they watched each other, it had been a long time, too long, unless you asked them. quietly they both dealt with a flood, some gates of unwashed emotions, pouring out after years of holding back. neither of them let it show, neither would. he went about the night, trying to ignore the most beautiful girl in the room, because he had too. couldn’t let on that he still might care, couldn’t let her catch him wondering. she knew he saw her, knew about the little game, knew she would win eventually, so she smiled, the same smile he loved, not toward him or for anything generally, just to let him see. eventually he walked up to the bar and she walked up beside him ‘not going to say hi?’ she said shyly. ‘not much to say’ he tried to get the bartenders attention ‘what are you drinking?’ looking at her for the first time. ‘you know’ he did. the bartender was distracted anyway. ‘just wanted to see if anything changed’ he addressed her like you might, up and down ‘should we keep pretending we don’t see each other?’ he smiled then. ‘probably, but you won’t, you’ll ask me what I’m doing later’ she was fairly sure of this. ‘how about I buy you drink, you go back over to your girlfriends, make some jokes, get swooned over by the vultures, then I pick you up for breakfast tomorrow’ he ordered from the freed up barman. ‘why tomorrow?’ she was confused. ‘because’ handing her a glass of red ‘if all I wanted was company at two am, it wouldn’t have taken so long to talk again’ he kissed her on the forehead, grabbed the beers from the counter, and before he was back to the table, started thinking about morning.