The Night We Almost Didn't Go

February ninth. We had not actually planned this. Simone texted at six-fifteen saying she was nearby after running an errand and did I want to get one drink somewhere, and I had been in the middle of nothing in particular, Gerald trailing a new vine toward the window, the apartment in its usual Saturday-evening quiet, and I said yes before I'd checked whether I wanted to go anywhere at all. Which I think is probably the right way to make that kind of decision.

We ended up at the bar two blocks past the bus stop, the one with the exposed brick and the pendant lights that take about forty minutes to look like you planned to come here. Simone had ordered something with amaro in it and I had a whiskey sour and she was telling me about a thing that had happened at work, not a bad thing, just a specific thing, the kind that only makes sense if you were there, and I lost track of what time it was in the way that only happens when the conversation is actually good and not just filling the air.

At some point I propped my phone on a stool and set the timer because neither of us wanted to ask a stranger and we figured we should have proof we'd been somewhere. It caught Simone mid-sentence, which is the most accurate photograph of her I own. She had worn these earrings, one side only, a long gold geometric drop that she had been defending since I'd seen it at the coat hooks and made a face. By midnight I had revised my opinion and said so. She did not act surprised.

the earring in question

We stayed until the place started to quietly close around us, the kind of closing that happens at the edges first, bottles moved, a stool lifted, and then we were on the sidewalk in the cold and it was later than I'd thought and I wasn't sorry about it. Simone said something I don't entirely remember about the food photography class starting next week and then our buses came in opposite directions and that was it. One drink, technically.

midnight, technically