Ron and Tammy, by Doris

If only I'd remembered my hat.

If only I hadn't realized it minutes before our bus was scheduled to arrive.

If only Rock weren't such a good friend that he trekked back to the theatre with me.

If only the hat wasn't in the first floor office and we would have had to go upstairs to find it, making us miss the bus we ended up taking.

If only I hadn't expressed an urge for hard liquor at the end of a long week.

If only we'd taken a different street to the grocery store and arrived a few minutes earlier or later.

If only I'd decided to go home rather than to Rock's.

If only any of these had happened, I wouldn't have had the Excalibur Encounter.

Oh yeah, and one more:

If only my Excalibur intuition weren't so goddamn strong.

I don't know if I believe in psychics, but I do believe in intuition/wavelength. Sometimes when I spend a lot of time around a person, I develop it. I've got countless examples of this where Rock is concerned.

With Excalibur, I always knew when he was going to say something big, or something I wasn't going to like. The air changed, buzzed so only I could hear.

And in the milliseconds before, when Rock and I were crossing the parking lot, I thought his name.

Only to look up from underneath my hat and see him.

(My hands-down favorite episode of the wildly underrated Parks and Recreation is last season's episode "Ron and Tammy." Not only are Nick Offerman and his real-life wife Megan Mullally brilliant, it has a great message that exes are exes for a reason. Anyway, there's a moment when Ron is going on about his own Evil Ex and suddenly, unprompted, he stands up, looks around and goes, "She's here, isn't she?" Well, this was my Ron and Tammy moment.)

I saw his eyes. I recognized the coat. I know it was him.

We didn't make eye contact, didn't say a word, didn't even physically run into each other.

I was with Rock, whom he knows and would recognize, but there was no acknowledgment of Rock either.

Oh, and he was with a girl who I assume is the girlfriend. I didn't get a good look at her. It felt like an invasion somehow, and anyway I was hustling for the entrance.

As we wandered down the produce aisle, Rock asked, "Do you want to leave?"

My eyes were shifting back and forth, my head swiveling almost 360 degrees.

"I don't want to, because what if they're still out there at the Redbox? Let's do a lap."

As we selected what we came for--frozen hangover food for Rock, chips and whiskey which I now REALLY needed for me--Rock was my rock. He checked down every aisle to make sure they weren't there. He reassured me that Excalibur hadn't actually seen me, and that he could have said hi if he did.

We never saw them again.

Back at Rock's apartment, I proceeded to drive my best friend crazy when all he wanted to do was fix potato skins and turn on the TV.

"Do you think he saw me?"

"No? Are you sure?"

"Well, at least I look good. Right?"

"I just couldn't do it, Rock. It's been too long of a week, and I didn't want to have an awkward conversation while you and the girlfriend were just standing there or whatever. And not two weeks ago I emailed the guy saying I didn't want to talk to him for a while. Oh yeah, and . . ."

"Doris. Chug your drink and stop rationalizing." Again, my voice of reason, now calmly popping potato skins in the oven.

"I know, I know, I'm being neurotic. I'll shut up in three minutes, I swear." I went into his bathroom, sat on the toilet and cracked the door just enough that we could keep talking. I didn't want any silence at that moment.

"You can talk about it, but you don't need to justify. I would have told you if I thought he had seen you. I would have told you if I thought saying hi was necessary. I really, really don't think he saw you. If he did, he could have said hi too, you know. I get you're weirded out. Just don't feel like you had to force an interaction you didn't want to have."

Friends, the boy has been talking like this since he was in high school. I think it was all the O.C. he watched.

So I did one last thing before we settled in to watch Australian comedy and pig out: I checked my phone. No text. No email.

Either he was abiding by my "no contact, please" edict, or he really didn't see me.

Thank God.

Oh, and here's the song I listened to this morning to wash the ex encounter taste out of my mouth. Nothing like rapping along with Nicki Minaj to make everything better.