The enchiladas were already in the oven when Emmett canceled our date with a text and then blocked my number.

In the mood for enchiladas? I texted Natalie as I leaned against my kitchen counter, wearing a tight black skirt and floral corset top. I looked hot, I straightened my frizzy hair, did my makeup, I wore tall heels and I made my bed. I never make my bed.

Natalie quickly texted back, clearly understanding the situation from that one question. I'm on my way.

Tulip allowed me to give her some head scratches, right between her ears, to help me feel better while I played my saddest playlist on Spotify. It consisted mostly of Taylor Swift's Red album (Taylor's Version, obviously), Liability from Lorde, and all of Adele's discography.

"I brought the good shit," Natalie announced upon her arrival, holding a bottle of fireball and a half gallon of apple cider. "Tell me what happened."

"He just told me that he couldn't make it tonight and then blocked me," I whined, dishing out two plates of enchiladas which, for the record, turned out really good. If Emmett would have made it to dinner, I bet he really would have wanted to have sex with me after tasting them.

"What an asshole," she shook her head, pouring two cups of spicy apple cider. "Well, you look stunning. We'll have a photo shoot, put it to good use."

"Why is dating so hard?" I whined as we sat at the table with our enchiladas and fireball. I deleted Tinder before I started to eat. "I just want somebody to love and adore me forever until the end of time and maybe rub my feet sometimes. Not too much to ask."

"I bet you'll find your person when you least expect it," she assured me. "And don't try to sleep with somebody just to distract yourself from another person."

"I wasn't," I denied quickly with a mouthful of mediocre veggie enchilada.

Natalie rolled her eyes at my obvious lie. "You skipped two dates to try and get this guy into bed. It was obviously because of Casey, and I think you need to unpack that."

"Maybe I skipped two dates because I haven't had sex in six months," I suggested, taking a big swig of my drink.

Natalie snatched my phone from the table to change the music and said, "We're not wallowing tonight, we're turning the night around. You can't listen to All Too Well and not be sad, we need happier music."

"My date with Emmett had nothing to do with Casey."

"Do some self reflection and come back to me when you realize what a pile of crap that is."

"I'm serious."

Natalie turned on a different playlist, one with the 1989 album and early 2000's pop music. Then, she raised her black eyebrows at me in bored disbelief. "Do you want to go brush your teeth now? Or do you think the enchiladas will be enough to overpower the taste of the bullshit that you're spewing?"

I stabbed into my enchilada. "Well, what do I do now?"

"You let him go, for real this time," she told me easily. "I know it sucks, but he's engaged, Josie. We've talked about this."

"He told me, a little bit ago, that he would check me out when we were in high school," I said to her between bites. "He even remembered a specific pair of shorts that I'd wear."

"Engaged," she said again.

"You're going to want to hit me over the head with a frying pan for bringing this up again," I warned her. "But he really sounded like he was reconsidering that engagement."

"You're right. I do want to hit you over the head with a frying pan," she agreed with me. "He's filling you up with all this false hope, but if he wanted to break up with her, he would. But he hasn't."

"I know."

"I know it sucks. I know that, but you clearly need some tough love right now. You need to focus more on his actions rather than his words, and his actions say that he wants to get married to her," she continued. "If he really wanted to be with you, he'd do it."

"I'm not going to stop being his friend," I warned her. I knew that was what she would suggest, because it was probably the smart move if I was having so many inappropriate thoughts. But I couldn't let him go. I would be okay if he didn't want more than friendship. I would be okay if he got married to Rebecca, I was still grateful to be his friend and my other feelings would fade with time.

"I know," she said again. "And we'll figure that out, and it'll be okay. I know he's a good guy, but he's stupid. Too busy getting so book smart that he doesn't have any room up there for interpersonal skills."

I started to laugh. "I love you so much."

"As you should. I love you too," Natalie responded. "Now, drink."

And drink we did.

After enchiladas, we turned up the music and started building a makeshift photo shoot background in my living room by hanging a flat sheet from my tall bookshelf. We used my big, soft ottoman as a prop with some pillows and a blanket to make it look nice and cozy.

"Put your hand in your hair," Natalie instructed me and I did as she said, posing for the camera as if I was a hot shot model. We had to look up how to pose sexy and I think I got the poses right, but if I tried to look sexy, my face always ended up conveying constipation more than anything sensual.

"It's harder than it looks!" I insisted as we cried laughing at the images I was producing. "You try it, Nat, see how hard it is."

"Only because I'm tipsy," she said as we traded places and I got my phone out to take pictures. She was wearing a pair of skinny jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt, her smooth, dark hair up in a pony tail.

"Let your hair down, come on," I insisted.

Hesitantly, she unleashed her beautiful hair and let it fall around her heart-shaped face. I knew she was self-conscious about taking any sort of picture, especially a sexy one, but once she got the hang of it, I could really see her allowing herself to have fun with it. Whipping her hair around, lifting her shirt a little bit to tease a glimpse of her stomach, wiggling her butt and laughing.

