I must look like the angry, pregnant wife standing over here in this babydoll dress that makes me look second-trimester fat and a pair of ratty Playboy flip-flops, intermittently scowling at him and rolling my eyes.

I’d just walked in five minutes ago and I was already ready to go home and go to bed again. When she saw me across the room, Erica the bartender waved and reached under the bar for a bottle of Bud Select, my usual here. I was too late to stop her before she popped the cap.

“Oops,” she said. “I thought you…”

“Nope. I came to get THAT,” I say, pointing down the bar to where Tim is seated with two girls I don’t recognize.

Erica frowned. “He said Mike was going to take him home.”

“Mike left.”

She looked around. “Oh.” She pushed the open beer across the bar to me. “Take it, on me.”

I don’t drink it but instead head in Tim’s direction. He looks up and sees me before I can speak, and one of the girls glares at me when she sees his eyes light up.

“Hey babe!” he says, a little too loudly. “Thanksh for coming!”

“Are you ready?” I ask. No preliminaries. It’s one o’clock in the morning, I’m wearing a dress I found on the floor and put on in the dark, and I want to go home.

“Lemme finish this beer.” He waves an almost-full bottle at me.

I sigh and pull up a barstool. Tim wraps his arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re here. You’re the best.” He turns to the girl I don’t know. “This girl is great,” he says to her, shaking me by the shoulders and smiling his dopey-drunk smile. “She’s such a great friend.” Then he looks back at me, turns my face toward his with a hand on my chin and looks right in my eyes. “I owe you. Big time.”

“Yes,” I say, pulling away.This is how he looks at me when he wants to kiss me. “Yes you do.”

So I wait it out. He finishes his beer and doesn’t want to leave until I have him by the arm and am tugging him past the pool tables and out the door. He has to get something from his truck. He forgot to say goodbye to someone. He wants to have a cigarette.

“Smoke in the car,” I say, getting in and slamming the door. “Please. Just get in.”

He blows the smoke out the window while I drive. “I’m really sorry,” he says drowsily as he flicks the half-spent cigarette out onto Lansdowne. “I came with Ben. He left to go do something with his girlfriend.” He practically spits out the last word. “He totally ditched me for her.”

“Um.”

“Then Mike said he’d take me home but he left early and I don’t know. You’re like my only real friend.”

I turn onto River Des Peres Road and roll down the window, letting the wind blow on my face to wake me up a bit.

“Twice in a week, though. You can’t keep doing this to me, you have to make sure someone less than twenty minutes away can drive you.”

“I’m sorry. I tried, but Mike–”

“Then leave with Mike next time.” I sigh and stare at the road. “E would not like it if he knew I was out with you in the middle of the night. I don’t want you to drive when you’re drunk but you can’t keep putting me in this position.”

“But we’re friends now. He’s secure, he doesn’t mind me.” He reaches across the console and rubs my arm. I try to shake him off.

“He would mind this. Stop rubbing me like that.”

“You’re just such a great girl, babe,” he says. My lecture has obviously had no effect. “Remember when we…” And he’s off.By the time I pull up to his house, drunken nostalgia has gotten the best of him. “Come in.” He tugs at my hand.

“No.”

“Then gimme a hug.” He leans awkwardly across the console and wraps his arms around me. I sort of pat him on the shoulder. “You really are the best,” he whispers. “I owe you for this.”

He repeats this several times before I can convince him to get out of the car. Yes, he owes me. Again.

I drive to E’s house instead of my own, because I know it’s the only way I’ll feel alright about tonight.