I shut the door and return to the cozy armchair. Even after all this time, it still smells faintly of Helen’s perfume. I take a hearty swig of my drink and pull up the photo on Instagram. I up the contrast and saturation and take a second to dream up a schmaltzy caption: “They say when you know, you know . . . and I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” I add a red heart emoji for good measure and jab my finger at the screen to triumphantly save the post to my drafts.

It’s silly, but the pressure that’s been building up behind my eyes ever since I left the bar seems to ease up a tiny bit. It’s not fair—I spent the first three years of my twenties in a joke of a relationship, and the next four completely single. It’s not that I’m a leper. But running a business doesn’t exactly leave me with tons of free time or energy to bother much with dating apps. When I do go out on dates, they either fall flat or they just don’t blossom into real relationships.

I have a Word document on my laptop that I’ve been keeping since college, titled “LIL BLACK BOOK <3.” The name seemed cute at eighteen. It’s organized by year, a chronological list of every single guy I’ve gone on a date with. A name gets italicized if we sleep together and bold-faced if I actually like him. Only one name is highlighted in pink: Holden. It means he was actually my boyfriend. The list is too depressing to look at for long, but I like to keep it up to date so I can scroll through it when I’m old and married and nostalgic for the adventures of my youth.

There haven’t been any pink or bold names in ages. Instead, recent dates included Todd, the startup engineer who drinks Soylent instead of having real meals because he claims eating food tanks his efficiency; Marcus, the guy who rambled for four hours straight and then texted that he didn’t feel chemistry because I was “too quiet” for him; and Zachary, who mentioned after we ordered forty dollars’ worth of oysters that he’s saving himself for marriage.

And meanwhile, Holden has apparently found the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with. I was in love with him, once upon a time. It’s not so easy to remember now; so many years have passed that it feels like recalling the hazy details of a movie I fell asleep halfway through watching. I believe that what I had with Holden was real at the time. But that doesn’t mean it was good, or right, or the kind of love that should last forever.