For the third day in a row, Stosh Piznarski sat at the seedy little bar around the corner from his nasty little hole in the wall apartment and prepared to drink himself stupid.

Don't really need the liquor for that, He thought. I've already proved that I'm the stupidest fuckwit who ever drew breath.

He smiled at the profanity. He rarely used such language out loud; he reserved it for his inner monologue.

Maybe if I'd talked like that in front of her, she would have loved me.

He shook his head and took a pull on his tall glass of beer.

"Nope." he muttered. "Love me, love my clean mouth. I wasn't the problem in this relationship. Relationship? Ha." He took another long swig from his glass, willing himself not to think of Veronica, stretched naked on his bed, firm, soft, alabaster skin...

She had never been more than his imaginary girlfriend.

He finished the beer and dropped the glass heavily onto the bar. He glanced at the bartender and saw that she had another glass under the tap for him already. She shoved the foamy beverage at him, then scooped aside the empty, depositing it somewhere out of sight.

He took a long drink.

The bartender didn't go back to her business but stood there across from him, waiting. He glared at her. She was young. Maybe even younger than he. She was wearing jeans and a laced up leather vest with nothing beneath it. She had unnaturally black hair, shaved above her ears but long on top, teased and gelled into a rooster's comb that somehow worked on her. Her kohl rimmed eyes and black lipstick seemed at odds with her slim, toned figure and well defined arms. Piz noticed for the first time that she had a silver ring through one nostril.

He frowned. She glared right back at him and suddenly he was reminded of the day he met Veronica, the toughest girl he'd ever known. Tough when dealing with scam artists and criminals but soft when she opened her arms and ...

"WHAT?" he blurted to the bartender to divert his mind from dangerous places.

"Wanna talk about it?" she asked.

the fuck she think she is? He was indignant. Like I'm gonna tell some goth chick bartender about my pain? Fuck off.

"Not really." he heard a voice, neither indignant nor angry, answer. Did I say that?

"Usually helps." she said. "Keep it inside, it'll crush you. Let it out; set it free." she gestured with one hand as though it were a butterfly, flitting away.

"It's okay." he mumbled. I'm fine. I'm fine. I dumped Veronica and I'm fine. I've escaped her clutches and broken her spell. I'll never see her again. Never kiss her again. Never hold her...she never loved me. I'm FINE. "I'm fine."

"The hell you are." she countered. "Never seen you before in my life then you're in here every day this week pounding beers like you wanna drown. I can smell a broken heart when it sits at my bar."

"How do you know I didn't just get fired?" He asked. What the hell is that tattoo on her arm? It's not a snake...

"Losing a job is usually a one day drunk." she stated. "Except for the guys who are already halfway to winoville, I mean. You're too young and you're dressed too well plus, you're drinking beer. If you were a lush in training, you'd be into harder stuff."

"Well maybe I just found out I have cancer." he challenged her. Snakes don't have bumps...sections? what the hell is that?

"You talk to yourself. You sit here all day and you talk to yourself." she shrugged. "Classic."

"Great." he muttered. "On top of everything else, I'm a cliché."

"We're all clichés. We think we're not." She nodded, looking wise for her years. "But we are."

"She wasn't." Piz said. She was smart and beautiful and kind and funny and she didn't love me she never loved me.

"Oh." the girl's voice became very sympathetic. " I'm sorry; how did she die?"

"What? No!" Piz shook his head. "She's not dead." Would it hurt as much if she were? Would it be worse if she really loved me but died, than to know that she's out there in the world but doesn't want me? Never wanted me. It was him it was always him never me. I had a fighting chance against the memory of him but I could never compete with the reality. Never me.

"Oh thank God. You'll get over her much quicker, then."

"Will I?" his voice sounded pathetic in his ears.

"Yes." she nodded her head firmly. "the dead tend to take on this holy aura that's hard to shake. We forget all the little things they did that annoyed us. Takes a mighty big push to knock 'em off that pedestal. Now the living; we might build them up but nine times out of ten, you run into her again in a few years and you won't even be able to remember what was so hot about her."

