Hey, you're not perfect either, Abby.

There went my pharmacist. My former pharmacist. He wasn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to have time for baking, but there he was, standing on the doorstep with a basket of blueberry muffins, and what else was I supposed to do? You’re just doing the crossword one Saturday morning and then the next thing you know there’s a knock on the door and then the next next thing you know it’s two months later and you’re making out with your obsessive compulsive former pharmacist in the dark in a Corolla in a parking lot and then you’re meeting his parents and he’s alphabetizing your refrigerator and then the next next next thing you know, it’s over, and you’re back to the crossword, misspelling names of Beatles because you’re distracted and wondering what went wrong, and Dear Abby is there on the same page, judging you for all of your failed relationships, but especially this one, because you should have known better.

I felt like maybe it was ironic that the one time I had a messy break up with a guy who went off his meds, it was my pharmacist. Former pharmacist. He wasn’t really my pharmacist for long. I switched from Costco to CVS in February and he was fired just after Labor Day for stealing Xanax, which, in hindsight, maybe should have been a red flag, but wasn’t, so it was a little less than four months. And saying “my pharmacist” makes it sound like I’m some pill popper who is there all the time, but I’m not. I’m just saying “my pharmacist” in the same way I’d say “my doctor,” whom I visit once a year, or “my optometrist,” if my optometrist were an extremely attractive, if neurotic, man who filled my cat’s prescriptions every week.

I like saying “my pharmacist” because it makes it sound like I have these regular people in my life, like in some old timey TV show set in a small town where all the people know each other and there’s the doctor whom everyone just calls Doc and the grocer and the paper boy and a gaggle of housewives in aprons and the town drunk. And maybe a hooker. Having a pharmacist makes me feel like I know the people around me, like some things are consistent. It’s possible that I like having a boyfriend for the same reason, and now that I’m thinking about it, I should probably work on that, because I’m pretty sure that no boyfriend is better, in the long run, than your former pharmacist who grinds his teeth while he’s awake and who sort of reminds you of Dr. Feelgood, without the accent, and who you’re pretty sure only introduced you to his parents in an effort to prove to them that he isn’t gay. The jury’s still out on that one.

Anyway, there he went, past my house, again, in his golf cart, because he had his license taken away after a free-wheeling night of anxiety meds and drag racing. (Probably should have been another red flag, but hindsight is 20/20, you know?) But there he went, and at some point, about the time he passed the mailbox and swerved around a pothole, I think I got over him. 

--Lauren Noorda