enjoy the ambient excitement, the buzz of people and need, and alcohol mixing together into a cocktail far more intoxicating than any mere booze, if one was discerning enough to enjoy it. And for that? God, I was an absolute lush.

I still liked to pick up a guy now and then; it’s good to keep your hand in, and a girl’s got needs. But the odd thing about going to the same place on the regular is that you have to be careful to not shit where you eat. The other regulars were off limits; some I’d spent a night or two with, but not many. 

As much as any other social scene, the woman that gets marked out as a slut better want that label, or she’s going to be miserable. Never mind that damn near every guy there would love to have the tag for themselves, except that they expected to change two letters and be ‘stud’ instead. But you can’t spell ‘stud’ without STD.

Truth be told, the last few months had represented a really low crop anyway, mostly out-of-towners with tan lines on their ring fingers and desperation in their eyes. Some gals might not have a problem there, but they all reminded me of my ex-husband. They could go fuck themselves because they sure as hell weren’t going to fuck me. Then we had the bands of frat boys that wandered in looking for a cougar and thought that any woman older than twenty-seven counted. No, thank you.

There had been that one guy a month before, the cute one whose divorce had gone through just that day. I’d happily have been his guide to the lands of the newly single, but like I said: I like to direct people to what they need, rather than what they want. He had come in with that young blonde “friend” of his that I pointed out wasn’t just his friend, and they’d left together after snogging at the bar for what seemed like five minutes. Hadn’t seen either of them since; I smiled at the thought of a good deed done. 

But this slow Thursday night, I saw something refreshing: a guy who didn’t want to be there.

They came in occasionally, usually one member of a group out helping to celebrate a divorce or a breakup. That was definitely what one of the guys in his party of four was doing: the others were slapping their newly single bro on the back and talking him up, buying drinks, and toasting. Two of the hangers-on were here for the hunt, too, supporting their friend by trying to grab their own brass rings, making him feel more comfortable with his manner of celebrating. But the last guy? He was being supportive with his presence, but that was as far as it went.

The other three scattered. The fresh divorcé, marked by the thin streak of paler skin on one finger, made a beeline for a curvy redhead I’d seen in Roy’s a couple of times. “Ro” something. Rowan? No, Rowena. She wasn’t a regular, but regular enough that I knew she could take care of herself, and this guy seemed pretty harmless anyway.

Jane intercepted the other two. She was a relative newcomer, but one with an impressive body count already. I hadn’t talked to her much, but as a fellow shy nerd who turned into a wild child after a bad breakup, well, like recognized like. I’d have given good odds that both of these guys were going home with her. Rowan wanted a guy for some fun, but I got the feeling that Jane was desperately trying to replace something she’d lost. I shook my head; we heal how we heal.

That left the last guy. He was a handsome dark-skinned Black man about my age with short dreads and an undercut. Tall and slim, his clothes were comfortable and appropriate to the bar we sat in, but only if the goal was to be as inconspicuous as possible. His manner, the way he looked straight forward, and how he sat all screamed, “I’m not here, don’t look in this direction.” Now this… this was interesting.

My initial thought was to simply do as he clearly wanted. There was an open seat next to him, though, and I knew that, body language aside, one of the thirstier women would occupy it and bother him soon. I remembered the nights when I wanted to be left alone in a crowd, and I sympathized. The correct choice was obvious.

“Hey.” I sat on the previously empty stool. “Sarah.”

He looked up. “Oh, uh, Darius.” I glanced at his finger and saw a distinct impression of a ring there, one that must have come off just before he’d walked in. But he wasn’t on the hunt. A guilty conscience or something else?

“I’m sorry to bother you, but, well… I could see you didn’t want to be bothered, and that just wasn’t going to happen.” He raised an eyebrow, and I chuckled. “You’re a handsome, apparently single guy in a meat market. You’re going to get hit on if there’s an opportunity. The empty seat next to you? That was an opportunity.”

Darius nodded and smiled slightly. “I, ah, I’ve been out of the game for a while. So, you’re bothering me so that I won’t be bothered?”

