Ten minutes into the date and she starts talking about her high school boyfriend who started texting her again. I start to get the feeling that this is not a date.

Then she talks about a gift she bought for him years ago, a $450 watch, and how she's never spent that much on a gift for a boyfriend before, she hasn't even spent that much on Adam.

When I notice her choice of verb tense, I'm on the last quarter of my pint, and I start to consider finishing it off, slamming it down, putting on my coat and walking out.

Instead I ask how Chicago was.

She says she loved it, she sounds like she did before her and Adam broke up. She says she wants to move there, it would be great to pay $300 a month for rent, to have her own car, even with the cold, it was so cold when she was there, -18� with the windchill. She spent Christmas with him and his family.

I'm starting to stare into space. I'm losing my appetite for the free popcorn. I'm starting to think that drink #2 may be a bad idea.

She convinces me to get a second beer.

Now she notices that I'm agitated. I'm quieter, I'm unresponsive. And when she asks, I remember my resolution to stop beating around the bush and how much better it feels to just say something and be honest instead of saying that I'm fine, that everything is ok, lying about how I'm drinking my beer so quickly because of how salty the popcorn is.

So I say that I'm bummed, and she asks why. I say it's because of the Chicago talk. "I like you here," I offer, and that suffices for about ten minutes, until I'm apparently still not over it, and I apologetically sputter, "It's because of the Adam stuff. What is your status with him?" I'm implying that it's totally okay if you're with him. It's totally fine, just let me, like, know, okay?

"I don't know what my status is with him," she says and she looks off, over my left shoulder towards the bar.

I start drinking my beer very quickly.

Now I have to play it off as if it's totally cool, no big deal, it's your life, you're under no obligation to me, and I try to paint this picture for her. Instead, I bring up the time a month ago when we got ramen together and she talked about how when she breaks up with someone, she just ends up finding someone who's nice to her to spend time with. I say that I don't want to be that person to her.

She denies that she ever said this. (I am 100% positive that she said this to me.) She gets a serious look in her eyes and she says that there's no way that that's all I am to her. She assures me of that.

Now she gets quiet and won't make eye contact, so of course now I feel confident enough to stare straight at her. She glances over at me every few seconds and says "What?!" in that defensive way that she always always always, every single goddamn time, says it. I say, "You tell me what," and she says "I'm trying not to cry right now." It definitely looks like that's the case.

So I try to make her feel better, because I do honestly believe that it's totally fine if she's still with her ex-boyfriend, it would just be a great treat for me if she stopped talking to me like she has been, like I was her current boyfriend. I just ask her to tell me who or what I am to her.

She doesn't or can't answer this question.

We leave the bar and walk to the apartment that she's cat-sitting at a couple of blocks away. We sit around the apartment for a little less than an hour saying nothing in particular. I've started to learn that her defense mechanism is to just start talking about nothing that has to do with anything, which she enacts by talking about her ex/current boyfriend's band.

The cat that she is watching has fled under the bed. She's trying to coax him out. I walk into the bedroom, get down and look at the cat.

His eyes are glowing out at me, dimly. I lie flat on my belly and fold my arms under my chin and stare at him. I start to drift off, lying on the cold wood floor in my winter coat and Timberlands.

A few minutes later I come to my senses and I get up to leave. "I'll walk you down," she says, sitting on the arm chair next to the couch.

I stand and tell her not to, lean over and kiss her on the top of the head and walk to the door. She gets up and follows me, insisting on walking me down because it'd be rude not to. She gets as far as the outside of the door, tries to pull it shut but she definitely can't because it is literally the most stubborn door I have ever seen, we spent 10 minutes trying to get it open earlier in the night.

I make up some lame excuse about the door not staying shut, that the cat'll get out if she walks me down. She either buys it--which I feel bad for, thinking that she's thick enough to believe--or understands that I really, really don't want her to walk me down three flights.

I almost walk away with just "Bye," my back towards her, but I turn around and embrace her deeply, the way I would hug someone I loved very much whom I was leaving for a long, long time.

I can feel it in her arms, though, she's not hugging me back in the same way, I feel arms around me that are eager to let go, so I let go. Now, I do walk down the stairs with my back to her. I don't look back and I mutter, "Goodnight."

Goodnight, girl who cannot explain what I mean to her. Goodnight, girl who texts me to see when I got home safely. Goodnight, girl who then texts that I was "more than welcome to stay." Goodnight, girl who literally has no goddamn idea what she's doing.