During my final semester of law school I took one of my favorite classes, Mediation. Everyone loved our professor. She had been a high-powered attorney at a snooty law firm but then she had a nervous breakdown, got divorced, and then became a mediator. New Age religious practices were key to her recovery and her mediation practice. She told us that when preparing for a mediation, she sat in her office, meditated, and then sent rainbow bands from the 7 chakras of her spine and connected herself to the conflicting parties, sending them positive energy. One of the assigned books was Difficult Conversations, which taught me how to practice empathy in conversation, which was a vital skill I had lacked all my life.

In class, she gave us experiential exercises where we played roles—plaintiff, defendant, their respective lawyers, and mediator—in a dispute that had to get mediated. We then discussed what happened in our roleplays. How did they play out? Were we able to come to a resolution? There was one insufferable student in the class who dominated discussions, acting as if these teaching exercises were real life. She regaled us with tales of how she had heroically saved the day for all involved.

Billie was in my Mediation class. She was naturally soft-spoken and introverted, but I got to know her through doing these class exercises and soon discovered she was also judgmental and mean, which appealed to me. We bonded midway through the semester, locking eyes in annoyance when the insufferable student raised her hand to wax poetic about how great she had just done in our class exercise.

I started dating Billie at the beginning of the summer. We had both just graduated from law school and were taking all-day bar exam classes. We started out eating lunch together, and then walking home together, until we were sleeping together. I don’t think I would have made it through the drudgery of studying for the bar exam without her. Our relationship may have saved my nascent law career, for better or worse.

Billie listened to the Grateful Dead, the Indigo Girls, and Norah Jones. She loved music but didn’t know where to find new stuff. She was stuck in a rut and asked me to make her a mixcd. I did. The bands she liked best were Rilo Kiley, Wilco, and Bright Eyes.

After taking the bar exam, we both moved to Southern California for jobs we had gotten months before we started dating. Me to L.A. to work at a small firm representing labor unions, and Billie to Orange County to work for a judge. It wasn’t exactly long distance, but sitting for two and a half hours in Friday night traffic to only do the same on the return trip on Sunday was a soul crushing way to spend a hard-earned weekend. By November it felt like the relationship had run its course, and we called it quits.

Bright Eyes was touring on their double release of I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. They were playing back-to-back nights at the Orpheum. I bought tickets to the first night, not wanting to get tickets for Valentine’s Day.

I bought them in haste to get good seats before it sold out without seeing if anyone would go with me. I was still finding my footing in L.A. and didn’t have any reliable friends to go to shows with. Eventually, Jesse said he’d go, but then bailed at the last second. He felt bad and said he’d still pay for the ticket. Now all I had to do is find someone who wanted to see Bright Eyes for free.

The email I sent to Billie inviting her to see Bright Eyes was at turns both teasing and flirty, but also standoffish and casual. Despite breaking up, we had stayed in touch, sending each other sporadic messages, mostly to trade gossip and talk shit about our former classmates. I enjoyed her friendship and wanted to go to the show with her, but I also didn’t want her to think we were getting back together. She responded to my email in kind and drove up in the late afternoon that Sunday for the show.

We went out for Thai food in my neighborhood. It was nice seeing Billie again, but the tension of being in the same physical space with an ex hung over every interaction. I felt a pang of jealousy when she told me that she had tickets for the Valentine’s Day show the following night and was going with her co-worker. I wondered if they were dating now. She said she would’ve asked me, but it was Valentine’s Day, which would’ve been fraught. I knew what she meant.

After dinner we walked back to my place. She was sitting on my couch, and I was putting on iTunes on my computer when she said, “If we’re going to have sex, we should do it now, because I want to drive back home straight from the show. Tomorrow’s Monday, so…you know.”

I hadn’t had sex since the last time I had sex with Billie, and doing so that night was a relief from the loneliness of moving to this new city and being back at the nine-to-five grind that was turning out to be more like a nine-to-seven bludgeon. Add to that the newly sprung war in Iraq, and I was feeling extremely down on the potential the rest of my life held. I listened to I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning at work every day on repeat. Conor had put words to how I was feeling, about the war especially, and it was helping me stay alive and not lose my mind. That night when he sang “Landlocked Blues” it felt like the whole auditorium was on the verge of sobbing. It got the loudest applause all night.

After the show, I kissed Billie goodbye on the street. I think we both sort of knew it would be the last time we’d hang out.

Two days later, I got an email from her. Now it was my turn to receive a missive from an ex about a transcendent show experience. She said that the Valentine’s Day show was fucking awesome. Whenever someone said “I love you, Conor!” he would say, “I love you, too. Happy Valentine’s Day!” And he played one of my favorite songs, “June on the West Coast.” I wished I had been there with her but was okay with not being there too.

Excerpted from Stubs 2001-2010