the last time i saw you

by Cathlin Sullivan

We didn’t even see each other until after midnight. At a bar in Kensington Market. It's called The Boat, you know, because it has big round circle windows like a submarine.

I got a drink and tried to dance, but it was too weird to dance alone, so I stuck by the bar and waited for something to happen. I didn't even realize that Caity was beside me until she said, “Hey,” and I looked at her and said, “Hey?” and she stared back at me, eyes widened, and said, “Heeeyyy,” and then I said, “Oh fuck, Caity!” We hugged and she handed me a shot of Jameson.

She looked pretty much the same as she did ten years ago, which is why I didn't recognize her. Most people change between eighteen and twenty-eight.

“Wanna dance?” she asked me, and I said, “Sure,” even though I didn't want to dance. I wanted to ask her a million questions like:

Do you live here again? and

What did you do with the baby? and

Do you still talk to Jesse? and

Are you here alone? and

Do you remember when I got a DUI to see you?

But we danced because that's what she wanted to do, and in the end, we always did what she wanted.

I don't remember her saying anything to me at The Boat, except for hey and yes and mouthing song lyrics. At 1:45, they shouted, “LAST CALL,” and Caity said, “I'm starving,” so we went outside to the fresh January air. Our sweat immediately froze under our jackets.

Finally, I could see her whole face. The Boat is dark. They put garbage bags over the circular windows. One time when we were twenty, I counted all of the freckles on her nose. She had 72. It looked like she still had 72.

“Food,” is all she said as she started walking south. Illuminated across Dundas Street with a blue facade was a 24-hour phở restaurant. A steaming bowl of soup seemed welcoming, like a place where we could remember.

When we sat down in the booth I asked, “Wait, were you at The Boat alone?” And she said, “No, I was there with coworkers.” And I said, “Really? I didn't see you talking to anyone.” And she said, “I told them not to worry. That I’d run into an old friend.”

We kept looking at each other and it nearly drove me crazy to think of her as an old friend.

She laughed, and her hair bounced. It was shorter, just above her shoulders. She couldn't stop smiling. I said, “What?” and she said, “Can you believe we're here?” I said, “No, I can't.”

The last time I saw Caity was seven years ago. We were in third year at OCAD, and she was pregnant. The father--which doesn’t seem fitting since he was twenty and, to my knowledge, never even asked about the baby--was my best friend, Jesse.

They had been dating for years, which is to say two. Jesse knew that I loved Caity, or at least I thought I did. What's love to a twenty-year-old art student?

The extra-large bowls of phở came out. Caity started slurping hers. She asked me what I did now. I said I was delivering for Uber Eats, which was true. I think she tried to come up with something kind to say. Nothing came out.

“It's been so long,” I said, and she nodded, her mouth full of noodles. “The last time I saw you was right after you had the baby,” I said and then cringed because if someone you're in love with gets pregnant with your best friend’s baby and then gives it up for adoption, are you supposed to bring it up?

“Crazy. Time is crazy,” she said, drinking the broth underneath the pink meat.

She wiped her mouth, and her lips parted a little and I thought of how many times I wanted to kiss her.

“That’s not right, though. The last time I saw you was at the police station,” she said. “I didn’t see you after I went to the hospital.”

“Yes, you did,” I said.

“No,” she said.

I was at the police station because I got drunk at Crocodile Rock, and I wanted to see Caity so badly that I got into a car2go and whizzed down the street, and I got pulled over, and I blew above the limit, and I called Caity to come bail me out, and she did because she wasn't drunk because she was pregnant.

“I think I would remember that,” she said. “If I saw you after I went to the hospital. We stopped talking when you told me you loved me in the back of the cab after I bailed you out with the money I saved for summer tuition.” She wiped her lips again.

I didn't remember talking to her that night in the back of the cab, but I probably did because I have a big mouth and a heart that lives to pump, and I think a noodle fell out of my mouth while I looked for something to say.

She kept slurping, and the window in front of us was so fogged up that I drew a heart on it because I'm stupid, and she smiled when she saw it and drank the last of her phở and said that she needed to go home.

She stood up, and I stayed seated because it was late, and I was drunk, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do, and she said, “I think we'll both remember this is the last time we've seen each other.”

It was so cold when she opened the door, and the phở place was cash only, and I had to give my credit card as collateral that I would come back and pay tomorrow.

Photo of Cathlin Sullivan

BIO: vvv