The very nice guy I was dating for two months just stopped by for the exchange of personal items left behind. I had three of his books, and he had two champagne glasses Catherine gave me as a belated birthday present. I really wanted those glasses back.

It took us a month to schedule a time to do the return. First it was him cancelling, two weeks in a row, which was part of the reason why we broke up, because sometimes he just cancelled far too late in the day for it to be acceptable to me. Then it was me cancelling, because I just didn't feel like seeing him. I had already moved ahead, I thought, and I didn't need to take two steps back.

The sun was streaming through my apartment when he arrived. I was on the phone, saying goodbye to my parents. My mom said, "You sure do have a lot of people running through your apartment," and I said, "Well, mom, that's because I'm a drug dealer. Yea, that's why I had to move back downtown. Smack, crack, I got it all."

And my parents laughed. They think I'm funny, I think.

He walked in and handed me the box and I handed him his books and we sat there and talked for about a half hour about him trying to find a job, and me dealing with all my work shit, and then he invited me to a birthday party tonight, for his friend that I don't know that well, the one that I always thought was a bad influence on him (though I never said it out loud, because, let's face it, it's none of my fucking business) even though his friend, too, is a very nice guy, at a bar somewhere in the East Village, he couldn't remember the name of it, only the cross streets, and I thought to myself, of course you can't remember the name of it, and I smiled and said I would try to make it, even though walking around the East Village looking for an unnamed bar located at an intersection where there are approximately twenty bars that fit the same description is the exact opposite of how I want to spend my Saturday night.

And he knows that. Anyone who knows me knows that.

As he left he wished me luck. I didn't even get up from my seat to hug him. I just felt odd and cold, which is weird because we didn't have a bad breakup, or anything, no big scenes, no screaming, no tears. We simply made it to our first disagreement, and decided not to continue.

Part of me thinks we spent two months smiling and agreeing rather than disagreeing until we both were exhausted with not saying what we really meant. That's not totally true. I acted like myself with him. I just acted like the most ideal version of myself. I think he did, too. That's what wore us out.

After he left, I felt depressed, though I'm not sure why. I recognize that the act of returning items left behind isn't particularly uplifting (though it's nice to get your stuff back), but it's necessary and inevitable. It's on par with getting your teeth cleaned every six months.

And it wasn't that I thought I had made a mistake, that we should still be together. Because he is so very, very nice, I would never detail my problems with him in print, but there were enough there to fill my girlfriends' ears, pressed to their cellphone; my IM screen; my paper journal, the new one with the da Vinci sketch of a thoughtful woman on the cover. No, we were never meant to be.

I just missed having someone to talk to all the time. I could talk to him for hours and never get bored. There aren't that many people I like talking to, and I always liked talking to him. Isn't that what relationships are all about?

Who am I kidding? I have no idea what relationships are about.

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