Lasts week, after we broke up the first time, I went to a new sports bar in the Gables and saw, by chance, a bar tender from John Martin’s having a drink by himself. I sat with him, he bought me a beer, and in a few minutes it came out that he’d just been dumped out of a three year relationship. We commiserated. He’s 34 and he’s done this a lot.

Yesterday after work I went to John Martin’s, where he was tending bar, and again he bought me a beer and we checked in on each other and he said, “Give yourself seven or eight days. Maybe you won’t be 100% better, but you’ll feel better than you do now.”

So I set an alarm on my phone for seven days later.

Halloween, coincidentally.

4 p.m. on Halloween my phone is gonna buzz and there’ll be a message saying, “This doesn’t feel as bad as it did last week.”

And when I look at the message I’ll say, “Yeah. That’s probably true.”