When you come face to face again with someone you went out with years and years ago, wouldn't your brain fly out of your head too? I couldn't stop the nonsense from cascading out of my mouth, and it's a mystery to me whether he understood anything that I said or was smiling just to be polite. Still a perfectly decent guy. Makes me wish I hadn't blown him off, but I wasn't in the best frame of mind back then. Impossible to believe anyone could genuinely like you if your erstwhile boyfriend had been seeing two other women, and had even used your car on one occasion to take one of them out to dinner. I had the terrible, terrible luck to get the biggest asshole on the planet for a first boyfriend. I have him to thank for filling one whole corner of my mind with extreme doubt about anyone's sincerity; where, previously, I had no such inclination. It's also thanks to my experience with him that I acquired the ability to sabotage every possibility of a relationship before it even springs off the blocks. I didn't just choose to be a spinster, I turned myself into one.
After the short encounter with the guy from the distant past, I kept asking my friend the usual susie-high-school questions like 'was I blushing?', 'did I say something stupid?' and 'did my hair look okay?' -- all right, not suitable behavior for someone pushing forty, but we can't all be wonderfully mature. Well, that particular friend, who I suppose would sit herself right in the 'wonderfully mature' section, succintly replied "I wouldn't think too much about it. He's probably forgotten about you by now." (cue in sound of hissing cat). Perhaps it might have stung a whole lot less if she had said it a day or two after the encounter, but holy mother of god, she gave it to me barely fifteen minutes after the fact. Meow meow, indeed.
Tell you something else has kicked me in the stomach. She turned out to be right after all.
