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The stem of her wine glass emerged from between her middle and ring finger as she slid it in a small circle. She didn’t know why sommeliers swirled their wine, but after watching Somm on Netflix, it was a practice she adopted.
They were nearly a week-and-a-half removed from the weekend they’d spent 2,300 miles apart. Todd, still living at Caroline and John’s apartment in their extra bedroom, asked if they could reschedule drinks the week following The Kentucky Derby. His lingering hangover mixed with the catch-up he’d have to play at work all combined for a week of 12-hour days and sleepless nights.
“Does Wednesday work for you?” she texted out of the blue on Sunday night. He confirmed, and she sent him a link to the PDF menu for happy hour at “their spot.” Todd knew what she was doing, and she knew that Todd knew. Neither seemed to care. 6 o’clock on the dot, they decided.
After being lead to a hightop in the bar, she asked the hostess if they could have a booth instead. Hesitantly, the hostess obliged and asked if they’d need food menus.
“Just drinks,” she said while looking over the wine list.
“Can I do a glass of this Cabernet from Bordeaux?” she asked.
“I’ll let your waitress know right away,” the hostess responded, setting the other menu where Todd would be seated.
She checked her watch and noticed that it was already 6:05. Defaulting to Find Friends on her phone, she again realized that they had turned it off during their break. Texting him seemed needy and overbearing, so she simply sat idly telling herself to not stare at her phone that she’d just stowed away in her handbag.
“There he is,” she thought to herself as he entered and brushed the rain off the shoulders of his jacket. She raised her hand and hailed him over. What ensued was an awkward ass-out hug and a fumbled exchange of cheek kisses.
“Soooooooo,” he began, “How ya been?” It was the uncomfortable start to the conversation that both of them saw coming. It was either going to be her or him asking the question, but neither had prepared responses despite both of their overanalyzing of the situation.
“Good!” she exclaimed perhaps a little too quickly. “Really good.” She hesitated while he looked down at his menu. “So how was The Kentucky Derby?” she continued.
“Really fun!” he answered generically. “Obviously a long weekend but, yeah, super fun.”
Another awkward pause that would’ve lingered even longer had their waitress not interrupted.
“Can I get you anything, sir?”
“Uhhhh,” he hesitated. “What’re you having?” He looked down at her wine glass that had all of three sips taken from it.
“I got this Cabernet right here,” she pointed.
“If you’re both going to be drinking this, would you rather do a bottle?”
They looked at one another. A bottle financially made sense but also meant they’d be committing to an hour or more of conversation.
“Uhhhhhhh,” they both droned on while looking at one another. “We’re probably good with just glasses,” they both said over one another in some variation of the sentence.
“Right away.”
For the next ten minutes, the conversation fluttered between Todd’s busy week at work and small anecdotes regarding both of their lives since they decided it best to separate. Todd hesitated to mention The Kentucky Derby at length for fear of she-who-shall-not-be-named’s name coming up, and she tip-toed around the fact that their yoga retreat had turned into a rosé-filled girls weekend.
She decided to change the subject from hearing about the meetings Todd had earlier that day to something she’d thought about since the moment it happened.
“By the way, I’m sorry I broke our rule and texted you while you were at the Derby.”
“Ha, it’s totally fine,” he assured her despite not knowing how he actually felt about it. “I was pretty far gone at that point so sorry if my texts weren’t super coherent.”
“Juleps get the best of you?”
“Always do,” he remarked, searching for an out of the conversation. After realizing their horse had not only lost but got completely decimated, Todd and John found it fitting to shift from Juleps to Woodford-rocks. The rest of the night remained blurry for both of them to this day, but considering they both woke up alone and fully-clothed in their beds the Sunday following, they figured nothing that bad could’ve happened.
Todd knew he had texted her that night – he just didn’t know how much. Going by the “ignorance is bliss” mentality, he had deleted all his texts before boarding his flight back from Louisville.
Still searching for a way to shift the conversation, he remembered something he’d thought about when they began texting again while sober. Before he could bring it up, the waitress had returned to their table with two more glasses of wine per Todd’s hand signal from afar to get another round. When she exited their vicinity, Todd struck.
“Wait, so I thought they didn’t allow phones at the yoga retreat?” he asked.
“Welllll,” she stalled, “They don’t really.”
He gave her a look that strongly resembled the confused emoji. She knew she couldn’t lie about what had happened and was honestly amazed that Caroline hadn’t already told John (who would’ve obviously told Todd).
“Ugh, okay, fine,” she blurted out. “Remember how I said I was hungover when I asked you to do these drinks?”
“Yeah, that seemed weird too, did you–”
“Todd, let me explain before I lie to you,” she interrupted. “We skipped the retreat.”
Todd laughed before asking for clarification surrounding how and why it happened.
“We got super hammered at that restaurant I told you about and ended up being too hungover to make the drive to the retreat.”
Todd was shocked – not because they skipped, but because he realized that they had spent an entire weekend in San Fran-fucking-cisco without posting a single Instagram or Snapchat. The realization that their weekends somewhat mirrored one another brought life to an otherwise boring conversation. The second glasses of wine didn’t hurt either.
She explained to him everything they’d done that weekend, outside of the fact that they’d spent a drunken dinner with nameless men in blazers.
Todd smiled and nodded along as she explained everything that had lead up to their decision that maybe a yoga retreat wasn’t time (or money) well-spent. “We’re so bad,” she said repeatedly while Todd didn’t disagree – he simply kept listening while not asking for details for fear she’d ask more about a weekend he didn’t fully remember.