"Okay, that had the opposite effect I was going for," I said as I showed her the amazing pictures. "Your sexy face is so good, I'm ready to jump your bones."

"Shut up," she rolled her eyes at me.

"Just saying. I have a track record for falling for my friends," I warned her jokingly as I took another drink from my cup. "Oh! I have an idea."

I ran into my bedroom, to my nightstand, and then returned to the living room with my hot pink vibrator. It was a pretty realistic depiction of a penis with veins and everything, except for the color of it.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Natalie cackled with laughter when she saw my little friend.

I returned to the photo shoot area and started posing with it. "I'm going to add the caption 'My soul mate #loveIsntDead' and it'll be so funny."

She took the picture, but then said, "Fine. But you're not posting that until you're sober tomorrow."

"I accept your compromise."

We were laughing ourselves into tears again as I posed around with my pink guy in a couple of different poses. "You don't think about Casey when you're using that thing, do you?" she asked me with a look of judgment already on her face.

"No..." I avoided eye contact with her.

"Why do you even try to lie to me when you know it won't work? You dirty, dirty pervert."

"I can't control what I think about," I said defensively after I took my pink guy back to his home in my bedside drawer. "His sweaty body just pops into my head, it's not my fault! And sometimes he's wearing his lab coat."

"Disgusting," she shook her head at me, still laughing.

"If you'd seen what I saw, you'd understand," I promised her. "Oh, shut up."

When our photo shoot was finished, we continued drinking and dancing to the 2000's music that was blaring in my living room. Tulip hid away in the bedroom, only screaming occasionally when she wanted somebody to pay attention to her for five seconds.

By the end of the night, I didn't even know who Emmett was anymore and I totally forgot what this night was originally supposed to be. The way it turned out was so much better than it ever could have been with some guy.

As for Casey, I hardly thought of him all night. Until Natalie passed out in my bed and I was still awake, still drunk, and my mind started to wander.

My alcohol-soaked brain worked on its own accord without my permission at all as I took my phone out of the apartment, down into the courtyard of the building where I started laying in the cool grass. It was too cold to be outside without a jacket on now, but I was too drunk to care. Alcohol was like a built-in blanket for your entire body.

And then I was calling Casey, because I'd really grown to love our night time chats where I spilled my heart to him and he did the same back to me and we just talked like nothing else existed. Unfortunately, he didn't answer the call and I wondered if that was because Rebecca was over, as he only called me when she wasn't around.

Still, I forged ahead and left a voicemail. The words fell out of my mouth like soup and I couldn't stop them. "Hi Casey, this is Josie calling and I'm lying down under the stars and I'm thinking about the time that we went to the planetarium when we were sixteen and I decided that I would finally make my move because everything is easier when the world is dark and you can't really see the consequences of your actions."

I pulled some grass absently from the ground, holding it in my fist. "Anyway, so we were watching this show at the planetarium and the guy was telling us the story of Orion and I decided I was going to kiss you because that was the only way you would realize how I felt. I sat there working up the courage as this guy droned on and on about the mythology behind Orion and I was finally going to do it and I was so convinced it would be the best kiss that has ever existed and you'd finally see me."

I tossed the grass back down only to grab another handful as I stared up into the starry sky. "So I turned toward you and my heart was beating so hard I thought I was legitimately having a heart attack but I was still going to do it. And you were fucking asleep. So I didn't kiss you, in case you were worried that I was some creep, but I did watch you sleep all the way through Taurus. Because you were so beautiful. Still are, obviously. And the way the stars looked against your eyelashes was something so delicate that I couldn't look away."

My brain was begging my mouth, stop talking stop talking stop talking.

"I could keep going over and over the thousand million what-ifs we left behind, but it's pointless because this is what we have. You're engaged and I'm pining over somebody who's engaged and I got stood up and that's my reality. But I love you Casey. I never stopped. Which is pathetic, because you gave up on us. I had so many big feelings for you and then you were just gone and it broke me but I still love you when I shouldn't. Who knows when you'll disappear again. Probably when you tie the knot, I suppose."

Stop talking stop talking stop talking. You're embarrassing yourself, you idiot idiot big stupid idiot.

"Does your voicemail not time out? I've been talking for a while. It's been a really long time since I've left a voicemail, so I guess I don't know how they work anymore. Well, I guess I'll end this by saying that I'm going to try my best to stop loving you and someday, I'll get there but tonight, I love you. I'm sorry that I just unloaded this on you, I told myself I wouldn't say it unless you broke up with Rebecca, but I'm drunk, so I said it. That makes me a terrible person, I know. Sorry."

Finally, I hung up the phone.

A few minutes of dreadful retrospection later, I sent him a text that said For the love of God, please do NOT listen to that voicemail!!