Last night, Christene and I decided to go out for dinner with Kristyl, Jason and Molly. Originally the plan was to go for Greek food, but in the end we switched it up and went to Pasta Polo - a really small little place in Langley, near the old movie theatre. I'd never been, but had heard it was delicious.
Christene and I got there first, and were immediately ushered into a booth near the back of the restaurant - the only section further back was a larger, open space for bigger groups. I should also mention that we were right in the sightlines from the main aisle through the restuarant.
We sat there for a few minutes, enjoying some drinks and eating the complimentary bread, when Christene got a frantic call from our dinner companions, who had just pulled into the parking lot.
Turns out, as they pulled into the lot, they saw Christene's ex-husband - who is, by all accounts, a pretty big douche - enter the restaurant with his new girlfriend. We resisted the urge to bolt (barely) and watched from behind our menus as they walked right past line of sight - down that damn aisle - and into the back area.
The same back area meant for large groups. This is when Christene realized it was her ex-mother-in-law's birthday. Sure enough, the back table was soon filled with the whole ex-family, which couldn't have been more awkward if it tried to be - or so I thought. We managed to ignore them for the most part, although both tables saw each other - I happened to accidently glance over there at one point and saw more than a eyes quickly dart away.
To some of you, this may not seem like that bad a situation - people break up all the time. It happens. But there are numerous reasons it was more awkward than usual, and I won't bother getting into them here. But rest assured, it sucked. It was pretty hard to relax, even after a couple drinks, and I've never wanted to leave a restaurant so bad in my life.
Finally, as we finished our dinner, we saw Ex and his lady friend go outside. They didn't return for quite some time. Phewww, we thought. They left. So Jason and I went up to the front to pay the bill, while Kristyl and Christene collected the boxes of leftovers and gathered up the baby and baby accessories. And as I waited my turn at the Interac machine, I glanced out the window.
Guess who I saw? Yep, the Ex, his girlfriend and the ex-mother-in-law, out for a post-dinner smoke.
Finally, we all got ready to leave, and Kristyl and Jason avoided contact by slipping through the parked cars on the way to their own vehicle, and they were home free.
We were not so lucky.
Christene went out the door first, and took a hard right - directly into the eye of the storm. That's when it got even worse. As much as I wanted to just bolt through some parked cars and run away, I didn't want to look like I was running away, so I followed Christene, who decided it was necessary to say Happy Birthday to her ex-mother-in-law.
I would've just booked it if I was her, but fair enough - she always liked her, and wanted to say hi. But that left five of us standing there awkwardly, and two of us - guess which two? - eyeing each other up.
And then we actually had to make the world's-most-awkward-introductions, which basically went something like this:
"Hi, I'm Nick. I'm the guy banging your wife. Nice to meet you."
It was terrible. So terrible in fact that I - a man of many words - cannot even properly explain it in print.
The only amusing part was, after the initial "Hello" - when it was suddenly clear that this trainwreck was progressing to a full-blown conversation - both the Ex and me looked at each other with the same sense of "are-you-fucking-kidding-me?"
"So, this is actually going to happen."
(It instantly reminded me of that scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall when Jason Segel's character invites his ex and Russell Brand to dinner, she accepts, and Brand says, "So, we're actually going to let this happen.")
The moment couldn't have lasted more than 45 seconds, but it felt like 20 years. And after it was done, all I could think about was how easy it would have been to avoid the whole situation. If it had been me leading the way out of the restaurant door, it never would have happened.
To properly illustrate my point, I created this handy diagram in photoshop. My proposed escape route is in green; Christene's chosen route is in pink.
This end-of-the-evening situation was essentially the equivalent of driving down the road in your car - minding your own business - and then seeing a car crash on the side of the road. However, instead of just zipping by the car crash, which is already bad enough, you decide to yank the wheel hard to the right and smash your perfectly good car into the other two already-damaged vehicles, thus making a regular car crash into a horrific multi-car affair.
To her credit, Christene felt really bad afterwards - and I know I made her feel worse by constantly bugging her about it, which wasn't necessarily my intent. But I just couldn't help it, even if popular opinion is that it was the polite, adult thing to do (Which, to be fair, is probably true. More mature than my plan of running away quickly, anyway).
But that said, I still don't think it ever had to happen. I'm sure such a meeting could have likely been avoided forever, since we don't exactly run in the same social circles (I for example, like slo-pitch, barbecues, and writing far-too-lengthly blogs, and I imagine the Ex is more of a monster truck rally, hang-out-in-dank-basements kind of guy).
But what's done is done, and one thing is for sure: I'm never going back to Pasta Polo again.
Can't take that chance.
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