Piz stared at her for a long moment. Then he started to laugh. He put his head down on the bar and laughed until his sides ached. It took his mind off the other ache .

"Okay." said the bartender. "that is so obviously not funny...wanna tell me why?"

Piz lifted his head from the bar and wiped his streaming eyes. "You are so wrong! I guess the good news is that I'm not such a cliche. Or maybe I'm just a different one."

"Oh?"

"Nine years." Piz declared. "She walked into my life nine years after she walked out of it and the A train wouldn't have flattened me any quicker."

"Whoa." the bartender looked suitably impressed. " Tell me about it."

"You don't want to hear my stupid story." Piz shook his head and took another drink. How big a moron am I to chase after the same mirage twice?

"Look around." she nodded toward the empty room. "You're my only customer. My options are turning up the sound on that stupid TV or listening to your tale of heartbreak and betrayal."

"Heartbreak and betrayal. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up." Piz said. "Complete and utter betrayal."

"What a bitch." the bartender hissed.

"Hey!" Piz glared at her again.

"What? I'm being sympathetic."

"She didn't betray me; I did."

"Oh." she nodded in understanding. "A moment of weakness cost you the world? That is a cliche."

"Nope!" Piz couldn't help but feel a momentary triumph. "Never cheated on her. Not in my heart. Every other girl paled in comparison. Cheated myself. I've been completely devoted to one woman. And she was completely devoted to one guy. For ten years."

"That's a long time." the bartender said. "how'd you betray it?"

"I wasn't the guy. The worst part is that I knew it. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice..." He raised his glass in a mute toast. "I convinced myself we were living a classic tragic/comic romance and had finally reached our happy ending." He took a long drink, then set the glass down. "She was supposed to meet my parents this week."

"Lots of people freak at the thought of meeting the parents. It usually means getting really serious."

"You think?" Piz chugged his beer. "My parents flew in from Beaverton, Oregon to meet her and she decided to stay in California."

"Ouch. That's an extreme reaction to parental face time."

"She doesn't even live in California anymore."

"What's she doing there?"

"'helping a friend out of a legal jamb'." Piz did air quotes. "And her high school reunion."

"Oh." she nodded as comprehension dawned. "I see."

"No," Piz shook his head. "It wasn't at the reunion. I kind of knew from the moment she packed her bag that she was never coming back. I followed her out there."

"So on some level, you knew things weren't as great as they seemed."

"Yeahhh." Piz nodded and finished his drink. "Part of me always knew, I just kept telling that part to shut up. We were living a classic romance all right, but I wasn't the lead. I was just a plot twist. A bump on the road to true love. I was the disposable rival and I knew it and I let myself do it anyway. I never had a shot."

"Ten years is a hell of a shot." the bartender pointed out as she placed another glass in front of him. "Just because it ended doesn't mean it wasn't real."

"It was never real." He grabbed the glass and took a swig. "It wasn't...actually...ten continuous years, either. I mean, it was for me. Probably not for her. This isn't the first time she bailed on me." Or even the second. I should have 'kick me' tattooed on my back.

"Tell me." she said. "I know it sounds corny but if you say it out loud, when you actually hear how stupid it is, it's a lot easier to find clarity, release, closure; whatever you need. To move on."

"That's a rosary!" Piz pointed at the tattoo on her bicep. "I've been trying to figure it out!"

"Yeah." She looked at her arm. "I like having it close." She rubbed her arm. "No one can tell what I'm doing. I mean; when I'm wearing sleeves."

"That's genius."

"You Catholic?" she asked. He nodded. "So you know confession is good for the soul."

"But I'm not sorry." He said. "I'm miserable and I'm doing penance but I'm not sorry."

"Then why are you drinking yourself into a coma for the third day in a row?"

"Okay, maybe I'm sorry for some parts of it. Clearly, it hasn't been good for me. Obviously, I'd be happier if I'd accepted the truth the first time it dawned on me..."