“Something like that. Bothering you for my own curiosity, too. But not bothering you in a way that’ll get us hot and bothered, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He laughed loudly then, and his smile was dazzling. The laugh was good, too, a deep bass rumble that felt comforting as it rolled over me, genuine and warm. Maybe he wouldn’t get hot and bothered, but it was going to be a struggle for me. “So you’re saving me from myself, is that it?”

“Yeah, guess so. What’re you drinking?”

“Soda. Designated driver.” He inclined his head towards his buddy. “My friend Lee just got divorced, and I’m here for moral support.”

That brought a knowing chuckle from me. “Well, I doubt you’re going to need to fulfill your duties. Pretty sure he’s not going to need a ride anywhere until the morning. Your other two friends, either.”

His expression was dubious. “You seem to know a lot about me for someone who’s just here to keep me from being bothered.”

My shoulders rose and fell in a resigned shrug. “I like to people-watch. Cheap entertainment, and maybe I get to help a person out. Sometimes it’s even me!” I raised my glass in mock salute and finished it, then signaled Roy. One more tonight wouldn’t hurt.

The owner’s gruff voice called out, “Coming right up, Double D.”

“Double D?”

I groaned inwardly and sighed outwardly. “Not… not what you think. Or maybe it is, too; Roy’s a bit of an old lech. But it’s short for ‘divorce doula.’ I helped a drunk forty-something get through the early days of hers, and she called me that. It kind of stuck.”

“So you do this a lot? Sit down with folks who… who aren’t married anymore and help them through it?”

I shrugged again. “I wouldn’t say ‘a lot,’ but enough that I picked up a nickname. So maybe? Regardless, I can tell that… Well, she was ready to get back in the mix. You? Eh, not so much, right?”

Darius sadly shook his head and looked into his glass. “No. No, I’m really not.”

“Then why take the ring off? To support your friend?”

“Sort of.” He took a sip of the soda. “He’s been… He keeps telling me I need to get back out there. That I need to get back on with my life, but… I dunno. She was my life, you know?”

That was a feeling I definitely remembered. “Yeah, I get it. How long has it been?”

“A little more than a year.” Darius’ shoulders slumped.

“Since you split, or since the divorce was final?”

The pain flickered across his face, then hid behind a well-worn mask. I’d put that one on myself often enough, the one that tries to lie and tell everyone that the wearer is getting on with their life. “Oh. Uh, no. Since she passed.”

Fuck! Fuck. Good work, Sarah. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.” Sincerity there, but also a flash of annoyance. I knew that one, too.

Taking a sip of my new drink, I chuckled quietly. “It’s exhausting, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“The sympathy.”

His features relaxed just a bit, his body language a little less guarded. “I, uh. Yeah. It, ah, it can be.” He smiled slightly. “Personal experience?”

I nodded. “Yeah. No! No, not on the scale that you have, but yeah. People mean well, but…” I shook my head. “No, they want to mean well. But they mostly want you to know that they mean well.”

That deep laugh again. “That’s a good way to put it. And you aren’t allowed to be annoyed. Can’t seem ungrateful. They’re trying to be there for you, even though they’re never actually there again. I tell you…” 

He shook his head in disgust. “It was at the receiving line after Carla’s funeral. There were so many people there, which… I’m glad she was loved. That people would miss her. But when her third cousin came through the line, this dude I’d never met and never heard Carla talk about, crying so hard that snot was coming out of his nose? And he gave me this huge hug and told me how much she meant to him, and how much he was going to miss her?” His glass was empty, and he raised it to get Roy’s attention. “Yeah, I could have done without that.”

In the mirror behind the bar, I saw two kindred spirits who were done with other people’s well-intentioned performative grief over our tragedies. Two ungrateful jerks who weren’t sure why we were supposed to be grateful to have more pain heaped on us. “It’s like being a sin eater, but for sorrow. A grief eater.”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Yes! That’s it! That’s it, exactly. They– some of them meant well, some of them were there with support, bringing meals or just sitting with me and letting me cry. But so many of them just wanted to confess their sadness. To let me know they were sad, too, even though…” He glowered.