The waitress approached their table again, this time asking if they’d like another glass of wine before happy hour ended in five minutes. They looked at one another and had another awkward hesitation that had been the trending topic of their entire encounter.
“You know, I think I’m good,” she said to the waitress.
“Yeah, me too,” Todd confirmed before she walked away to print the check.
“I’d rather not stay here,” she told Todd with a whisper. “I just got another wine club shipment to the apartment – should we call an Uber there?” .
Image via Shutterstock
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
@willdefries
@willdefries
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It is the same Fake News Media that said there is “no path to victory for Trump” that is now pushing the story that Lightweight Todd knows what he’s doing. Such dishonesty! Girl’s happy hour attempts are just like the phony Russia story. A total scam! Amazing that no illegal leaks were spread by very annoying Carloine or the completely incompetent John that would have blown their friends’ respective covers. But I know they talked. I had been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community. Couldn’t do it – FIRED!
I’ll be honest, I picture Sean Spicer approaching Trump asking “Mr. President, what do I say when they ask about Russia”, with Trump responding “Not now Spice Girl, I need to comment about Todd’s sad attempt at distancing himself from Girl. I bet he has small hands!”
Lies, any hour with girl is a sad hour.
Congrats on the sex Todd
Mid pump, Todd is going to get flashbacks to his blacked out session with Claire. Realizing that Girl is nothing but a dead fish, while Claire a dragon, he’s going to leave without hesitation and more importantly, his manhood.
Nah, that won’t happen.
No she is going to pull out all the stops for this, she wants Todd back. After a week it will be back to dead fish city.
Can we get a Thing Girl’s Do After Graduation: Sex, for next week? Thanks Will.
I hear all of your comments in Bryan Cranston’s voice and it provides no small measure of entertainment. Please comment more often.
Cranston was the voice actor for Tim O’brien’s The Things They Carried. It’s a really good audio book. Would recommend if you have a long solo drive
I am fuming at Girl placing her drink order with the hostess instead of just waiting for the waitress to come around.
This cliffhanger makes me happy I have desk booze because WTF? How do I wait a week?
Desk booze? Teach me your ways
1. Have your own office
2. Close door
3. Open desk drawer that you can lock and stores your booze
4. Pour yourself a drink
5. Enjoy the rest of your day
Dreaming about having a door to close. PGP
Exactly! Will, enough cliffhangers, tell us what happens!
Name checks out.
Reading the last part all I could think was “man they’re gonna be pissed in the comments”
Classic Girl using sex to reel Todd back into her grasp
Just when you think he’s out, she pulls him back in
Just hope he pulls out in time.
She’ll never let him pull out. Remember how she forgot to take her birth control a couple weeks ago?!
Unless she’s skipped more pills since, missing a pill weeks ago won’t still affect her
but will he pull out?
page refresehd, im super late.
hope shes not late.
It’s clear Todd and Girl are not breaking up. In order to complete a series based on a narcissistic psychopath millennial called “Things Girls Do After Graduation,” Girl has to go through engagement, everything that comes with that leading to a wedding, and the wedding. After 3 years, there’s no way another guy other than Todd can fill the roll of fiance and husband. The material would be too similar a second time around. Claire’s story-line is just dragging the story out and making the plot unfocused. It doesn’t even appear that her presents is going to lead Todd to a revelation of his true feelings of Girl that will lead him to commit considering the fact he spent the weekend completely blacked out. I’m ready to bury that rabbit hole and have some sense of where the series is going again.
Presence*
Thanks, saw that after it was posted. Need an edit function.
There’s no edit function in big law. Do better next time.
Excellent analysis though.
I have to agree. This series is one of the website’s biggest draws and I don’t see it ending any time soon. TGDAG: Single would very quickly get too repetitive so the only way to keep it going is to have her get engaged and married to Todd.
Will knows so much about weddings and engagements there is just no way he would leave that on the table.
You gotta look at the big picture. I’m invested in the “TGDAG” Universe, rather than this story itself. Give me a Todd spin-off, maybe a John spinoff. Basically, just get rid of Girl ASAP, but continue churning out content.
I love the TGDAG Universe. I’ve followed this series since day 1 and my girl friend routinely tells me I’m way too invested. I’ve been rooting for Todd and Claire, for a year. And until last week, the Universe has been working towards some semblance of a story. Claire was dangled to us and it didn’t happen. I think it would have made the story great, but that’s not Will’s vision obviously. I would have loved CoT to go off with Claire and TGDAG to continue with Girl. But, it’s not going to happen. She hasn’t even provided any kind of character arc for Todd, just a source of sexual tension for Todd and plain tension for Girls’ relationship. Time to move on from that, at this point and back into the story everyone’s been following.
I just know that Will deFries loves engagements and weddings. A large chunk of his career on this site is devoted to those subjects. He’s not going to pass the opportunity to put all that knowledge to work. And that means that Todd has to propose to Girl, if TGDAG is actually going to have a coherent ending.
I’m getting a strong sense of reverse psychology here…
Is that something you fall for often? If so, this is me not saying sup.
I see your point but to counter I think without Girl, there isn’t a long-game for this universe. If it’s just stories about a likable guy who has a good life, that’s not interesting. The main reason most of us keep coming back is the hoped for downfall of Girl, which would mean John or Todd would have to become just as detestable as Girl if she were removed from the plot.
or Todd bangs Caroline in guest bedroom
This. Exactly this.
BREAK HER FUCKIN HEART TODD. GOD DAMNIT