Flash forward to my twenty-sixth birthday. I sat by myself at Little Italy for thirty minutes, waiting for Robert to show up. He’d said he wanted to do something just the two of us, so Steph and I were going to celebrate the next day.

As I was waiting, I kept thinking about the conversation Robert and I’d had a few days before. The conversation where he’d gone on and on about how great it was that his mom had stayed at home to take care of him and his brothers and sisters. He’d followed it up with, “Maybe we should look for places in Longmont once we have kids, so you could be close to your mom. Then it won’t be so hard when I’m not home.”

“That would mean we’d both have at least an hour commute each way,” I’d said.

“But if you stayed home, then I’d be the only one doing the commute.” It ended the same way it always did. With Robert saying, “It’s not something we have to decide now, but I think you’ll find you want to stay home once we have kids.”

And maybe he was right. But there was also a chance he was wrong.

When Robert finally walked up to the table, I felt like crying. Everything suddenly felt wrong and I didn’t know what to do about it.

“Sorry I’m so late,” he said. “I know you hate waiting, but you know how it is. One thing leads to another…” He leaned down and gave me a quick peck before sitting across from me.

My breaths came out shallow, and my nerves were all jittery. “I was starting to think I’d be celebrating my birthday by myself.”

“Well, I’m here now. And I don’t want to wait any longer to give you your present. I’ve been excited about it all day.”

“What if I don’t want to stay home with our kids?” I blurted out. “What if I only want a small family, and I don’t want to move out to the suburbs? Lately, your hours have been crazy. This is the first time I’ve seen you all week, and I have a feeling it’s only going to get worse.

“I don’t want to be some housewife with kids hanging off me, wishing I would’ve said something before it was too late. These are some big issues, and I’m not sure we’re ever going to agree on them.”

Robert blinked, obviously taken aback by my words. “We can figure that out later.” He recovered and placed his hand over mine. “Now, just wait until you see your present.” He reached into his coat pocket.

“Robert, I don’t know if I—”

“Darby Quinn, will you marry me?” He pulled out a black velvet box and popped open the lid.

I stared at the ring. A simple silver band with a solitaire diamond winking in the middle.

If he’d asked me the day before, I would’ve said yes. I wanted to say yes now. I knew he was passionate about his job. So was I. Sure, I wasn’t keeping innocent people out of jail—of course, he wasn’t all the time, either, which still bothered me a little bit—but I loved my job. It made me happy. But he thought what I did was a frivolous waste.

As I sat there, my dream bubble bursting, I realized Robert and I didn’t want the same things out of life, either. Not just with the kid issue, but where we wanted to live, how we wanted to raise our kids (six if he had his way), the lifestyle we’d lead. I’d tried to be understanding about it, but the fact that he was always late drove me crazy.

There was also a struggle over visiting our families. He rarely had time to go with me to see mine, yet we managed to make it to his twice a month. And when we did visit his family, he’d disappear to hang out with his brothers, leaving me with his sisters and mom, who I had nothing in common with.

If only one of these things had been an issue, maybe we could work them out. All of them together were too many.

Tears filled my eyes, and the pain in my chest made it hard to breathe.

I can’t believe this is happening.

Robert moved the box closer to me. “Darby, say yes already. I’m starting to get worried.”

“I can’t do it. I love you, I really do, but we don’t want the same things. I tried to tell myself it’d all be okay, but…” My words came in a high-pitched squeak. “It’s not going to work.”

People around us were staring. A few people started clapping. They thought we were getting engaged; they didn’t realize we were in the middle of breaking up.

That was the day I realized I’d been lied to. Even though I’d found an amazing, mature guy who I loved, who loved me back, it still wasn’t enough. I was crushed. And pissed. And totally heartbroken.

Time Wasted: I refuse to say any of our ten months together were a waste. I learned a lot about myself. I got to experience the most intense love I’d ever had up till then. I also had to get over it, which wasn’t easy. I became bitter and went through a zombie/horror film phase. My favorite part was when everyone died. If someone actually found love in the movie, I booed and threw popcorn at the screen.