I picked up the thread. “Even though you don’t need their sadness piled on yours. You need to have yours lessened. But no one’s going to be able to do that, are they? Even the ones that mean well, the ones that do keep coming back after… Well, for me, after the divorce. They can help, and they can be supportive, but even those ones–” I grimaced. “If I never hear another person tell me that it’s time to get back up on the horse, it’ll be too soon.”

We shared a laugh. “God, I know what you mean. Lee means well. He invited me along so that I’d… I don’t know, so I guess his enthusiasm for getting on with his life might rub off on me, but…” A rueful expression crossed Darius’ face then. “He got divorced. He wanted to. They both cheated on each other; her first, but he took it as an excuse rather than a warning. He was ready to be free. I- I just…” His voice had cracked a little.

I put my hand on his shoulder. Perhaps too intimate of a gesture from a stranger in a bar, but his hand patted mine as he gave me a sad smile. “Double D, huh?” I nodded. “Are you a psychologist or something?”

“Nah. Only by osmosis. Spend enough time and money on shrinks, and you start thinking like them, eventually. For me, I see people sad, and I want to help. Not to sympathize, but to empathize. I… Sympathy says, ‘I’m glad that’s not happening to me.’ Empathy says, ‘I wish it wasn’t happening to you.’ I want to do that.” It was my turn to look into my glass. “I wish someone had done that for me.”

We sat quietly together for a while, me thinking about how I’d gotten here, him… I don’t know. But I could guess. “Would you like to tell me about her?” He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Only if you want to. I… when things ended with Richard… I wanted to speak to someone about it without people trying to… I wanted to talk about it how I wanted to talk about it. About what it meant to me, rather than what I thought it should mean to the person listening. I get the feeling that, maybe, you haven’t gotten to really talk about Carla like that with anyone except maybe a therapist.”

I heard a ping on his phone, then another. Darius chuckled. “Guess you were right. I’m free.” His head tilted to one side as he regarded me thoughtfully. “I, uh. I’d like that. To talk about Carla. But…” He sighed. “Look, I’ll be honest. I wasn’t really up for coming out tonight, and I kinda just want to go home. But, um. I don’t want this to sound like a come-on, but would you like to get coffee or something sometime? Just… just to talk.”

Well, how about that? Not even trying, and I still got his number. Score one for Sarah.

Coffee became brunch by the time Saturday morning rolled around. I got there on time, but Darius was early, dressed in a casual outfit that was a close cousin to his bar attire: understated, comfortable, and designed to make people’s attention glance off. He stood as I approached. “Hey, Sarah. I’m really glad you came.”

He really did have a lovely smile. “Me too. Thanks for inviting me.” 

We sat and perused the menu; I sipped on a mimosa while he contented himself with a coffee. I broke the comfortable silence first. “You know, I don’t even know what you do for a living?”

“Oh! I’m, ah, a professor. Linguistics. You?” Smart, sweet, and handsome. If he ever got back into dating, someone was going to snatch him right up.

“Nothing that lofty. Personal assistant at an electronics firm.” I shrugged. “Pays the bills.”

“Did you… was there something else you wanted to do? Did you go to college?”

The sigh came out before I could stop it. “Yeah, but I didn’t finish. Got three years in and…” I waved my hand. “Things happened.” Richard happened. “English. Thought I was going to write the next great American novel. Or at least something that could get optioned into a script, horribly mangled while it went through the Hollywood machine, and then piss me off while I cashed royalty checks.”

Darius laughed quietly. “Ah, yeah. I– “ He smiled sadly. “I was never a big fiction reader. Strange, I know. I like words, but…” He shrugged. “I like them because of how they work, not so much because of what they do. I know that might sound weird.”

“No, I get it. There’s a guy at my work, a few of them that– they’re geniuses. Design all sorts of chips and such. Some of them still have flip phones. One only has a landline. I get it; making and consuming scratch two different itches. Understanding scratches another.”

He smiled. “Well, damn. Maybe you should write that book.”

“Maybe. It… I kind of got that lust for creation burned out of me with…” I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter.”

