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Jake is positively furious now, his face red, the vein in his forehead popping. “How could you? After all the time we spent together—”

“Are you fucking serious?” No longer a simmer, my anger is now a roaring fire, ready to obliterate everything. “You were literally cheating on me with the girl you then left me for, and you expected me to, what? Cry over you forever? Wait for you? What? What did you expect?”

“I can’t believe you replaced me with...” Jake’s face is a snarl, and he motions with disgust toward Joe. “With this.”

Joe leaps off his seat, reaches across the table, and grabs Jake by his fancy new sweater. “What exactly are you implying, Jake? She replaced you with what?”

Jake’s face turns pale. He looks like he’s going to pee himself. “Nothing.”

Joe lifts him off the seat by the sweater. “You mean she’s replaced you with someone who is not a sniveling pretty-boy cheating piece of shit, stupid enough to dump an actual fucking goddess, only to pout eight months later because she’s moved on and won’t give him the time of day anymore?”

Jake starts wiggling and pushing against Joe’s arm, and Joe lets him go and sits back down next to me.

“Fat bastard,” Jake mutters.

“What was that?” Joe asks and leans menacingly over the table and toward Jake. “You really want me to ruin that pretty sweater of yours, don’t you? I hear getting blood out of wool is a real bitch.”

Jake fumes as he moves to straighten himself. “Your parents miss you,” he says. “You had a nice life in St. Cloud. Your parents, your brothers. Your job. You could’ve had all that again, but you had to go and fuck the first Wisconsin Sasquatch you found.”

“That’s it,” Joe jumps up, and Jake does the same. “This Wisconsin Sasquatch is sending you back to Minnesota without any teeth.”

“That’s enough!” I get up and insert myself between them, one palm against each of their heaving chests. “You’re both ridiculous. I like this place and don’t want to be thrown out.”

A few beats pass and no punches are thrown.

“All right. This is what will happen,” I say. “Joe, can you go to the bar and get you and me a round of drinks? I need a couple of minutes alone here with Jake, and then he will be leaving.”

Joe looks me in the eye and clearly decides that I’ve got this. He nods and leaves.

I motion to Jake to sit back down.

“You’ve trained him well, I see,” Jake says with a sneer.

“Cut it out,” I say. “I won’t hear a word against him. He’s amazing and I care about him a great deal. It’s not his fault I have no intention of ever getting back with you. It’s yours.

“And it’s not just the cheating, although that was really shitty. It’s that I’ve had a lot of time to think about our relationship and who I was in it and how you treated me, and it wasn’t good, Jake. It was never good. You’ve always taken me for granted. Shit, you’re even taking me for granting now, coming here after eight months expecting I will welcome you with open arms after you cheated on me and dumped me! Who does that? Not someone who really loves me or who really respects me.”

“Lizzie, baby, that’s not true,” he reaches for my hand for the tenth time.

“Will you cut it out? Stop grabbing my hand and stop calling me Lizzie! I don’t want to be with you! You did me a huge favor when you dumped me, Jake. Honestly, I should thank you. I would’ve been miserable if I’d married you, with all your little putdowns, all the little ways you never let me forget that you’re the prize, that I’m too fat, too lower class, too unworthy of you in every way, that I should be grateful you’d graced me with your affection...”

Jake’s eyes and mouth are wide open. He seems to be in shock.

“I don’t know how much of what you did was conscious, and frankly it doesn’t matter anymore. My point is that there is nothing you can do to make me go back to the life I had before. Nothing. The Liz you knew is gone. She’s never coming back. To St. Cloud or to you.”

Jake’s fists push down against the seat, his torso straining against the backrest. There are a number of emotions flying over his face. Disbelief. Anger. Traces of sadness. Indignation. Hurt. More anger.

“Look, Jake,” I say in a softer voice. “This thing between us is over. I don’t have any hard feelings. Let’s not make it ugly.”

“I really do love you, Lizzie,” he says finally.

“Thank you for that. Maybe you do, in your own way. But it wasn’t a good kind of love, Jake. The kind that lifts and nurtures. But maybe you can do better with someone else. Maybe even Bethany.”

“Did you love me?” he asks.

I take a moment before I respond. “I thought I did. I probably did in some way. It wasn’t a great way, either, Jake. I was always performing for you. That’s no way to live. And no way to be with someone you love.”

He puts his elbows on the table and runs his hands through his hair in frustration.