"When was that?"

"The spring of...no, see? there I go again. That wasn't even the first time. She'd dumped her neanderthal boyfriend a month or two earlier and I was taking my time to avoid being just a rebound and we ran into each other late one night. You ever had one of those nights? You know; when you and the object of your dreams have that soul baring conversation and you realize you're totally in sync? I basically told her I was waiting until she was ready. We agreed that real love was worth waiting for and worth doing anything to hang onto. I was on cloud nine." He sneered at the memory and lifted his glass.

"So what happened?" she demanded.

He finished his drink, placed his glass on the bar and smiled at her. "She went straight back to her ex."

"Ohhhhh fuuuuuck." she groaned.

"Red flag?" his voice dripped with sarcasm, which he did better drunk than sober.

"Big enough to hang at Perkins." she nodded.

"I must be color blind." he took another swig. "They were a disaster, of course. It didn't last a month."

"You tried again, after that?" the bartender asked. "You're either braver, stronger or dumber than you look."

"Oh, I was just beginning to get my stupid on." he assured her. "I would have left it alone but my room mate kind of told me to go for it. This is really all Wallace's fault."

"Why would you listen to a guy named 'Wallace'?"

"He's her best friend. Knows her better than anyone." Piz snorted. "Not."

"So what happened?"

"It's kind of a blur. We were at a party...a birthday party...Oh! That's right; it was at his place. Her ex threw a party for his new girlfriend who was a friend of ours so there we were and she kissed me. Rocked my world."

"She kissed you at a party that her ex threw for his new girl?" she raised an eyebrow. "Classic chick trick."

"what do you mean?"

"He had moved on; she needed to prove she could too." the bartender pointed out. "You were convenient."

"Well yeah; its obvious now!" Piz threw up his hands. "She needed to make him jealous and there I was; more than willing to be used! It worked, too; he beat the shit out of me."

"He did?"

"for a minute or two I thought he'd put the nail in his own coffin. No way would she ever go back to a jealous, abusive asshole. And then..."

"What?"

"Then some bully threatened her." Piz took a thoughtful sip of his beer. "Did I say he beat the shit out of me?"

The bartender nodded. He shook his head.

"He knocked me around a little. He destroyed this other guy. I walked in just as it started. Never seen anything like it in my life. When he finished, he laughed and just walked out. I looked over at her and she was watching him...the look on her face..."

"Ooh."the bartender winced.

"Yeah. She has never looked at me like that... the writing was on the wall but I ignored it."

"For ten years?"

"Uh...no. Term ended a couple days later and she transferred to another school. We were done but at least L-the neanderthal didn't get her either." Piz stared sullenly into his glass. "I took comfort in that."

"Well yeah, anyone would."

"Life goes on, get my degree and here I am in the Big Apple, climbing the ladder of success in my chosen field when who walks back into my life, older, wiser, sexier and more desirable than ever?"

"Hormonal ambush?" she nodded sympathetically. "Damn."

"Boom." Piz mimicked an explosion with his hands. "Day one, all over again. It was kind of reassuring to discover that the one that got away was actually so hot that I forgave myself for letting her memory prevent me from developing anything serious with anyone else. It was a good thing I didn't have a girlfriend; the poor kid would have been roadkill the second I saw Veronica again."

"Her name is Veronica?" the bartender curled her lip.

"Yeah." Piz sighed. "Even her name is beautiful."

"Who the hell names their kid Veronica?"

"Shut up. What's your name?"

"Liz. Like a normal person."

"Well, Liz the normal person, a girl who can inspire men to violence and keep the flames of passion alive in absentia for ten years can certainly pull off a name like Veronica."

"I hate her." Liz said. "she sounds like a stuck up pig."

"She's not! She's the best, most honorable and honest person I'll probably ever know! The worse thing...the only dishonest thing she ever did was trying to convince both of us that she loved me. I knew better! Or at least I should have." He took another sip. "But she was so...I fell even harder than I had back in college. It seemed like she did too. This time there were no distractions. No other guys. The neanderthal was nothing more than a faded memory and the occasional throbbing in my face. We moved in together while she studied for the bar..."