Lessons Learned:

My family is really, really important to me.

I want someone with enough free time to spend some with me (a.k.a. no workaholics).

Never date someone who wants six kids.

The hardest lesson: Sometimes love’s just not enough.

…

Stephanie, Anthony, Karl, and I sat down at a table near the bar. I’d called Stephanie, desperate to get out after spending all day working, and we’d met at Shots, the place Anthony had originally meant for us to go. Saturday nights were apparently popular, because it was hard to move. When a group got up to leave, we snatched the table.

“So what happened?” Steph asked.

I knew what she was talking about, but I didn’t want to get into it. The whole point of getting out was to stop thinking about him.

She scooted her chair closer to mine. “You know I’m not going to leave you alone until you tell me what happened with Jake.”

I sighed, nice and dramatic so that she got how much I didn’t want to talk about it. “He kept trying to convince me that some relationships are good.”

Steph tilted her head and stared at me. “Oh, Darby. Surely there’s more than that.”

“I called him for no reason but to chat, even though he was in the middle of work. When I had a bad day, I complained about it to him. I had him go to a boring party with me. I was relying on him too much. I could just feel it starting to get messy.”

Karl leaned in, yelling over the music. “What’s going on?”

“Darby dropped a guy because he liked her and she was starting to like him back,” Steph said.

I scowled at her. “Thanks for making it sound as horrible as possible.”

“I guess I should consider myself lucky that you were appalled by me,” Karl said with a smile.

“You better watch it. Getting someone in this place to punch you might be harder than at Hot Shots, but I like a challenge.” Usually I would’ve delivered that line much better, but it came out kind of sad, thanks to the fact that his statement was a little too true. Maybe my exes had a list of what not to look for in a girlfriend with all my qualities listed.

Anthony held his hand out to Stephanie. “You want to dance?”

Stephanie glanced at me.

“I’m fine,” I said, pushing her toward her fiancé. “Go dance.”

Anthony hated to dance, but Steph loved it. I knew Anthony suffered through it because of how happy it made Stephanie.

As soon as they were gone, Karl asked, “You want to talk about your relationship? I know you don’t believe in what I do, but I might just impress you with what I know.”

“I don’t need a therapist to tell me that my views on relationships are screwed up.” I glanced at him. “I hope this doesn’t come across as offensive, because I don’t mean it that way, but don’t you have a hard time convincing your clients you know what you’re talking about when you’re not married?”

Karl’s lips thinned. He took a swig of his drink. “I was married. For six years. My wife had cystic fibrosis. They wanted to do a lung transplant, but they couldn’t find a donor in time. So she passed away. A little more than two years ago.”

“That’s… I’m so sorry. I can’t believe Stephanie didn’t tell me.”

“I asked her not to. I don’t want it to be the first thing people know about me. I’d rather tell them in my own time.” He sat back. “Everyone keeps saying I should get back out there. But it’s impossible not to compare them all to Monica.”

“At least you had training on how to make those six years good.”

“You’d think. She used to get mad whenever I’d ask her counseling-type questions. I had to word them differently so she didn’t know what I was doing, and even then, she caught on pretty quick.” He stared at the table, a faraway look on his face. One corner of his mouth twisted up. “She taught me the real-world experience I needed.”

“So after going through that, don’t you hesitate to do it all again?” I asked.

Karl nodded. “Sure. It’s why I’m sitting here with you right now instead of going over to the blonde at the end of the bar and asking her out.”

Trying to be subtle, I checked out the girl he was talking about. She was pretty, dressed in clothes that were sexy but not completely revealing, and had these cute black glasses.

“You should go,” I said. “The worst she could say is no.”

Karl shot me a sidelong glance. “I’m not sure I should be taking relationship advice from someone who dumped a perfectly good guy.”

“Just because I’m a big failure at relationships doesn’t mean I’m not right about the blonde. She keeps looking back here, and she’s going to think you and I are together.” I nudged Karl with the tip of my shoe. “Go.”

He reluctantly stood up and headed over to the bar.