And we tried to imagine if we ever would’ve met each other in the normal people world—like, what would’ve had to happen so that Mandy and me would’ve met naturally, like, as just two people—and the scenario we came up with was, like: Mandy probably wasn’t gonna leave Arizona, you know, because her whole family was there and that’s probably where she would’ve wanted to teach, but like, when you’re a doctor, you sometimes just have to do your residency basically wherever they tell you to do it, and so maybe I would’ve been assigned to the hospital at the University of Arizona, and like, maybe Mandy would’ve been there getting her teacher’s degree, and then maybe we would’ve met in the cafeteria one day when we both reached for the same cup of pudding.

And we sort of played it out: I pretended to be this med student, and she pretended to be this teaching student, and we pretended to meet and talk about our lives, and talk about what we were studying, and I pretended to ask her out on a date.

And, you know, somewhere along the line, there was some kissing, and then there was some touching and blah blah blah, but it really wasn’t about that. It was nice, you know—I mean, it’s always nice with Mandy—but it felt like the whole week in France was more about us being friends than it was about us rekindling some big love affair. It just felt really nice taking care of each other.

And since then, you know, since being back in L.A., it’s been more or less back to normal for the both of us—back to being officially “broken up.” I mean, it’s not like we were ever back together, but we sort of left it where it had been once we landed, and I think we both still feel pretty good about that. I hugged her and kissed her on the tarmac, and we both got into our different cars, and we went our separate ways. In a way, that week really reignited our friendship, you know, which had been lacking for what felt like a really long time. Or like, I don’t know, I guess it created our friendship, since we were never really “friends” to begin with, but it’s been kind of beautiful navigating this new space together. I don’t really know what else to say about that.