a rush of blood to the head

its dark and OM and i are walking around palmer square with styrofoam cups of miko's italian ice clutched in our hands. a digestive walk after a pile of indian food and heavy conversation.

i have just spent some hours giving him my best logical argument for why he CANNOT just hang out with a girl "as friends" if he knows that she wants to be more than friends. that he must decide if he wants to move ahead with her, even in the face of all his emotional upheaval over the barely-dust-settled break up or step away and save her the trauma. it's unkind, i tell him. if he is not into her but she is diggin' on him, it is not right, or acceptable, or OK to "hang out with her as friends". because it never works that way for girls. i can speak from experience, i tell him. this new girl who has just appeared on the scene and become smitten with him is not a good person on whom to practice "being just friends". it sucks. it hurts. it is not worth it.

the elephant in the park looms so large that i finally cave.

"you know that it IS in fact ok to hang out with ME just as friends, right? you know why i am the exception to this rule? right?"

i think i actually shudder a lurch of terror as i hear myself proceed, but i start giggling instead...

"because i WAS infatuated with you. but i got over it and now that is like another life. i barely even remember that girl, and i'm not sure i ever really knew you. so now we CAN just be friends, because that is all behind us."

his slow one-sided smirk drew my eyes up to meet his for a nanosecond before i had to awkwardly scrape my plastic spoon into my ice again and look away. he stopped walking, so i obliged to stop too. he took a step away from me.

"well, since we're being honest, i want you to know that i WAS interested in you too. it just wasn't the time. i was going through some stuff. it would have been bad for both of us. but yeah. i get it. i know."

and we resumed walking. in silence for a few feet before i gasped to fill the air with blathering nonsense.

he insisted on walking on the street side of the sidewalk. he opened car doors and cafe doors and complimented me.

and all the while i was reassured, like a cosmic hand on my shoulder, that i feel zero romantic feelings for him. his issues, newly minted (or increasingly ill-managed) profanity streaks, his assumptions about me and my life and what i believe. there's nothing. it's gone. friend, yes. more than friend? hell no.

but damn he does look good these days.
well, lucky for me, so do i.