We sat down and I took a cautious sip of my drink before asking the obvious. “Like what?”

He laughed. “Um…” He laughed again, but I clearly wasn’t in on the joke. “I think maybe we oughta work up to it. Start with small talk or something.”

I set down my cappuccino. “Okay. Well, I’m fine. My family’s fine, except for my sister Diana, who’s as much of a pain as ever.” I rolled my eyes and Jason laughed. Even though he and my sister hadn’t interacted much during high school, everyone knew Di back then. She’d had, to put it euphemistically, a “big personality.”

“She’s been married for almost two years, though, so she’s her husband’s problem now,” I added. “But, otherwise, I’ll just be finishing up my classwork and starting the job hunt for a librarian position this summer.” I paused to consider what passed for Big News in my world. I came to the rapid conclusion that my life was boring as hell. (Well, except for the Jane-Austen-voice-in-my-head thing, but there was no way I was telling Jason about that.) “There ends my small talk. Your turn.” I smiled at him.

He gave me an endearing grin, looking very cute in a significantly more grown-up way than I remembered. But still, even now, I couldn’t see his face without thinking of going with him to our senior prom and the whole drunken debacle that followed. It was a memory that saved me from feeling something like sentimental over him.

Just for good measure, though, Jane murmured, He seems as much the affable lackwit as before.

I inwardly rolled my eyes at Jane and outwardly nudged Jason. “C’mon. You can tell me.”

“Okaaaay,” he said, dragging out the word. “I’m fine. My family’s fine, except for my mother, who’s a little worried. My girlfriend’s pregnant and we’re getting married this Sunday.” He paused and watched my expression, which I’m certain must’ve been one of shock, then said, “Oh, and I had to drop out of grad school. I’d only taken three classes last year but, anyway, I might go back sometime. At least I’ve got my bachelor’s in marketing now because, you know, having a degree will make supporting the family easier.”

He stopped talking and waited for me to speak. After a full fifteen seconds I was finally able to.

“That’s actually a lot of news, Jason.”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“Are you okay? I mean, how are you and your girlfriend doing with all of this?”

He glanced out the window, then looked back at me, his eyes serious. “Look, I know it’s not ideal timing. It’d be better if this all would’ve happened another year from now and we were a little more settled in our careers and everything, but — ” He shrugged and kind of grinned. “Anyway, I love her, so we’d have gotten here eventually.”

About ten different emotions battled it out in my gut, not the least of which was envy. Envy of Jason’s girlfriend/fiancée at having someone love her like that, stick by her, be loyal to her. I didn’t covet Jason — both God and Jane knew that wasn’t the case — but I’d been in enough bad relationships to yearn for a man who cared about me as deeply. The kind of man that, say, Brent or Dominic or Sam had never been.

“She’s lucky,” I whispered, not realizing until I heard my voice that I’d said the words aloud.

Jason dipped his head. “No. I’m the lucky one,” he said, his tone quiet but fortified with conviction. Then he picked up his coffee cup and drained it in one gulp. “I need to get going now, but it was great seeing you again. You take care of yourself, okay?”

“Thanks, Jason. You, too.”

A minute later he was out the door, and I was left with a budding hope in man’s faithfulness, a renewal that both buoyed and haunted me throughout the next several months.


Unfortunately, that hopefulness did not last forever.

By the time I’d received both master’s degrees, gotten a fulltime librarian job with the Meadowview High School District (about a half hour west of Glen Forest) and worked for a couple of years, I was on the verge of giving up the whole depressing dating scene altogether.

I had friends, of course, who never tired of trying to set me up with random single men. And then, naturally, there was my overly romantic and highly delusional cousin. Who happened to be in town one New Year’s Eve. Husband of three years — and young child — in tow.

Angelique grabbed her daughter’s elastic waistband and yanked the toddler away from the hot curling iron on the bathroom counter. “No! Not a toy. Go play with LEGOs.”

Lyssa looked up at her mommy with big brown eyes. “Toy? Me have toy.” She reached out a chunky hand and took a big step forward.

“No.” Angelique yanked her back again and jabbed a parental finger at the hair-styling tool. “Icky. Hot. Bad.” Then she pointed toward the hallway of my parents’ house. “Toys there. Go.”

