Dan ran into his closet, the beer they’d began drinking — slower in the race to the brain than the tequila they’d thereafter moved onto — was masking the cotton-polyester-blend of shirts and other things one usually finds in a closet into a three-for-one view of things, like taking your glasses off in the middle of a movie in the third dimension. Meanwhile, Angela — when they were dating, friends had called them Dangela, which everyone hated, and really it was only ever Raz who said it with a sort’ve emphasis on “Dan,” so it came out as Dangela, like it’d sound great without that first hard consonant — was rummaging through her suitcase in the master bathroom, one hand on the towel rack to steady herself, searching for the one piece of green fabric she knew she’d packed.

“Almost ready?” Dan shouted from his bedroom.

“Like ten minutes!” 

Both took pause, as they were simultaneously reminded of a sweet and stupid aspect of their now defunct relationship that hadn’t registered as significant until that moment. Perhaps the detail most indicative of Dan’s taste in women and Angela’s forthcomingness and Dangela as a unit in general was the subconscious assural both of them had that when Dan asked Angela how much longer she needed to get ready, they’d be ready at the exact time she gave. He counted on her precision when it came to preparatory scheduling and likewise she could bet on the fact that the instant she walked out of the bathroom he’d walk out of the bedroom, ready to go, as if they were the world’s lowest-stakes synchronized swim team.

It wasn’t so much the ease of one never waiting on the other so much as the mere convenience that however many variables in each of their lives had led them to be perfectly punctual and respectful of the other’s (some might say) materialistic needs such as makeup or finding the perfect cufflinks. Dan got jealous every now and again and Angela was an awful listener sometimes, but somewhere out there is a couple that never gets jealous, or two folks that are perpetually cognizant of the other’s needs thanks to mutual listening skills; it just worked out that way sometimes.

If two people could find emotional sustenance on this type of scheduling alone, it wasn’t Dan or Angela. In fact, what one lacked was the most crucial quality the other looked for in a partner; it was one of those cases — and I really hate to use this phrase — that was just a matter of time. But Dan needed to feel heard because he wasn’t as a child and Angela needed unconditional trust because that’s what she offered.

But while he tied his tie Dan wasn’t thinking about the time he told Angela about a particularly bad beating from his sixth-grade bully and had caught her checking her phone. While she finished the last of the tequila and zipped her dress Angela wasn’t thinking about when she’d caught Dan tailing her to work, “just making sure” she wasn’t going to some mystery man’s house. They were checking their watches, waiting for ten minutes to be up, falling back into those absurd niches of a relationship that go unseen until it’s all over.

Dan smoothed out his vest and thought about how he didn’t want Angela to leave for the airport the next morning. Angela put back on her flats and tried to remember how they’d decided to do what they were about to do. It felt like something couples, not friends, would do. Dan had offered her a place to sleep and a ride to the airport; but that’s what friends do too, Angela remembered. Only friends. The two were ready, but there was sixty seconds on the clock, so she sat on the toilet and stared at the second toothbrush next to his sink: who was it for? Dan sat on the bench at the foot of his bed and tried to remember what she was even going to Vancouver for, certain she’d told him and wanting to bring it up in the car ride to the airport the next morning, before she was gone again.

These thoughts went with the second hand as it rounded the corner and both doors opened simultaneously, as always. Dan stepped out in a white button-up and black vest, complete with slacks and dress shoes, a blood-red tie pulling it together. Angela in her knee-length green dress she’d packed for her brother's engagement party, flats she’d worn to dinner with Dan to catch up, hair still pulled back from when they’d decided to have a nightcap between friends and raced to her car from the restaurant.

“Ready?” Dan asked, as if there wasn’t this giant unspoken remainder of what had been deeply intertwined peoples. It happens every day, Dan thought. Love gained, love lost, all that.

“Let’s do it,” Angela nodded.

Dan turned back on the music they’d been trying to dance to previously, the music Angela had requested when they’d switched from beer to tequila, because, as Angela had put it, if one is going to drink something trashy, something classy should be listened to so as to even out the vibe and such. 

“I’m still a little tipsy,” Angela remarked as they began to sway individually to the soft melody, not touching each other save for the eyes.

“I’m way past tipsy, honestly,” Dan chuckled as he took a step closer. Dancing to a slow song apart is awkward, Angela thought. It’d be weird if they were friends and they couldn’t even have a friendly dance with one another.

She took a step closer as Dan did and put her arms around his neck. He put his hands on her waist and they rocked back and forth.

“I’d spin you,” he said with boozy breath, “but I think I’d kill you.” 

“I’d lift you up into the air,” she said, “but I think you’d kill me.”

They laughed, glad to have her joke as an excuse to giggle in the way that two people irrevocably engrossed in one another can giggle sometimes.

“You’re right,” he said, “it is better in formal wear.”

“See? You’ve just gotta trust me.” Due to the tipsiness Angela had previously mentioned, she’d said it before thinking through it, that word ‘trust.’ It was small and dumb but enough for them to remember the whole instead of the parts. And, still in the vein of two people not merely infatuated but, as I said, irrevocably and pathetically engrossed in one another, they each took a half-step closer.

“What time do you want me to set my alarm for the morning?” he asked in a voice that didn’t sound like it was asking about an alarm.

“My flight’s at noon, so I was thinking we could leave at nine? Give plenty of time,” she said, looking up at him with eyes far too severe for air-travel plans.

The music was on shuffle and something not attuned to slow dancing had come on. After that the entirety of the album Pet Sounds played and then a podcast that Dan had mistakenly placed in his music library, but they just rocked back and forth and occasionally regarded one another. They both knew Angela was leaving in the morning, and they both knew that Dan didn’t use two toothbrushes but in this pocket, this quick cul-de-sac off of the main avenue of their lives, which really no longer included each other, they stood as long as they could — however long that was.