"She's a lawyer?" Liz rolled her eyes. "That figures."

"The legal profession needs people like her." Piz said, firmly. "Lawyers interested in truth and actual justice, not just winning and billable hours. We should be so lucky as to have her on the Supreme Court someday!"

"Yeah, right. Look; it's going to take more than a week long drunk to get you over her if you're going to cling to this image of her as a paragon of virtue. She used you back in college and this time, she lead you on."

"She didn't lead me on. She's been trying to apply the brakes since the day we hooked up again. I can see that, now."

"Oh, well; she's clearly perfect." Liz rolled her eyes. "You're not even trying."

"I'm not trying to get over her." Piz said. "That's not going to happen; I know that much. I just need to accept the fact that she doesn't feel...that she never felt the same way about me. She can't. Then, maybe, I can move on."

"You need to get laid." Liz said. "Good, long and hard."

"That isn't going to help."

"Couldn't hurt."

"Then I'd be doing to somebody else what she did to me!"

"Get over yourself." Liz said. "Not everyone is looking for a grand romance."

"What about that?" Piz pointed at the tattoo rosary.

"I'm not offering to fuck you, you dipshit." Liz laughed. "I'm just pointing out what you need."

"Oh. I need another one of these." Piz held up his empty mug.

"Although," Liz took his glass. "You're a lot cuter than my normal clientele."

"You're a lot cuter than my normal bartender." Piz said.

"Don't flirt with me." Liz said, plunking a full glass in front of him. "Guys like you are usually scared shitless of chicks like me."

"Guys like me? You mean stupid, self deluded romantics?"

"Young, upwardly mobile, professional types. College grads." Liz smiled.

"You're not scary." Piz snorted in his beer.

"I'm not?" Liz rested on her elbows on the bar. "Date a lot of girls with ink and metal?"

"Pshhh." Piz eloquently dismissed her fashion statements. "What's scarier; the rattle snake that warns you it's there or the virus that infects your system, unseen, unheard, undetected until you realize you're dying?"

"What do you mean?"

"Veronica would eat you alive."

"Doubtful."

"Trust me." He lifted his glass. She would eat. Your. Lunch. "I'm not afraid of you."

"OH. Well, then; flirt away."

"I'm...I wasn't flirting. I don't think." Piz looked confused. "You're the one who brought up sex."

"I assume Veronica was amazing in bed." Liz said dryly. "If she hadn't been, you wouldn't be so hung up on her."

"A sharknado..." his gaze drifted. Can't think about that. she was probably thinking of him every time she... "At first, yeah. But...The first time we were together, back in school? I always felt like she was thinking about him; her ex. Like, when we were in bed, there were three of us, at least in my head, you know? Jeez. There kind of was."

"She kept you insecure. It's where her power lay."

"No, I mean someone was secretly videotaping us."

"Ew!" Liz gasped. "The neanderthal?"

"No, he thought I did it. That's why he beat me up."

"The plot thickens!"

"It's...someone was spying on my room mate. Veronica and I just got caught in the cross hairs. In flagrante. Boy, has that been the gift that never stops giving." He shuddered at the memory of the reunion. All those people watching us...

"How did he even know about it?" she asked. "The Neanderthal, I mean."

"It was a sex tape. And a college campus. Everyone knew about it. But my problem started way before any of that. See, he had this reputation of being a complete lady killer..." Piz started to laugh. "Oh, that's ironic. Half the girls on campus were stalking him."

"I bet they weren't. That's just your insecurity talking."

"No. There were entire fraternities that couldn't score as easy as he did. He was That Guy."

"That Guy?"

"You know; the guy whose got everything; looks, money, confidence, charm...that guy." Piz grimaced. "The rest of us lived in cramped smelly dorms but he lived in the penthouse of a five star hotel. That guy."

"I hate that guy." Liz snarled.

"Everyone hates that guy."

