Dear Pretend Girlfriend:

Here is the third way we might meet, no pressure.

The day we meet we are both dating other people. I’m taking a girl I know and like well enough out to have drinks, and you are on your fifth date with your current girlfriend. There is something lacking about both our dates, nothing that we can quite put our finger on, nothing that can be pinpointed exactly. Mine is sweet and kind and cute, and yours is, you will later tell me, attractive and wealthy and generous.

But good Lord, do I get bored with my conversation partner quickly. I excuse myself to the ladies’ room, which is always a gamble on lesbian dates, because they might do that awful thing where they insist on coming with you, like we’re sorority sisters or something. Is it a coincidence that you also got up to use the restroom, or did you see me pass by your table and make a snap judgment? I’ll never know because you’ll never say.

I take my time at the bathroom sink, reapplying lip gloss, checking my phone for messages. It’s my sigh of discontent at the blank screen that draws you over. You wash your hands and say, with a little nod of your chin at my phone, “Waiting for a call?”

“I wish,” I mutter. “It would get me out of this dreadful evening.” I say this with my overdone Lady Astor accent, swishing an imaginary cigarette holder through the air. “I simply won’t make it past the third cocktail, I daresay.”

You reach for the paper towel dispenser, which is predictably empty, and I fish my handkerchief out of my purse and give it to you. You glance at the monogram and make a guess at my name. It’s a wonderful, absurd guess. I shake my head with a grin.

“But maybe I’ll change it, now that you’ve come up with it.”

You might be going in for some kind of kiss; again, one of those things I’ll never know for sure, because the door swings open and an old lady shuffles her way to a free stall. I give you a little wave goodbye and start to leave.

“Don’t forget this,” you say, holding out my damp handkerchief.

“You can keep it. I have others.” I click my tongue and reach into my bag for one of my cards. “But if you ever feel like giving it back, look me up.”

I leave the ladies’ room, resolved to make it through the evening even though I’m not on my best behavior, because I’m a gentleman and gentleman brave things like boring evenings all the time. I’m almost back to my table when my phone buzzes. I take it out and see an unknown number, and I glance up in time to see you, leaning against the wall with your phone at your ear.

I hold your gaze as I answer. “Yes?”

“I thought I’d look you up,” you say, tinny in the phone lines. “Want to go have a proper drink somewhere else?”

“That would be incredibly rude of me,” I say. “My date would be livid.”

“I’m going to tell my date I feel ill. Meet you on the corner in five.”

Well, I mean, who can say no to that? I do go back to my table, I do beg off early, I do leave enough to cover the bill, but I also get to the corner in about three point five minutes. The next day, you break things off with your girlfriend, and I smoke a cigarette and do my Astor impression for you some more.