In col ege, twenty-nine had seemed impossibly old. By now, she’d thought, she’d be married and have kids. But as each year went by, she didn’t feel much different than she had before. Time kept going by and she was just here, the same.

It seemed like it al happened easier for everyone else. Look at Harrison’s friends. They just got married and had kids and didn’t seem to think about it too much. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was thinking about it too much. Or maybe the fact that she was thinking about it meant it wasn’t right.

There was one morning recently when they were lounging in bed, which was unusual for Harrison. Sundays were his day to go running, and he was usual y up and out the door before she woke up. But this Sunday he didn’t go anywhere. They ordered breakfast in from the Bagelry and watched Meet the Press with the New York Times spread al over the bed.

It bothered her that he was such a go-getter on the weekend. It made her feel lazy to stay in bed when he was out running. That morning she was ready to pick a fight with him over leaving the apartment. And then, like he knew what she was thinking, he didn’t go anywhere.

“No run today?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t real y feel like it,” he said.

Isabel a had two tiny stuffed pigs that she kept on her night-stand, named Buster and Stinky. Harrison had always thought it was odd, the way she loved stuffed animals, the way she was drawn to little figurines and fuzzy things. “You’re so weird,” he said, laughing, when she made a stuffed frog ribbit at him. And she knew he meant it.

Boyfriends in her past had found this trait cute and charming. They had indulged her with little fuzzy animals as presents. Ben had even gone so far as to give them little voices (usual y when he was stoned) and march them across the bed to make her laugh.

Harrison had largely ignored Buster and Stinky, except once when he had used Buster as a Hacky Sack during a long phone cal . But that morning, Isabel a came back from the bathroom to find the two pigs in the middle of the bed in a compromising pose. She stared at them for a minute before it registered that they were in the 69 position.

She stood at the end of the bed until Harrison final y looked up.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Bunch of dirty pigs around here. They must have learned it from watching you.”

“You know,” she said, “that they are both boys, right?”

“Are you saying that two male pigs can’t be in love? Did you learn nothing from the penguins at the zoo?”

Isabel a laughed and climbed back into bed with him. For the rest of the day, anytime she left the room Harrison arranged the pigs in another dirty pose. Yes, she thought at the end of the day. Okay, I could be with him forever.

She worried that maybe they’d been dating too long to end up together. It was like when you tried to jump off the high dive and if you did it right away, you were fine. But if you stood there looking down, thinking of al the bad things that could happen, you were doomed. You would just climb back down the ladder to the safety of the ground.

Harrison was standing next to a dorm building, checking his BlackBerry. She watched him from behind. How was she supposed to be okay just hating him and then loving him on alternate days? What if that never stopped?

She went up behind him and stood on her toes until her nose was right next to his ear, and then she snorted softly and slowly. He tilted his head like she was tickling him, and he lowered his BlackBerry. She kept snorting until she heard him laugh and then she stopped and kissed the back of his neck.

“Hey, dirty pig,” he said, turning around. “There you are.”

“There you are,” she said. She put her face next to his and snorted again until he smiled and kissed her.

E veryone was talking about babies. It al started when someone suggested that Shannon was getting married because she was pregnant. “She just met the guy six months ago,” their friend Annie said. “And here we are at their wedding. It’s a little suspicious.”