"Except Veronica the paragon."

"Except Veronica." Piz nodded. "I thought she did. She said she did. But...I was trying to fill his, um...shoes."

"Is that what you were trying to fill?" Liz leered.

Piz laughed so hard he shot beer out his nose, causing both of them to laugh even harder. "You wrecked my drink!" Piz protested. "I should get a freebie!"

"Hey, I'm not the one who referred to your girlfriend's cootchie as her shoes." Liz shook her head and grabbed a bar towel.

"I actually referred to it as, um...his shoes." Piz solemnly corrected her.

"Yeah, that's even funnier." Liz said, topping off his glass.

"It's funny because it's true." Piz drunk deeply to make up for the beer that had gone through his nostrils. "Anyway, when we ran into each other again, as adults, it seemed like Kismet."

"Like what?"

"Karma. Good things coming to those who wait." Piz shook his head. "She left school and never came back. I had no expectation of ever seeing her again yet we run into each other in Manhattan, of all places? And we're both available? Kismet."

"Damn."

"Yeah. I felt like I'd won the lottery. Unlike before, I had something to offer. Good job with unlimited avenues of advancement; an apartment; some disposable income and no rich, handsome neanderthal in sight."

"And yet..." Liz prompted.

"A few weeks after she moved in, I began to notice how she reacted whenever his name got mentioned."

"Why would you bring him up?"

"I didn't! I just as soon forget he existed!" Piz exclaimed. "He's not that easy to ignore. She never said anything but I couldn't help notice that she bought any magazine that mentioned his name or the crowd he ran with."

"Her ex gets mentioned in magazines and shit?" she asked, incredulously.

"I told you; he's That Guy."

"I hate that guy!"

"It got worse lately. I think...I think she was cyber stalking him. I never looked in her phone or anything but once I borrowed her laptop and you know how when you put something in the address bar, the last few sites you visited pop up? His name was there."

"Uh oh."

"These days you don't have to be a licensed PI to follow someone's every move."

"No, it's pretty easy. People are so damn stupid about social media."

"And also, she is a licensed PI." Piz sighed and took a long drink.

"I thought you said she was a lawyer."

"She's both."

"Damn." Liz frowned. "On the other hand, if she were seriously stalking him, she'd be smart enough to hide it better than that."

"That's what I thought." Piz said. "I mean, who wouldn't be interested when the name of an old flame pops up online or in a gossip column, right? Nothing suspicious in that, it's human nature!"

"Yeah. Its not like she sat up late at night, Googling him and looking at his Facebook posts." Liz nodded. Piz raised an eyebrow. "Omigod!"

"The night before she flew back." He nodded. "She didn't actually go back for the reunion. She hated that school. An old friend needed some legal advice, that's all. She'd be back in a day or so, no biggie. Love ya."

"She said that?"

"Most of it. She kind of has a problem with the L word. That's what I told myself. Why is it easier to make love than to say it?"

"You were making love; she was just having sex."

"Yeah." Piz drained his glass and shoved it forward. "That's about it."

"So," Liz said, pulling another draft for him. "I take it one look at the ex and she pulled the plug on you two?"

"Not at all. In retrospect it was probably a bad idea for her friends and I to shanghai her and drag her to the reunion. She was right about that school; its evil incarnate."

"You made her go to her highschool reunion?" Liz groaned sliding the new glass to him. "I'd dump you for that."

"I paid for that mistake." Piz picked up the mug and drank. "It never occurred to us that he would show up. I still can't believe he did!"

"Who?"

"Her ex boyfriend!" Piz explained.

"At her highschool reunion?"

"It was his class too." Piz took a swig. "But he hates that place as much as she does. And it hates both of them right back."

"What happened?" Liz demanded.

"Same thing that always happens when they're in the same place:a fight broke out and I got punched in the face."

"He hit you?"

