Well, so I had a bona fide boyfriend. A bf. A manfriend, as I like to say. For two months, we frolicked, and talked, and went out to eat, and slept at each other’s apartments, and had a time of it. But now I am single. Again!

Let’s just say you are me. And you go to work, say, yesterday. (Strictly as an example.) Early in the day, you get a text from the manfriend which reads:

“If youre [sic] not working tonight, we should meet up and talk.”

So you get the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, the oh shit feeling. Because this cannot be good. It is, in fact, probably bad. You decide to salvage the small amount of control/power/dignity you have in such a situation, and to lay down the time and place of such a meeting. You text back: “Fine, I’ll see you at [coffee shop] at six.” Knowing he gets off work at 5:30.

(Because the alternative, of saying something like, “Okee dokey! Come to my apartment tonight after work!” would inevitably lead to a shameful dumping in your new, dark, box-strewn apartment, and the thought of tainting your new apartment with such a bad event early on is just too sad.)

And you continue on with your workday (and by the way, the whole “serving at the busiest restaurant in town thing?” LOVE IT) and then on your way out, you get stopped by a newish girl you don’t know very well, but she’s always seemed like a perfectly nice woman.

COMPLETELY THEORETICALLY, here is how your conversation went:

New Girl (NG): Hey! Do you have a friend named [Manfriend]?
Me: Um, I have a guy I’m seeing named [Manfriend].
NG: Oh. Ah. Well, uh, I was out at a bar this weekend, and I sort of…met him.
Me: Ah…what?
NG: He kind of…flirted with me and asked me for my number.
Me: …
NG: And he asked where I worked, and I said here, and he asked if knew you, and I said yes, a little.
Me: Oh…kay… Go on.
NG: And then he said…um, he said, “Yeah, I dated her for a week, but that was a while ago, and since then we’ve just been friends.”
Me: Uh, we’ve been seeing each other for almost two months now.
NG: Oh. Oh, man.
Me: Oh my god.
NG: (Hurridly) Look, I don’t want to get in the middle of anything, or do anything weird! I really don’t! I mean, I don’t know you all that well, but you seem really nice, and I just wanted to let you know! Because after he left the bar, Kim [my friend from work] came up to me and said, “Um, isn’t that supine’s boy that was just hanging all over you?” and I really didn’t know!
Me: No, it’s okay, it’s fine, it’s not…you. Thank you for telling me all this!
NG: I REALLY REALLY do not want to get in the middle of you and your boyfriend!
Me: Well, actually, this morning he texted me asking “to talk” tonight, so I have a feeling we’re breaking up anyway. But I’m really glad you told me this. Oh man, we are going to have WORDS tonight.
NG: I’m really really sorry.
Me: Dude, it’s fine. If he’s going to do this to me, in a bar we both go to, and where I have friends that would obviously see him, then…I just don’t know what to say. But listen, just so you know, if you do decide to go out with him now…well, just know that this is how he’s treating me, and we’ve been together for two months, so this is how he’ll treat you too.
NG: Got it.

Completely theoretical conversation if by completely theoretical, you mean, “it all freaking happened to me yesterday!” ARGH!

Soooo, we met at the coffee shop. I looked fabulous. I wore the outfit I wore on our first date, plus the shoes he loves. I brought his things for him in a plastic bag. He sat down, looking sheepish (thinking he was dropping some bomb on me) and I beat him to it. I handed him the bag, rebuffed all his apologies for hurting me and “not telling me sooner” with “Dude, it’s totally fine"s and “Oh my god, it really is no big deal; we barely went out"s. He was shocked, and I was perfectly breezy and unflappable, and he just got MORE flustered, and it was awesome.

And then I let him know that, “By the way, I told NG that, contrary to what you’d told her, that we have in fact been going out for almost two months.” And he was super-duper shocked, and tried to backpedal with “Oh I didn’t say that! She must have misunderstood!” But I was cold and ice and looked him in the eye and assured him that, “Well, she understands everything perfectly now. And I wouldn’t go banking on her being your next relationship.”

He pretty much pissed in his pants. And then he slunk out of there clutching his plastic bag of stuff, and I stayed a while, and then went to a girlfriend’s house and talked her ear off all night.

It was an eventful day.