By Francesca
Last night, I ran into my ex-boyfriend’s best friend while on a date with someone new.
This wasn’t a passing glance or a casual bump on the sidewalk; this was a full-on meet-and-greet. We were at a Brooklyn biergarten, and I had just put my purse down on the chair when I locked eyes with the person sitting at the very next table.
“Hey!” I cried, sounding like someone calling for help.
“Francesca!” He mirrored my expression of shock and fear.
But we hugged—I was with my ex for two years, so his friends had become my friends, too, and although I relinquished any claim on them now, I still had genuine affection for this guy. I just wished I’d run into him at any other time than this.
After making rapid, anxious small chat, my ex’s friend introduced me to his three pals, which meant I had to introduce him to my date. As they shook hands, I could feel my smile twitching.
“Well, it was so good to see you!” I grabbed my date by the arm and wheeled him away.
“You don’t want to sit with your friend?” he asked in my ear.
“Nope.” I didn’t know how to explain it further without sounding preoccupied with my ex, and I didn’t want my date to feel as awkward as I did.
We sat farther away, but over my date’s shoulder, I could see my ex’s friend sneaking glances in our direction.
Or maybe I was the one glancing at him.
Eventually, my date decided to sit beside me for a cuddle, and I realized two things, 1) we were now in full view of their table, and 2) I could no longer hide my discomfort.
I didn’t want my date to think he was the problem, so I spoke the words that never need explanation to a man:
“Let’s get out of here.”
Misleading, perhaps, but it got us out of there without finishing the beers.
When I told my mom and my friends the story the next day, the general take was: awesome! And some petty part of me did enjoy it. Running into your ex’s friend has all the envy-inducing benefits of seeing your actual ex with none of the pathos. If I had to be seen by a member of the enemy camp, at least I was wearing a red dress, with a tall, well-built guy on a Saturday night.
If we were keeping score, I was up one.
But it didn’t feel like a win. Seeing the ex-friend that night threw me off my game. He didn’t fit into the version of my life I was trying to create with this new person. He was a reminder of the past, a ghost, and I wanted to feel carefree and open to indulge in the heady promise of potential.
And I definitely didn’t want to think of my ex out with a new girl.
When a chapter of our life ends, we want the metaphor to be made literal. We want to turn the page and leave the past behind, completely. But that’s not possible.
Not in a small town like New York.
Even without physically seeing an ex, we have Facebook and Instagram to sprinkle breadcrumbs of past loves, leading us backwards instead of forward. Before I ran into his friend, I had avoided my ex’s social-media presence completely and without effort. But afterwards, I found myself creeping online.
The next morning he posted a picture with the friend I ran into. I wondered if he told him. I wondered if I wanted him to.
In other pictures, I saw he attended a friend’s wedding, one that we had both been invited to before we broke up. He had told me to put it in my calendar, but I hadn’t. I remembered wishing otherwise but knowing that we weren’t going to make it to summer.
Now, I couldn’t stop myself from combing through the photos, scanning for him, reading into body language, trying to see if he’d brought a new plus one.
It didn’t look like he had, I thought, with too much relief.
You want to move on from your old life, but you don’t want it to move on from you.
Past lives stubbornly live on in art. I write about past and present relationships often. But for the first time, it’s a fair fight. My ex is an artist himself, a musician. It’s been five months since we broke up, and although we didn’t end on bad terms, we haven’t seen or spoken to each other since. Now, all of a sudden, I feel a fleeting urge to go to one of his shows.
I’m not really sure what I’d seek to accomplish by doing so. In my fantasy, I don’t go to the show to reopen any doors, or even to get an ill-advised drink with him afterwards. I simply feel a wish to go by myself, listen, then leave.
“So then why go at all?” my best friend asked when I confessed my thoughts to her.
I’m not really sure. Maybe to spook him. Maybe to spook myself.
“I guess I just want to listen to the music. Look for signs of happiness, of sadness.”
Look for signs of me.
But I probably won’t go.
Because as hard as it is to accept that the ghosts of our past linger in our lives and surroundings, it’s even harder to accept when they leave no trace at all.