"Oh hey. Language. There are kids with their nannies about," he said. "Look. The staying friends thing? It's something all people who are about to become exes say to each other. It's really just code for lets-be-civil-if-we-run-into-each-other-in-public-places-or-social-situations. Like, you know, this." He indicated the two of them in that moment.

"Think about it, Alisa. I tried to date you, but I was also constantly being interrupted by the first guy to ever turn your cherry out." That was an ambiguous enough, family friendly turn of phrase, wasn't it? "And he wasn't letting go of the stem to that cherry. It wasn't exactly a situation I wanted any connection to. When you called, when you needed a friend, I came. Because that's what friends do. But I also didn't want to give you any mixed signals about where we stood, because you did do a lot of flip-flopping between Alistaire and myself and I didn't want to make things any more complicated. It wasn't healthy, and I wanted out of the equation. I mean, I bet the next guy you date is going to have to deal with his overly pampered shadow as well."

Ryan shrugged. "I'm sorry that I hurt you, Alisa. But when I said we'd be friends, I didn't mean that we'd become besties for life. It...rarely works that way. And not in the triangle that we were in."