"Right right. Jackie. Christ. You were a fucking wreck."

Chad smiled, giving James the raised eyebrow. "And now look at you."

Abashed, James asked, "So how did you get over her?"

Chad looked at James honestly. Between men, there are very few authentic moments. Interpersonal relationships between men lie in a fuzzy realm of half-truths, exaggerations, and false bravado. On rare occasions, usually brought on by severe external stressors, two men will reveal their actual selves to each other, and will converse as two adult human beings. Until things regress back to dick jokes and homophobia. "James, I never really did get over her. I still miss her. Despite all her flaws and all her fucked up insecurities. I still miss her."

There was a pause, and James let it go.

"But what I do now is look for someone to replace her. Someone I'll love as completely as I did Jackie, or even more so."

"So. Kundera's lyrical womanizer."

"That's what I thought. But it's not anymore. I've become the epic womanizer. The blonde girls simply because they're blonde. The Model simply because she was a model. I'd forgotten what the point of this all was."

"Right."

They sat silent for a moment, collecting their thoughts, thinking about what had been said, what would be said, and the impossibility of love. There really is something to be said about beer, men and misery. It's just so bittersweet. The beer, that is. Men saddened by the injustice of failed love is just sad.

"I'm sorry about Julia, by the way."

"I suppose I am too."

"You can do better, though."

"I don't think I can."

"Really." The two of them thought about their memories of Julia. For Chad, she was suburban and domestic, a girl whose dream and sole aspiration was to be a wife with children, supported by a loving, doting husband. Just so pathetically Middle American to the core. Really. Julia, the light of whose life?

"She was making breakfast one morning. Her Meyer lemon and ricotta pancakes. I had just stumbled out of bed, and she smiled at me from the counter, standing in front of the mixer. The light was pouring in through the kitchen window, and the way it illuminated her...." He stopped and gave pause, as the evoked image brought on a surge of emotion that he wrestled down. As any decent gentleman would.

"She looked ethereal. An angel. Her smile. The light catching her blonde hair made it glow like gold, and her pale skin shone. I can't explain it. It was almost a pregnant glow, as if to say to me that she was ready to be my wife. And I have to say. I loved her. Then and there. There was no question. I loved her. Absolutely loved her then with all my heart. And so I had to run out of my apartment. I just had to. I burst out running from the apartment. I was just so overwhelmed. I loved her so much at that moment it scared the shit out of me. I was actively afraid of how much I loved her. I didn't know what to do."

The gravity of what he admitted stunned Chad. "Fuck."

The two nursed their beers. The jukebox played something wildly inappropriate for the moment, but what can you do. Chad thought about saying something, but then thought better of it. He would leave the silence be.

The crowd at the bar milled about, ignoring the two men who sat, rather stunned, staring into their beers, hoping for some unknowable truth to be revealed through the Brownian motion of the carbonation.

Chad knitted his brows for a moment. "Wait. So that was the day of the awkward third wheel pancakes."

James thought for a second, then laughed sheepishly. "Yeah..... Sorry I dragged you into that."