It was a few minutes before Merri had the guts to emerge from the bathroom. He'd splashed water on his face a few times, gave himself as much of a pep talk as he could muster (So it's just as friends. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no such thing as having too many friends.), and paced about the bathroom a about twenty times before taking in a handful of large breaths and opening the door.
To his dismay, Aisling was no long there, and he felt as though he wanted to fall through the floor. Reading the note she left made him feel little better, but hopefully, if he was very lucky, she wouldn't have thought that he had meant for this to be something more?
No, of course that wasn't going to happen. She knew. Merri knew himself as transparent. So he fell into the seat, held his head for a while, and then pulled out his coin purse and paid for the food and left.
He had no idea how he was going to live this one down.