Capparelli’s is only about five blocks from my apartment. In a city this big, that’s like hitting the lottery.

The Uber driver picks me up, and I wonder if I should have asked ThatGuy for more information. That was always the plan, but those plans fell apart when I agreed on a spur of the moment meeting.

“We’re here,” the driver says.

I blink and stare out at the sidewalk. That was fast. Too fast. My head is light, and my fingers are weak when I thank him and reach for the door handle.

This is a nice area, and I know the coffee shop is a popular one even though I’ve never been. I’m five minutes late already, so there isn’t really additional time to settle my nerves before I venture inside. The scent of freshly ground coffee tickles my nose when I walk through the door.

Muted conversation and laughter spill into the open seating area. It’s dim and intimate, and almost every table is occupied, but I don’t see him yet. The few single men I do see are not candidates, considering they look nothing like the photo. They aren’t holding a rose either, and he said he’d bring the rose.

I walk to the counter and wait my turn to place an order. The line is long, and it takes fifteen minutes to get a hot chocolate. Once I have it in hand, I slide into a vacant table the moment the former occupants leave.

Trying to quell my nerves and give my hands something to do, I retrieve the copy of Pride and Prejudice I snagged from the shop and set it on the table, adjusting it several times. Then I take a sip of my hot chocolate, only to discover that it’s in fact way too hot, and I’ve burned my tongue.

Why do coffee shops do that? I have to wait at least another fifteen minutes for it to cool down to drinking temperature. My foot bobs up and down as I check my phone.

No messages.

He’s thirty minutes late now, and I don’t know what the protocol is in a situation like this. There are a lot of plausible explanations. He got stuck in traffic, which happens often in this city. Or he thought he told me another place, and went there instead. I pull up google to double check that there’s only one Caparelli’s, which in fact there is, and then I try to invent some other logical reasons he isn’t here.

After a while, the crowd begins to dwindle, and I feel more and more like a fool.

I shouldn’t be here.

It feels like a cruel trick. Like he’s taken the exact scene from the movie that he’s referenced and stood me up the way Kathleen believes she’s been stood up too. It’s too much of a coincidence, and I don’t understand how this happened. If I had any pride left, I would take it and walk right out that door. But a part of me still wants to believe that he will be here at any minute, rose in hand, explanation at the ready. He will apologize, and then everything will be fine.

Only that isn’t what happens.

More minutes go by, and so do the customers. I’m one of the few left when a staff member kindly informs me that they are closing. I apologize and scoop up my book, wishing I’d never associated it with this memory. It really is one of my favorites, and I really am a fool like Kathleen Kelly.

I exit the shop and toddle down the sidewalk, vaguely aware that the safest thing for me to do is call an Uber. Even if it’s only five blocks, it’s late. The old Lola wouldn’t have cared. She would have used her emotional crisis as an excuse to be reckless. But maybe I haven’t really changed that much after all because the fresh air feels necessary, and I can’t find the energy to be logical.

I’m feeling quite sorry for myself and the state of the world for about a half a block, and then I come to a dead halt. Sprawled out on the ground like a vagrant in his two-thousand-dollar suit is Adrian Daire. It takes me a minute to be certain, but one glance at his face and I know that my eyes are not deceiving me. If there was ever any truth to his statement about being sober, he’s made a liar of himself now.

The half empty bottle of Jack rests between his legs, and the scent is disgustingly strong the closer I get.

“What are you doing?” The words barely squeak out of my throat.

He squints up at me, eyes blank. And he doesn’t have an answer for me. I’m still trying to grasp the reality of my situation. I’m trying to comprehend what possible explanation he could have for being here, but there’s really only one.

“It was you, wasn’t it? It was you all along.”

His reaction is to take another drink, and that is my answer. “How could you do this?” I shake. “What is wrong with you?”

“A lot, Lola,” he croaks. “There are a lot of fucking things wrong with me. You should know that by now.”

That explanation isn’t good enough. I should walk away. I should go home and never speak to him again, but I have a burning need to understand this. It’s the only thing I can grasp onto right now. I need to know why he did this. “Tell me why,” I demand. “Did you want to hurt me? Did you want to punish me for Ryan? Is that it?”

Daire stares at the sidewalk as he spins the bottle around his finger. “I needed you to choose me.”

“What?”

His eyes cut to me, studying the details of my face with unnerving concentration.

“I needed you to choose me.” He shrugs. “It was that simple. Right or wrong, I didn’t want you dating anyone else, so I created this profile.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. He was nothing like you.”

Daire mocks me with cruel laughter. “He was exactly like me, Lola. But you wouldn’t know that because you tarred me with one brush a long time ago and that was that. Fair enough, I deserved it. I deserved your hate and more. I’m a selfish bastard though, and it didn’t change how I felt about you. Say what you want, but those conversations were real. They were me.”

I don’t know what to say. Maybe there is some truth to his words, but it doesn’t excuse what he did. He tricked me. He lied to me. He made me feel like an idiot. “You just left me sitting there,” I whisper. “Humiliated.”

“That wasn’t my intention. I wanted to tell you, but what it boils down to is that I’m a fucking coward. And I couldn’t get over you choosing him. Just like you chose Ryan.”

“You are a coward,” I sob. “Because you could never just admit your feelings to me when you had the chance. Let me tell you something about Ryan. When he brought me along that first night, I thought it was my chance to get close to you. He caught me watching you, and do you know what he told me? He apologized for your standoffish behavior. He said he was sorry you were a dick to me, and he didn’t understand why you hated me.”

Daire shakes his head in denial. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“Right, just like he wouldn’t tell you I slept with him if I didn’t.”

“You chose him,” Daire slurs. “That’s all there is to it.”

“I loved Ryan, but I didn’t choose him. I settled for him. And that’s the difference.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I guess all the things you said about me were true. I’m no good for you, LB. I’m glad you can finally see that.”

“You are infuriating,” I screech. “Do you know that? Do you even realize how exhausting it is to deal with you? You’ve thrown away a year of sobriety, and for what? Because I hurt your feelings? Get over it. In fact, get over yourself. You always take the easy way out, and this is why we never could have worked out.”

He finishes off the bottle in silence. And it feels wrong to leave him here like this, but I’m not responsible for Daire anymore.

It’s the most sobering realization I’ve ever had.