Darius leaned forward, favoring me with an earnest expression. “Hey, Sarah. Yeah, it does. Look, I know you said you wanted to hear about Carla, but I’d like to hear about you, too. I, uh, I mean, if you’d like to tell me. I don’t want you to feel like– “

“No, no, that’s not it. It’s just.” I laughed. “I guess it doesn’t matter. We’re– this is just friendly, right? You’re not looking, and I’m not looking to push that. Even if–” Another laugh, this one a bit embarrassed. “Not saying you should get back up on that irritating metaphorical horse, but when you do? You’re going to be in for a wild ride with someone. Lots of someones, if you like.” He studied his hands. “Sorry, I don’t mean to embarrass you.” I wondered if I could blame the mimosas, but knew that probably wouldn’t fly.

His head came up, a kind smile on his face. “No, no, that’s not it. It’s just… It still feels disloyal. Less than it used to, but I feel like I’m cheating on her, even, um, even just having lunch with a pretty friend.” I blushed just a tiny bit. False flattery at the bar no longer had an effect on me, but this? Honest emotion from someone with no reason to lie? Yeah, that still got to me. “Now it’s my turn to apologize.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not embarrassed. Just… Just a little thrilled, honestly. It’s nice to hear real compliments. Spend enough time at a bar, and they become rare as hen’s teeth. I guess that’s why– well, like I said. This is just friendly. And it’s the first ‘just friendly’ thing I’ve really had, outside of hanging with some coworkers, in quite a while. So I’m kinda having to stretch some muscles I haven’t in a while. But it feels nice. Really.”

My breath came out in a big sigh. He had asked, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to filter myself. “Richard–my ex–he really threw me for a loop. He was older than me, eight years older. Not a big deal even if you’re talking about a couple of people that are even, like, twenty-four and thirty-two, say. But a huge deal when one is nineteen, and the other is twenty-seven.

“He was handsome and smart and successful. On his way to his first million. We met one night while I was out clubbing, and he– I didn’t know it then, but he was a narcissist. He used every tool in the box to isolate me and make me his; I don’t know if it came naturally to him or if he was one of those douchebags that studied pick-up artist tricks or what. But he lovebombed me, praised and negged me to get me twisted around, separated me from friends and family…” 

I looked away, unable to stand the honest, heartfelt pain on Darius’ face. “I dropped out of college to ‘support’ him, even though he didn’t need the support. He killed my love of writing a bit at a time, convincing me that none of my stuff was good enough to show anyone else. I know now that it was just to keep me from making friends, but the damage has been done. He just wanted me available to him at all times. 

“I convinced myself, because I was really still just a child, that it was the storybook romance I’d been promised by Disney and Co. But he wasn’t Prince Charming; he was more like a less violent Bluebeard. Except that it would have been kinder if he’d abandoned me; instead, I was his fallback girl, the one dumb enough to marry him.

“The first time I caught him cheating, he promised it was a fling, a drunken mistake while traveling. We went to counseling. He lied about everything there, I later found out. The second time, I divorced him. He got violent then, and… and I took whatever terms I could to get out of the marriage, just to get away. I found out he’d been sleeping around the entire time we were together, and I’d been none the wiser.” I chuckled ruefully. “Hard to notice changes in behavior when there were no changes. He’d always been a selfish, greedy son of a bitch, and I’d missed all the signs.”

“God, Sarah. That’s awful.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, it really was. Anyway, it kind of killed my love of writing, like I said. And then I had to get a job for the first time just to live, and I had no degree, so here we are.” Another sip of my mimosa. “That’s the first time I’ve told the whole story in a while. Sorry. I know it’s kind of a downer. Not something you want to tell on a date, either. Guys tend to either decide you’re a sucker that won’t notice them cheating or a damsel to be rescued, and I’m neither.” I sighed. “Not anymore, at least.”

Darius smiled warmly. “Clearly. You seem to be more the rescuing type these days.”

The waiter interrupted our conversation. We ordered, and he continued. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that that all happened to you. That guy…” He shook his head. “I will say, you’re right about… I don’t tell my story much anymore. The full one. Most people don’t dig about–“ I didn’t mean to, but I cringed. “No, you didn’t dig. You asked, as part of a conversation, where you could see I needed to get something off my chest. That’s different. I appreciate that. I really do.”

