‘I should get out of here,’ I say. ‘Where’d you find that asshole?’

‘Please,’ says Brian. ‘If I weren’t here and you weren’t babysitting, you’d have gone home with him already.’

‘I go home with a lot of assholes,’ I say. ‘At least I don’t love any of them any more.’

‘Really?’ says Brian.

‘I’m over Jay,’ I say. ‘We don’t speak. And anyway, he told me once that love was not a real thing because it was comprised of too many subsidiary emotions.’

I wait for Brian to laugh, but he doesn’t.

‘Jay wasn’t the one I was talking about,’ he says finally.

‘Stop.’ I say. I look away and then turn back.

Brain told me once that I was the only woman in the world he was completely honest with. He said my problem with relationships is that I make everyone feel like it’s good enough to be who they actually are. At the the time I had thought these were both good things.

‘Trust me on this,” he’d said. “Appreciate the liars. When people don’t hide things, it means they don’t care enough to be afraid of losing you.’