The No-Girl

Thursday night, we had our production dinner for the gig I'm currently on. I did not have the highest hopes for it. I'd already survived the gauntlet weekend where I'd weathered three heavy nights of drinking-events in a row.

However, the production dinner turned into an epic bar crawl. One of those slightly crazed nights where, if you stick around long enough, you actually get to talk to some people. I actually managed to have a conversation with the No-Girl, which was oddly cathartic. She has a girlfriend, which was perhaps predictable, but she ended up being... *nice* when she finally lowered her steel guard. It's funny, sometimes you can sort of tell who a person is before they actually begin to let you know who they are.

I ended up getting home around the time I sometimes wake up to get ready for work. So I preemptive shut off my alarm and resigned myself to arriving late on Friday.

We didn't really talk more on Friday beyond a cursory, "How are you doing...?" But there was something different there. The tone of our interaction had evolved ever so slightly. I could tell she's accustomed to keeping her guard heavily up. I can only imagine how often she gets approached by randoms. So this infinitesimal shift in her physiognomy was... oddly moving. We bonded, nearly wordlessly, over shared hangover pain.