He leaned back in his chair. “I mean the ones that… I tell them that my wife died. And then it’s like, ‘Oh no. How long ago? What happened? Did she suffer long? How did you find out?’ Those folks, the ones that ignore the fact that I clearly want them to shut the fuck up about– Uh, sorry.”

The mimosa almost went out my nose. “Oh, hon, trust me. One swear word out of a few hundred? That’s fucking nothing.”

“Okay. But, yeah. The ones that dig, especially the women. I just– some of them mean well and just don’t have the social graces to not ask, but some of them want to fix me. Like the fact that I love and miss Carla is some kind of defect, that they can– can replace her in my life, and I’ll be all better. I’ve had more than one friend try to set me up with a woman that they say is like, ‘Oh, bro, she’s so caring, she’ll get your pain,’ and then she just wants to…” 

He shook his head. “Moving on isn’t… When most people our age move on, it’s because they got divorced or broke up. They want to forget what happened before. I don’t. And when I do want to move on? I still… She’s still going to be a part of me. And I want that. I don’t want Carla replaced in my heart. But people are so stuck on the idea of competing with an ex that…” He laughed. “I’m ranting now. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I wanted to talk with you about her and about how you’re feeling. And… honestly, this feels really good. Cathartic for me. Just having someone to talk to about this shit that gets that… that it is shit. That people don’t get it. Your problem and mine might be different, but…” I searched for the words.

He found them first. “Our problems are so different from most folks’ that it’s hard to find anyone to talk to who doesn’t immediately try to apply solutions that don’t fit. You aren’t doing that with me, and I hope I’m not doing it with you.”

I smiled. “You’re not. But, um. Did you want to talk about Carla? Tell me about her? You don’t have to– to tell me anything about what happened. But just about her?”

Darius took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She was… amazing. Smart, funny, gorgeous. A real ‘dad joke’ sense of humor, the kind that would make you groan and laugh at the same time. We met in college. She was comp sci, and I was, well, linguistics, obviously. I fell in love with her so quickly.” He looked off in the distance. “So easily. She was so easy to love.” A slight tremor in his voice there, but he cleared his throat and continued, looking at me again. 

“I proposed to her just after she graduated, a year behind me. We got married on her parents’ farm, a couple hours north of here. It was a rough first few years since I was a TA, and she was just starting out, but we made it work. She was my biggest booster; I don’t know that I would have made it all the way through my doctorate without her.”

The food arrived, and we ate a couple of bites before he continued. “She was such a hard worker.” His face fell. “That’s what… what took her from me.”

“You don’t have to–”

The brave little smile on his face broke my heart. “No. No, it’s okay. I– I’m just glad you want to listen. Really listen.” Another deep, fortifying breath. “Carla started in a corporate gig, but switched to a startup after a year or so. I was getting paid almost nothing as a TA, so we needed to make it up somewhere. And startup means crunch. She’d work sixty- and seventy-hour weeks. I’d handle the household–the cooking and cleaning and the like–but she wanted to make sure… make sure there was time for us. We were newlyweds, after all. So she burnt the candle at both ends.”

Darius’ eyes grew moist. “She got used to that level of effort. Promoted to senior dev. Less scutwork coding, but the same and sometimes even longer hours. Eventually, things eased off as the company transitioned a bit out of startup mode. But Carla was still so tired. We thought it was burnout. She wouldn’t go to the doctor, though. She grew up on a farm, after all; her dad worked sunup to sundown, and the only time he went to a doctor was when he had a broken bone. She idolized him.

“I couldn’t get her to go until…” He swallowed. “We decided we wanted kids. She started to get time in her schedule, and the company got bought out by a German corporation; good benefits, including maternity benefits. So she finally went to the doctor to do an assessment and… And…” 

His voice broke. “It was cancer. Stage four pancreatic that had metastasized. There was nothing…” A drink of water. “She passed six months later. I held her hand as I watched… watched her last breath. She was so sedated by then that…” He shook his head. “She was twenty-eight years old.”

I took his hand without thinking. He just hurt so badly, so visibly, and I couldn’t let him suffer alone. “Oh, Darius. I’m so sorry. That’s…” I felt myself tear up. “God, I’m so sorry.” He squeezed my hand.

