I would probably benefit from a good therapist session or fifty, but I don’t know if I’ll even have health insurance in a few months.

“I’ll let you know,” I say, sighing and pulling off my rhinestone tiara. It’s giving me a headache.

“No more princess look?” Raj teases. “It really suited you.”

I roll my eyes at him and drop into an ironic curtsy. “Look, I think I’m going to call it a night,” I say. “Thank you all so much for being here for me.”

“Of course,” Carmen says.

Raj grabs the empty pitchers and we all grab the glasses. As we leave the roof behind, I take my sunflowers with me. Downstairs, the bar is still thrumming.

“How’s it going?” Raj asks the other bartender.

“Dude, I gotta thank you,” he says. “The tips are lit. I’m glad you called me in.”

“Want me to stick around?” Raj asks.

“Nah, I got it covered,” his coworker says.

“Eliza, I know this is a living nightmare right now, but it’ll be okay in the long run,” Carmen says, squeezing me into a tight hug. “I love you.”

“Boys suck, you don’t,” Sasha says—I think that’s her way of saying goodbye.

I watch my friends make their way toward the door, and I lose sight of them once they’re outside. I hate that that gives me a pang of sadness. We aren’t in college anymore; it’s not like I should reasonably expect any of my friends to stay by my side all night, distracting me with gloriously tacky early 2000s music videos and homemade cookies. I should be strong enough to deal with this on my own. That’s how grown women cope with heartbreak, isn’t it?

“It’s okay to be completely miserable,” Raj says, as if he understands exactly what I’m thinking. “I mean, this is bad. Really bad.”

I laugh hollowly. “Yeah. It is. Even though it was all my fault.”

He rubs my shoulder sympathetically. “It was not your fault.”

“Of course it was!” I exclaim.

“Relationships are a two-way street,” he says. “Maybe you weren’t honest because he didn’t make you feel comfortable enough.”

Raj’s suggestion makes my thoughts shift and ooze in a way I don’t know how to process.

“Let me walk you home?” he offers.

“Sure, thanks,” I say.

I gather my things. He holds the bar door open for me. The walk to my apartment is barely thirty seconds, even if you count waiting for the crosswalk signal to change. But it’s just long enough for me to make up my mind.

“Raj, would you, um, want to come up and hang out?” I ask, lingering by the door to my building. “I don’t mean anything, you know, like that. I just thought we could talk or watch TV or whatever.”