"Did you guys know Ritchie had some sort of a problem with me?" Boof asked as he sat down, looking only slightly bemused.

I, for one, had been told that "Justin is trying REAL hard to get the Reaper in bed, and Ryan's super pissed off about it" and so was he. But this all came from the world's most dubious source, Ritchie himself.

"Did you talk to Ryan about it?" I asked.

"Yeah. Ryan's the one who told me."

Interesting. Why would Ryan talk to someone he's 'super pissed' at? "What'd he say?"

"Well," Boof goes, "for one, he said that Ritchie's losing his fucking mind. He's very threatened by the Hemmy thing. And he thinks I'm trying to sleep with you."

"ME?!" I say? WTF? Man, Thursday night was just stupid drunk talk, and he and I both know this. "That is NOT what I heard. He told me that you were trying to sleep with Tara, and that Ryan was mad at you."

"Tara!? I haven't... I haven't talked to Tara in, like, MONTHS."

None of this bodes well. First of all, I just hung out with Ritchie and Carie on Saturday night. He seemed ... alright. But in the back of my head is what Carie told me on Friday: "He goes, 'I don't know why she just doesn't see it. She's totally in love with me, one day she'll come to her senses.'"

"I don't need this! I'm sick of this reputation, that I sleep with all my friends' exgirlfriends!" Boof does look pissed.

And now, what with Boof corroborating what I'd been fearing before, I know that Ritchie and I having ANY contact is just no good. Because he's bordering on psychotalk.

"Pinkie swear: we never had this conversation." Boof pinkie swears with me, but I neither know or don't know if I should break his finger or not. So far, I have no reason to disbelieve him.

I wonder if Ritchie would be any saner knowing that Anthony and I got back together.

Ohh, quiet you: I know, it could be just another knot in the rope, but I wouldn't have done it if he hadn't won me over with the right things to say. And I know that he meant them, because he had to get good and buzzed to let them out. Only problem is, I too get good and buzzed when I hear them--so much so, I don't even remember all that was shared. I know that the chord is struck in precisely the right way that the defenses get shattered. I see he knows what he did wrong. He admits it. He so wishes he didn't have certain problems. I so wish he didn't either, because if he keeps it up, or verbally disembowels me ever again,...

But we're going about this try differently. With more reserve, with more thought. It'll no longer be me waiting for him or his every move to see how my own nights progress. I have girl friends AND guy friends. Ritchie / the band (synonomous wedges in our relationship that I foolishly took at only face value) aren't a threat to him anymore. Passion isn't making me think Anthony is the end-all, be-all for me; he's not the solution to my private life, he's just a part of it. And I'm a part of his. A substantial part, but how much space I take in it isn't a concern anymore.

Boof gave me 1 line of advice that really made sense.

"Knot, you don't need a boyfriend. Just hang out."

I think I'm going to do both.