Sequence of time in the sentence

Hello dear friends ,would you please shed the light upon this rule?

Please notice the short conversation:

A: hey Jim how have you been?

B: hi, great, long time no see.

A: yeah I think the last time we saw each other was one year ago.

or I think I saw you last time one year ago.

In fact I'm sure that based on the balanced rule ,there isn't any balance between these highlighted sentences, in terms of sequence of time . In other words, we must say:

I thought

the last time we saw each other was one year ago.

or I saw you last time one year ago.

But

the sense in speaker's mind is in the present for the first sentence(I think). In this case how do native speaker say and what is more natural and idiomatic to say?

I can't figure it out.

Thanks a bunch