“I just…I don’t know anymore.” She grunts and rolls her eyes, her jawline tensing. “Where is this going, anyway?” She’s still wearing her page uniform. This meeting was arranged coldly and with little words in the halls of Studio 6A during lunch break, the leftovers from the previous night’s alarming bedside exchange. I twist my face as if I’m pondering the question, but I merely focus on the gay pride-colored peacock logo pinned to her lapel while I debate whether or not to be honest. I’m paying twenty dollars for two drinks so we can break-up.

“Nowhere,” I mutter with contrived conviction, staring at my fuzzy and warped reflection in the patterned steel bar top. “Fast.”

I always feel like I’ve delivered some sweeping, brooding Patrick Swayze-in-Road House line, until their lip begins to quiver, and they make an animated mad dash for the door. The bartender always gives a stare that could be interpreted as either understanding or disapproving. I usually realize about ten seconds too late that I’ve let the thrill of the world’s stage turn me into a complete prick, replaying the words in my mind and disagreeing with every syllable. I finish both of our drinks and head for the train home, ears muffed with headphones. I always try to carry a copy of Blood On The Tracks for just such an occasion.

“She’s a really nice girl, man,” John mutters from a Cannon’s barstool, shaking his head and curling his face. John is always quick to voice his mind, and I admire that about him. It’s the most admirable trait you can ask for in a man. Portly, bespectacled, and meek, John’s advice is the sort that pseudo-Christian businessmen often laugh off with a sarcastic ‘OK, Jesus’. It’s a nice thought, but it’s entirely unrealistic in this world. “And she really liked you.”

“I know…but I’m not really in love with the girl…I was just fucking her…for a few weeks…what do you want me to do?”

“There’s more to relationships than just fucking, you know.”

“I know that,” I groan, running my hands over my face. “Believe me, I’d fall in love with her if I could. That’s kind of the purpose of a prop, man…something to stand it for what you would like to be there.”

“You use women, man,” he explodes with a fed-up boom, throwing up his arms and drawing the attention of the lulled regulars. “And I don’t get it! Because you’re generally such a good person.” He thrusts his hands against the bar to push himself from his seat and stalks off to the bathroom. Robbie strolls over with interest, as if my glass were empty. I swear that I have one of the island’s best bartenders. He begins pouring me a fresh draft, even though mine is still about a quarter full.

“It’s a fuckin’ broad, kid,” he mumbles, raising his eyebrows and nodding. “Don’t listen to him.” He plants the brimming drink next to the evaporating one, winks and walks back to crane his neck at whatever hockey game he has the evening’s tips riding on.

In the end, I know that both men are right. And while John takes the moral and logical high road, I don’t think we should crown him as the more level-head just yet. I think that John is so angry not so much because he thinks she’s a nice girl and I’m making a mistake, but because he’s watching me squander everything he’s ever desperately pined for. In my misguided head, I want her to be someone and something else, and in his misguided head, he thinks that she’s everything he could ever ask for.

“What’s up with Johnny?” Mark asks, lured away from the dart board by the commotion.

“Nothing…anyone got next?”

“You do,” he says, pointing the tail end of a dart at me and ordering another draft.

I try to assemble the proper words to express to John that I’m not a heartless human being, just someone who needs believe in the idea that he needs to be rescued by a singular entity. And this one was not the singular entity that could rescue me. She was merely driftwood to cling to when my arms grew tired of treading water. I fail to find a good way to say it, the idea instead dissolving into inane jokes and television commentary. He’s quick to gather his jacket and head back to Astoria. Tomorrow, sometime around rehearsal, he will apologize, but I will know that he meant it and that he was right.

This is only a test.