We sat like that for a while, then he wiped his eyes and laughed with embarrassment. “Sorry, not exactly good brunch conversation.”

“Hey, no. I… Thank you. It really– Look, I know we don’t know each other, but it really means a lot to me that you shared that. She sounded like a wonderful woman.”

“She was.” He sat quietly for a minute before picking up his fork and beginning to eat again. I followed suit.

After the waiter cleared the plates, Darius said, “Sarah, thank you. I– It’s been a long time since I felt… This is the first time since it happened that I wanted to tell someone the story. Not– Not felt like I had to, like I was expected to.” He ran his hand through his dreads. “Look, I know this might seem weird, but it’s… These are the two best conversations I’ve had in close to a year. Can we– Like, would you like to hang out sometime? Not talking about this again, or Richard, but just hanging out like friends?”

I nodded eagerly. “I really would. It felt great, just– God, just talking to someone and not dancing around shit.” 

He laughed. “Strange place to start a friendship, but I’ll take it.”

And so we both made a new friend. That’s all it was at first, a friendship. We did talk about our respective tragedies a bit more, but we also just talked about movies or music, or the news of the day. We had coffee a few days later, and dinner two days after that. Things continued on similarly for a couple of months. 

He was charming. Funny, in a very self-deprecating way, but with a wit that could turn on a dime to extremely dark humor. We loved a lot of the same movies, TV shows, and music. He was a linguist, and I was a lapsed writer, and we spent a lot of time just talking about words and where they came from and where they were going; it was exactly the kind of nerdery that I hadn’t gotten to experience in almost a decade. We both hated the figurative literal; that really cemented our bond, being apparently the only two under-thirties that literally meant “literally” when we said “literally.”

I very quickly developed a crush on my friend, and I was pretty sure he felt the same about me. But I wanted to respect his boundaries, and he wanted to respect mine. So we danced the dance of two people that like each other, but can’t admit that they, like, like-like each other. He was my friend, and I was his, and we put anything else we might be up on a shelf, not completely away, but shoved out of reach for now.

Then I asked him if he wanted to hang out on a Sunday afternoon, just watching movies at my place.

His grin was somewhat embarrassed. “I can’t. I wish I could, but I, um. I have a standing engagement on the last Sunday of the month.”

“Oh! Well, that’s okay. We can do it some other time then.”

“Thanks. I– look, I don’t… It’s weird. You won’t judge?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Other than your absolute trash taste in sci-fi, what have I judged you on?”

He frowned. “I’m serious. It’s– look, I go visit Carla then. Her grave. I just– I talk with her. Tell her what’s going on in my life. I used to go every Sunday; then it was every other, and now…” He shook his head. “I know it’s kind of pathetic. It’s just a stone. She’s not really there. But…”

“It’s not. You’re doing what feels right for you, and you’re not hurting anyone.” I gave my friend a hug, and he returned it, a tight, warm embrace that just felt… right. We held it perhaps a little longer than necessary. “It’s not pathetic. It’s sweet.” My hand went to his bicep and squeezed. “We’ll catch up in a couple days, okay?”

As I hung out more with Darius, I found myself spending less time at the bar. Not a lot less at first, one or two days fewer each week than I had before. Some of that was that I was spending time with him. But even on the nights when we weren’t hanging out, I just didn’t feel the same pull anymore. It was still fun when I did go; there were still people to watch, new lost souls coming in, and guys to flirt with. But I found myself flirting less, and only flirting. I looked out for lost souls, but they mostly made me think of him, of the man I’d preferred to spend my evenings with.

We spent more time together over the following months. Got closer. Still not anything more than friendly, but edging closer to that fuzzy boundary between friends and something else. He wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t sure I was. But neither of us seemed to be shying away from the course that would take us into that liminal space. 

On the other hand, neither of us talked about it, either. We were just friends. Friends that eventually hung out together four nights out of seven. Friends that found each other really attractive, that shared the same interests, that finished each other’s sentences. Friends that thought about each other right before we went to sleep. Friends that… well, let’s just say I thought about him at times I probably shouldn’t have been thinking of someone who was “just” a friend.

Three events within the space of a week changed this status quo.

