We make direct eye contact. He asks “is there anything I can help you find”, and I have more-or-less five seconds to answer before my pause is awkwardly long. Is he being polite? Did his customer service instincts kick in on auto-pilot? Or does he want to spend time with me?

I had been avoiding Barnes & Noble since my sister told me he moved back home and was working there. But things were different now. His hair was insanely long, and I was in a relationship. His hair covered his name tag, making him simply Mic. It had been two years since he spent most of his (and my sister’s) college graduation turned around to glare at me.

“I’m good. Thanks, though.”

I could’ve said I was looking for the lit mags five paces from him, but I kept it simple. We parted with “good to see you,” which I had recently started saying, which makes me feel cordial and mature.

Since my own graduation, I was trying extremely hard to transition well into adulthood. My senior year had brought new lows of immaturity. I did zero work and drank heavily, but also constantly screamed at parties, cried, and fought with my exes on the internet. I egged one of their cars.

None of these activities prepared me for the Real World, where I was supposed to get a job in marketing, but at the very least, be somewhat mature.

I returned to soul-sucking retail (the floor below Mic, a wing away, unbeknownst to me, in the third biggest mall in the U.S.). Shelving lotions gave me a lot of time to harp on my ludicrous behavior and regret every decision I had ever made.

I found my desired copy of Tin House and chose the bench furthest from Mic. Like an involuntary tick, I remembered every awful thing he had said to me and every kinky thing we had done in bed. Now I’m supposed to be cordial?

The New Me, post-grad and forgiving, was trying new things every day. Bitch, where? I rejoice, having kept the Old Me far away. That me yelled and sobbed when Mic lied “I don’t want to hold you back,” making up he wanted to be polyamorous; initiated Skype sex immediately after telling him I hooked up with another dude; attempted seduction and failed wildly in an academic building after hours, out of control, topless, and covered in zombie facepaint.

My therapist pointed out that I don’t have amicable relationships with any of my exes.

I’m not supposed to hate someone who did me dirty? That didn’t compute. My blocked accounts list was a mile long.

Mic had blocked me first. As I flipped through the pages of Tin House without absorbing anything, I wondered if I was still blocked. (I check periodically.)

New me, with the bossy, bingedrinking, sex fiend devil on my shoulder, and the gently urging saintly me on the other, all agree: seeing who has blocked me on social media is a tell-tale sign of who, in some way, gives a shit about me.

When a Facebook search of his name shows nothing, I wonder if Mic’s wound still feels fresh. My first boyfriend blocked me within the last year. (I drunkenly liked some of his posts at a Mitski concert.) No Posts Found, Instagram lies boldly to me to this day. I see he has 202 posts. (He must truly wish I’d rot in hell – I didn’t pick a great time to realize my bisexuality.)

When we broke up, my first girlfriend and I took to our blogs to air our grievances. Our mututals witnessed us argue in the most immature way since the dawn of the internet, but also the dawn of man. “Girl, please the last thing I want to do is look at you,” I posted with no thought after stalking her personal posts. She was stalking my blog too, because we went back in forth posting generally in response to the other’s zaps. I unfriended her, without blocking her, so my face would occasionally pop up on her suggested friends.

I myself use the block button frequently. My therapist suggests it is a power play. I block and unblock a recent ex-lover under the guise that I am staying one step ahead of him. He likes things I’m tagged in, like when my parents donate to the School of Fine & Performing Arts. I find this wildly innapropriate. We’re not okay, I want to shout. When I picture old me, twenty- three, angsty and sexual, with no responsibilities but also no self-worth and no coping mechanisms, I picture him too.

When I feel tender and responsible, I wonder if I should apologize to them all. I do nothing but think about my past behavior, counting up the register and backstocking body wash. It looks worse and worse. Apologies is something the New Me would do after careful deliberation and adequate time. Still, I block with reckless abandon.

I put tape over the mouth of the devil on my shoulder. I settle into young adulthood. I get a nine-to-five and a girlfriend. We sit in the park when I get out at night. She tells me she loves me and I feel like a good person. I decide I am going to be sober.

After a year, this first honest go at a relationship loses my interest. I go back to binge drinking. When dudes I banged in college text me, I text back. When I am in the mood for trouble, I follow the afformentioned ex-lover.

We catch up for three days via messenger, and I spend those days perpetually aroused. I tell him I’m a good girl now, and he goes, yeah right.

He tells me he jacks off twice a week thinking about me. I find twice a week to be oddly specific, and an insultingly low amount. Often, New Me scrolls through our dirty text thread dating back to August 2015. I don’t tell him this. Instead I wait for the tiny bouncing ellipses to disappear with a new message.

I know I’m not an anomaly for what I like in bed. I keep this to myself too, and respond stupidly, sexually. The check mark “seen” gives me a shot of adrenaline.

We text for a month. He pesters me to come visit so he can do nasty things to me. I send a video of myself masturbating. It gives him chills and disappears in seconds. He likes my old selfies in the middle of the night. (His original likes had disappeared when I blocked him.)

I stalk him on the internet, worse than I had in the years long stretch that we were on a no-speaking-but-mutually-jerking-it basis. I even look at my “followers” feed to see the posts he’s liking. They are mostly girls’ selfies. I stalk them all. I wonder if he’s texting them or having sex with them.

My girlfriend and I break up. I archive all my posts of her. I don’t cry once. I never visit this man. I post sexy selfies. I watch my likes closely.

– E.F. Flynn