Back then

I realized only quite recently that I had finally gotten truthful about a near-relationship from long ago.  Up to that point,I'd glazed over the memory, making him much nicer and kinder than was accurate. But the truth back then was that he'd been rather cavalier about whether we were "together" or not until it was clear that we were not; and then at the first public meeting afterward, I with new date in tow and he with his typical posse of male miscreants, he'd publicly denounced me as though I had proverbially fucked him over, all for the benefit of those he'd allowed to construe that we were together when, in fact, we were not. Indeed, apologies (from him) were extended and accepted (by me) later and we'd gone our own ways and let each other be although always with the thought that things could have been different, or worked out somehow, and that we might have had a happy successful life together or some similar kind of nonsense.  It's stupid, you might say, to take this long to get over this business. But back then, I was even stupider.