I decided that after work I was going to drive to his office and tell him so, but before I could, he showed up at my work, told me he was miserable without me, and apologized for everything he’d said. I apologized, and told him I loved him. He said he loved me, too. Things went back to perfect.

Three months later, we started discussing our future. We talked about buying a place; the M-word was mentioned. We were at my kitchen table, looking at flyers for homes when the topic of having kids came up.

“We’ll start in a home like this,” Robert said, picking up one of the flyers. “But we’ll need to move to a bigger place once we start having kids.”

“I’m a little shaky on the kids issue.” I swallowed the bite of cookie I had in my mouth. “If we do decide to have one or two kids, though, three bedrooms should be enough.” I popped the rest of my cookie in my mouth and wiped the crumbs from my hands.

“I’m thinking more like five or six kids.”

I almost choked. “What? I’m not having five or six kids. After my parents got divorced, I went through this phase where I didn’t think I wanted kids at all. Drew and Devin pretty much solidified my stance on it. I’m barely getting used to the idea of having kids at all.”

“Since I’ve met Drew and Devin,” Robert said, “I completely understand.”

“Hey, those are my brothers you’re talking about. I can slam them, but no one else can. Besides, they’re not so bad now.”

“Yeah, I loved it when they dragged me along to show me”—he made air quotes—“real men’s work.” And how they called me a city boy when I fell off a horse. Or when they didn’t tell me that a giant bull was in the pen, so I climbed over the fence after them and came face-to-face with the beast.”

“Tiny’s the most gentle creature on the farm,” I said, picturing the enormous black bull Dwight treated like a puppy.

“He rammed me with his head.”

“He nudged you because he wanted his head scratched. You’re just lucky you weren’t holding a stick. Tiny loves to get scratched with a big rough stick. He’ll come running at you if you’ve got one of those in your hand.”

Robert exhaled, managing to convey with the sound how frustrated he was. “Anyway, all I’m saying is that I grew up with seven kids, and I’ve always wanted to have a big family. It’s crazy, but it’s fun. And we’ll have them all close together so they always have someone to play with.”

“You’ve got cases piled up all the time. How are you going to have time to take care of six kids?” I put a hand on my chest. “I’m not raising six kids by myself. I’m not even going to raise one kid by myself. Not to mention we can’t afford to have that many kids.”

“You can work from home. We’ll buy a fixer-upper. With how great you are at your job, you’ll find a way to make it nice.”

As nice as that vote of confidence was, frustration welled up in me. Cleary, he didn’t get what I did. “I can’t paint over bad plumbing or holes in the wall. And there’s no way I could work from home while taking care of kids. Don’t you remember what it was like last week at my parents’ house? Devin and Anne were about to go crazy taking care of Levi. He just cried and cried and nothing made him happy.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I’m not even sure if I can do more than one baby. Then there’s the whole issue that most of the time my job involves working in the home I’m renovating.”

Robert tossed the flyer back down on the table. “We don’t have to figure everything out right now.”

I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, either. But in the back of my mind, I knew this was a problem we couldn’t ignore forever. I told myself it was okay, though. This was what people meant when they said relationships were about compromise. We just had to find the right balance.

A couple more months went by. I was working on a condo project that was hectic and stressful, and Robert had more and more cases piling up. We looked at homes whenever we could squeeze time into our crazy schedules. I kept telling myself we’d figure everything out. We did love each other, after all.

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.”