A steakhouse in downtown Columbus.
I was meeting a potential manufacturing partner.
Ryan was leaving the bar.
We saw each other at the same moment.
He stopped.
I stopped.
For a fraction of a second, I was back in my living room at one in the morning.
Pathetic.
Then the feeling disappeared.
Ryan looked older.
Not dramatically.
Just tired.
He wore a suit that probably cost more than mine.
He glanced at the people behind me.
Then at me.
“Heard the company's doing well.”
“Yeah.”
“Lauren tell you?”
“No.”
He nodded.
Awkward silence.
Then he said:
“For what it's worth, that night got out of hand.”
I almost laughed.
“That’s one description.”
He shoved one hand into his pocket.
“She told me you guys were basically finished.”
“She lied to you about some things.”
“Yeah.”
He looked toward the door.
“I probably lied to myself about some things too.”
That was the closest Ryan Mercer would ever come to apologizing.
I didn't need more.
He started walking away.
Then stopped.
“Daniel.”
I turned.
He looked uncomfortable.
“I shouldn't have called you that.”
I knew exactly what he meant.
“Pathetic.”
He nodded.
I thought about saying something clever.
Something devastating.
For years, stories teach us to wait for moments like that.
The perfect comeback.
The sentence that makes the other person feel what we felt.
But standing there, I discovered I didn't need it.
“You were trying to make yourself feel bigger.”
Ryan looked at me.
“It worked for about ten minutes.”
Then I walked back to my table.
That was the last time I saw him.
Three years after the divorce, the little American flag still hung beside my porch.
The house looked different.
New paint.
New landscaping.
Different furniture.
The maple tree had grown large enough to shade half the driveway.
One October night, almost exactly three years after Lauren brought Ryan through that door, I sat on the porch with a woman named Emily.
We had been dating eight months.
She was a physical therapist.
Divorced once.
Funny.
Direct.
Emotionally incapable of pretending everything was fine when it wasn't.
It had annoyed me at first.
Then I realized that was probably why I liked her.
We were drinking coffee after dinner.
Rain had started.
Softly.
Almost exactly like that night.
Emily looked toward the flag.
“You disappeared.”
“What?”
“Mentally.”
“Sorry.”
“Don't apologize. Where'd you go?”
I looked through the front window.
The sofa was visible.
Different sofa now.
For a moment, I saw the old pillow sitting in my lap.
Lauren smiling.
Ryan standing beside her.
I told Emily the story months earlier.
Not every detail.
Enough.
“Three years ago tonight,” I said.
She understood immediately.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
I thought about it.
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Then I laughed.
“What?”
“I used to replay that night and think of things I should've said.”