Tiffany hadn’t physically changed much since I last saw her and still had that quiet but thoughtful expression her face. For whatever reason she didn’t seem thrilled to see me and didn’t even want to hang out at their house so she insisted we go straight out for lunch somewhere. Maybe seeing me like this was forcing her to repres all of those feelings she had for me and it was too much for her. Or maybe she just didn’t like me. Her only real comment to me was to say that my facial hair made me look like a convict. Alan, on the other hand, was excited to see me and wanted to know all about what I had been doing. I was careful about what I said since I can’t imagine hearing that a person is out here to see if they have a chance of stealing your girlfriend is going to go over well no matter how many games of beer pong you may have won with that person. Tiffany left us at the restaurant because she said she wanted to go shopping and I have to say it actually made me kind of sad. This wasn’t how I wanted it to go. I guess she wasn’t going to be telling me about how wrong she had been about dumping me after all. That left me to catch up with Alan and despite my disappointment in Tiffany leaving it was nice to hear what our friends from college were doing now. I hated getting nostalgic with anyone but I did enjoy finding
out who was married, who was teaching something now and who was gay. Updates pretty much boiled down to one of those three options. I could tell he was happy here though. He was from a tiny town in Ohio and most of his friends were still there which seemed to make him especially proud and satisfied to be somewhere else. But at the same time I’m sure a lot of those guys felt that same kind of pride and satisfaction in staying and establishing themselves there. I guess it all came down to what kind of a choice you were going to make and what kind of a life you wanted to have. Tiffany eventually came back and even though I had seen the two of
them interact when we were in college, she looked at him differently and he looked at her differently now. Things had changed. It seemed like they already were one of those couples that were going to be together forever. And that was a good thing. I was jealous of what they had but was I jealous because I still wanted Tiffany or because I wanted the kind of life and relationship that I knew she could have given me? I wasn’t sure but I didn’t have time to dwell on it because our time together was over before I even realized it had started. Tiffany said she had some errands to run and Alan was going off to volunteer at a hospital. And that was kind of tough to take. Even after all that Tiffany and I had shared together and even after all the games of beer pong Alan and I had played together I wasn’t much more than an afterthought to either of them. That just left me to go into the bathroom to shave so that I didn’t look like the convict Tiffany had called me.