"Sorry that your adult human ex-wife is the only woman interested in speaking to me about something that isn't my zodiac sign - signs?" Henry's eyes narrowed for a moment as he thought on it, throwing the concept out into the air for, perhaps, further consideration. "Sign. Whatever. Or, they wanna know, like, the craziest thing I've seen at work. People are weirdly addicted to gory details, now. I think it's the true crime thing." With a small scrunch of his nose, Henry made his distaste known. "I get people are trying to make conversation, and it's hard for everyone and whatever, and we're all guarded and looking for love and for somene to accept our true selves, but God damn. Maybe we could all afford to be less of our true selves. And maybe that goes for me, too, honestly! Caught myself asking a woman a lot of questions about a cat I saw in the background of one of her profile photos on my last date. For what? Who was that for? I'm not gonna get a cat. Could you imagine? Jesus. I'm already enough of a red flag."
Henry sighed, exhausted from both the feat of modern dating and his tangent, and slumped back into the back of his seat a bit more, offering it more of his weight. "I just - its never...I dunno. It's never gonna be what I want it to be, I don't think. I can't decide if that's my fault or everyone else's."
"Okay, that's fair." Jack relented with a genuine smile. He knew better than anyone the kind of friend Jules was — it was one of the many things he had adored about her for most of his life. She was a fabulous, steadfast sort of friend. A fierce loyalty. It was those characteristics that had made her such a world-class mother, too.
"I've started telling really horrendous lies to keep the conversation going. Sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it, until I'm in the middle of telling the most batshit story anyone's ever heard. My most recent one was saying that I was supposed to be on that Titan submersible that blew up, but I woke up late and missed the boat." Jack looked at Henry with a half-horified, half-amused expression.
Jack delivered his friend a very sympathetic look, reaching out to clap him on the shoulder in a supportive fashion. "You know, buddy, I've just decided I'm way too high maintenance. And I'm not even, well, looking for love, I guess. But I think companionship is the harder thing to find. I did it once, I guess I was lucky to have that. And if something else comes my way, it'll be rarer still."




