When the little girl finally waddled away toward her LEGO collection, my cousin sighed and sent me an exhausted smile. “This mommy stuff really changes your life. I haven’t spoken a complex sentence in twenty-one months.” She grimaced at her reflection in the mirror. “And just look at my hair!”

I grinned and helped her brush out a few snarls. “But Lyssa’s a sweetie, and she’s grown so much just since the summer. I could hardly believe it when I saw you guys at the airport. She’s got to astonish you every day.”

“Yes.” Angelique kissed my cheek and squeezed my shoulder before returning her attention to her tangles. “But today she’s astonishing me by how insane she can make me. I’ll never be ready for tonight. Three measly hours isn’t enough time to make myself look like a woman again.”

“Leo thinks you’re as gorgeous as ever, and you know it. You don’t have to try so hard.”

“But we don’t get many dates together, El. That makes tonight special.” The lines at the corners of her mouth tightened. “Thanks for watching Lyssa for us and for being so welcoming. You don’t know how — ”

She stopped, and I saw her flick an errant teardrop away.

“Hey, it’s nothing,” I said. “I’m crazy about her. So are Mom, Dad, Gregory, even Di and Alex. And Aunt Candice is starting to come around about Leo. No one can resist your little girl — ”

We heard a delighted shriek from the hallway and the crash of LEGOs.

“ — even if she is kind of loud,” I added, chuckling.

Angelique’s amusement was fleeting. “My mom’ll never really forgive me,” she whispered. “You know that, right? No matter what front she puts on in public.”

“Is falling in love with a man who’s smart and kind something anyone should have to forgive?”

She shook her head. “But, in Mom’s opinion, marrying him was going that little step too far. And even getting a granddaughter out of it hasn’t been compensation enough.”

I thought about this. Aunt Candice didn’t cast quite the welcoming eye on Angelique and Leo’s engagement that my cousin had hoped. In fact, my aunt’s reaction to their subsequent elopement (when I was still in grad school) was even less congenial. To date, the best spin she’d managed to put on her daughter’s marriage was — once — when she called the relationship “surprising.”

“Do you have any regrets about marrying Leo, other than your mom’s disapproval?” I asked.

“None,” she said without hesitation. “Not a single damn one. He’s the best, and I hope you’ll find somebody equally as amazing. You deserve someone great.”

At this point, I suspected finding someone moderately tolerable would’ve been big news, but I said, “Thanks.”

My cousin curled a section of her hair into a springy ringlet and looked pleased with the result. “You know,” she said, twisting a new strand of hair around the curling iron, “Leo has a ton of friends. Most live near us in California, of course, but he’s got a few pals here in Chicago, too. We could hook you up with somebody vraiment fantastique.” She winked.

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve vowed never to go on another blind date again.”

To solidify my point, I spent the next ten minutes recounting in extensive detail some of the torturous dates I’d suffered through during the past year alone. “Besides,” I told her, “it wouldn’t matter. You could present me with forty such men, all as wonderful as Leo, and it wouldn’t work out.”

“Why the heck not?”

I looked over my sweet, warmhearted cousin from her now curly head to her sock-footed toe. “Because I’m not cute and nice and funny like you. I don’t have the kind of disposition that attracts really thoughtful men or the temperament to keep one if I did. I’m a louse magnet.”

“That’s absurd!” Angelique set down the curling iron and stared at me. “What kind of God-awful guys have you been dating to make yourself believe such a thing?”

“My point exactly. But not all of them could’ve been weirdos or imbeciles, though I thought so at the time. I must’ve misjudged at least one or two. I mean, statistically, it has to be impossible to have a string of duds like that.”

Angelique laughed. “You are funny, El, cute and very nice, too. And, for the record, I think your theory is totally bogus. You’re just insulated in your high-school-librarian world. You don’t meet a wide enough assortment of men.”

Okay. She might be onto something there. The school-district staff I worked with consisted of lots of balding, married men who taught subjects like government or mechanics, but who really dreamed of coaching varsity football or basketball. Most of the unmarried guys also wanted to coach some sport but, if they didn’t, they spent their free evenings hopping the clubs downtown. Not a poet in the bunch.