"No," Piz shook his head. "This time we were on the same side. I was helping him...or was he helping me? I don't know. I don't think he even knew it was me up there; he just knew it was her and he started swinging." 'Thanks for helping out, Piz.' that's what he said to me. I was the one bare assed up on that screen and he thanked me for helping him out. What's wrong with this picture?

"Sounds like fun." She said sarcastically.

"NO." Piz shook his head. "He wasn't at the party later but I could tell...she thinks she's so good at covering but its not really that hard to tell when her mind is on something else. She pretended to fall asleep as soon as we got back to her place but I wasn't even going to try to, you know; do anything that night. I was afraid she'd call me by his name." He took another drink. "She was supposed to come home with me in the morning but she bailed. I reminded her that my parents were coming...whatever held her there was more important. I knew...I could tell... when she kissed me at the cab, it was over. I hoped I was wrong but I could feel it in my bones: she wasn't coming back."

"That sucks."

"Bottom line: just because we met cute didn't make me the leading man. I was just an obstacle to be overcome in their epic romance. I'm Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle and he's Tom Hanks. I'm Greg Kinnear in You've Got Mail and he's...Tom Hanks again. Huh. I might be the only guy in America who hates Tom Hanks. I'm the disposable 'other man' in a tale of romance and adventure that spans more than a decade and has nearly as many dead bodies as a Quentin Tarantino movie, if, you know, Tom Hanks was ever in one of those. Either way, he wins Oscars and I get left on the cutting room floor."

"Bill Pullman and Greg Kinnear did not get cut out of those movies. In fact, both those breakups were unrealistically amicable." Liz pointed out.

"Well, it's not a perfect analogy!" Piz cried, taking another swig from his drink. "I was out of my league. Been out of my league since day one. I couldn't compete with him and it was time to stop trying."

"There's one thing I still don't understand." Liz said.

"What's that?"

"Who dumped who?"

"Oh." Piz took another drink and thought a moment. "I'm the one who said it. Even at the end, she wanted to make it work but...she bailed on my parents to help him out. All she was supposed to do was help him find a lawyer. Instead, she...Standing on that sidewalk, with my Mom and Dad, who had just flown 3000 miles to meet a girl who couldn't be bothered to show up..." He shook his head. "I never lost her. She was never mine."

"Sounds like a sad country song."

"It is a sad country song." Piz acknowledged. "Delbert McClinton. It's on the jukebox." He nodded toward the juke in the back corner. "I checked."

"Let me tell you what I think," Liz said. "I think you dodged a bullet. You're better off without her. You convince yourself that she's this perfect woman but she uses people and plays guys against each other and she gets off on the trouble she causes. Any girl who prefers a violent jerk just because he's got money and looks is an idiot who doesn't deserve a sweet, cute, true hearted guy like you."

"That's very kind of you to say."

"She chose exactly who she deserves." Liz grabbed a lowball and pulled two fingers of draft into it. She raised the glass. "May they give each other all the happiness they've earned!"

"I'll drink to that!" Piz grinned and raised his glass to her toast. They drank.

"You know-" Piz began, as he lowered his glass.

"Oh, hang on!" Liz cut him off and grabbed the remote control to the TV, turning on the sound. "I've been watching this case."

"...completely exonerated for any part in the death of his former companion, pop star Bonnie DeVille. Stu Cobbler has been arrested for the deaths of both Ms. DeVille and socialite Gia Goodman. Lt. Echolls has been cleared to rejoin his squadron..." said the broadcaster.

"Oh thank God!" Liz cried. "I'm so glad he didn't do it. I love that guy! I mean, you hate to think of any of our servicemen being homicidal maniacs but he's just been through so much. See? This should restore your faith in humanity; sometimes justice does prevail and the good guy wins..." she turned to see that Piz's face had become a stony mask. "What?"

"Nothing." he said, throwing a wad of bills on the counter.

"What's wrong?" she asked. He just shook his head.

"Thanks for listening." He muttered and slouched out the door.

Liz just sighed and shrugged. Then she turned back to the TV to watch the good news of Lt. Logan Echolls' becoming a free man once again.

"I'm so happy!" she said.