The first was a barbecue. Lee was having a small pool party. I only barely knew Lee, having hung out with him a couple of times at Darius’ place. I didn’t rate an invite yet, but Darius did, and he invited me. Not as a date, of course. As a plus one, but of course–of course!--not as a date.

Yeah, no one else bought that, either. Especially when we stood so close to each other. And when his arm went around my shoulder. And when I, maybe, might have put my arm around his waist and my head on his shoulder.

Okay, and then there was that one time we kissed.

That may require a little context. It was, as I said, a pool party. I wore a relatively tame bikini under my shorts and T-shirt. Darius wore trunks. Now, I knew that he was in good shape; he had been a swimmer in high school and kept it up during college and later recreationally. I had seen his well-sculpted calves and forearms, and they were quite a sight.

But I found myself wholly unprepared for what he’d look like without a shirt on. He was, to put it simply, hot. Ridiculously, stupidly, panty-droppingly hot. Six-pack, muscular without being bulky, v-shape, the whole nine yards. I already knew he was cute, but if I hadn’t been thinking about him during my “me time” before? I was never going to get that image out of my head now.

It didn’t go just one way, either. When he first saw me in my bikini, he froze. I’m not as athletic, but I still do yoga and spin classes. I’m not one for false modesty: I look fucking amazing. Darius wasn’t the only one that noticed, but he was the only one I cared about. And I knew that by the way he looked at me, and the way that I looked at him, we’d crossed well over the line and into that fuzzy area between friends and “other.”

We both kept trying to pretend, though. He and I splashed and played together, sat on the side of the pool, drank some beers, ate barbecue, and talked. Everything was normal. We could just be friends. This would still work fine.

And then we headed to the car at the end of the day, with my arm around his waist just by happenstance, and his head leaned in just a little too close to mine, as if by accident. I looked up at him, and he looked down at me at just the right time. Just the right angle. Our lips were close enough that all it would take was a slight incline of my head or a slight decline of his. His eyes searched mine; whether for a sign we should stop or a sign we should proceed, I couldn’t tell. I went up on my tiptoes, and he had his sign.

It was a small kiss, the first one. An appetizer. Our lips brushed together, and if we had stopped there, it could have been written off as a friendly peck.

We did not stop there.

Darius pulled away for just a moment, gauging my reaction. I loved that he did that, that he was making sure things were still okay. But it was more than okay; it was electric. My hand found the back of his head and pulled him in again. I flicked my tongue across his lips; the taste was intoxicating. He was intoxicating. His arms pulled me in, and I felt, for the first time, something that I’d only imagined, something hard and insistent pressing against my stomach, something that told me we were well past the point where we could pretend this was only friendship gone a bit too far. I wanted so much more. To see where this would go. To find out what we could be.

And then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended. A door slammed, and loud, laughing voices reminded us of where we were. Of who we were, or at least who we had pretended to be. We jumped apart, trying to put distance between us so that people wouldn’t get the wrong idea. Darius looked at me, and the look on his face crushed me. I realized I might be one of those people that had the wrong idea.

We drove in silence until we reached my apartment. Then he said, “I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. You’ve been a really good friend, and I’m…” He trailed off and shook his head.

My voice was almost too quiet to hear over the car’s AC. “Don’t apologize. I liked it, D. I wanted it.”

“I did, too. No, not did, do. I do want it.” His gaze wouldn’t meet mine. “That’s the problem. I need– I’m sorry, Sarah. I just need to figure some things out. I don’t want to…” He shook his head. “Please. I can’t lose you, but I need to figure out… figure out what– whether I can be more than just a friend. I want to, but I just…” A deep sigh as he looked at me. “I may not be up for hanging out for a few days. Please don’t take that as… I just need some time, okay?”

I’d spent years hiding my tears, the years where Richard broke my heart, the years where I helped people who needed me to listen and not judge. I could do it one more time for Darius. “Of course, D. I’ll be alright.” I put on a brave little, fake little smile and said, “Call me when you want to do something, okay?” Then I was out of his car, and up the stairs, and in my apartment, and I didn’t have to hide them anymore. I sat there for a long time, alone, slumped down next to my door, full-on crying for the first time in years.