She walked into the arcade bar that Banana frequented and where she was meeting up with Piz. From his texts he seemed excited to meet up with her despite it snowing all day, threatening to freeze all the roads.
The bartender was instructed by Banana to flirt shamelessly with her so Piz got jealous, which was just a funny game considering that Piz was already in an (albeit terrible) relationship and she wasn't about to get involved with all that.
"...you still like him!" the bartender said with his trademark grin. Her half-smile and glance to the right gave her away. She couldn't deny it. Maybe a piece of her heart would always be with that goofball. What they had was fire and wasn't fully realized, and she desired closure so much that she was in that bar.
They played pinball, and a few other games that she was embarrassingly bad at. After a few minutes of hanging out he asked her if she was hungry, because he was starving.
Piz ended up picking a new pizza joint within walking distance of the bar. She grabbed her jacket out of the car and laughed because his light jacket wasn't going to cut it for the walk. Halfway there he realized the sidewalk was too narrow and let her walk ahead, softly berating himself for not doing it in the first place. Her heart squeezed a little bit as she remembered the time he pulled her out of the way of some leaking water on her walkway. She felt like no one had ever really looked out for her in such a sweet way.
They walked past the restaurant that saw their end as a couple. "You ever go back there?" She asked him. "No....you?"
"Are you kidding? They had a giant taxidermist bear head over the woman's toilet. I'm never going back there."
He chuckled at the earlier memory of that night. At the pizza place they talked about how the bar moving in next door was their second date. She brought up that she always worried that he had stopped smoking because she didn't like it. She mentioned that Mel was really into pot and it was a strong disconnect with her.
"Amy smokes pot every night, without fail." He shared.
She took a deep breath. "Does she know that it's over?"
He looked uncomfortable. "I'm sorry, that was really overstepping. You do not have to answer that at all."
"No, no...I honestly don't know. She can't not know."
"You play it pretty close to the vest Piz. She might not know."
They started talking about other things since he was clearly uncomfortable with the situation. She was going to be sensitive because he was doing to Amy what he did to her, just on a grander scale.
They started talking finances, and as the conversation continued she suddenly realized how much he didn't really care about them. When they met he wanted a career in finance, she thought he was passionate about it.
He was so...listless. He didn't know what he wanted to do. He never actually stuck to anything, or anyone.
She had, yet again, dodged another bullet.
