One Life Becomes Two

I left the deafening bar, exiting onto Wells Street into a warm and welcoming drizzle. I realized that I had, finally, had enough of this. Endless standing, shouting meaningless pleasantries inches from a companion's ear, music too loud to converse normally, and drinking mechanically for want of anything better to do.

That stroll up Wells in the rain, towards a spot more favorable for taxis, was in retrospect rather cinematic. Seen from overhead, my drenched reflecting could easily have passed for a lovelorn John Cusack. But while he would have been desperately longing for some specific, dark-eyed waif, my longing was more general. For something calmer, someone to talk quietly to and do low-key everyday things. For the serenity of domesticity. Not the clamor of superficial, fake sociability. Someone real. I found her not long after.