I didn't know anything other than I wanted the day's nightmare to end. And that somehow, somewhere there had to be an easier way to meet a good man, and I desperately wanted to know the secret.

"It just happened once or twice," Brent explained, as if fewer than five indiscretions didn't count. "And I like you better than her. I-I really, uh, kind of love you." He paused. "C'mon, Ellie. Say something."

I studied his handsome face, so flushed with embarra.s.sment-real or contrived-then turned my attention toward the quad, where scores of students milled around and chatted daily, regardless of the weather. About twenty yards away a lively a.s.sembly of females had gathered and several delighted giggles rose above the pack.

I pointed at the group and said to Brent, "Go fish."

4.

They who are good-natured when children,

are good-natured when they grow up.

-Pride and Prejudice The rest of that year wasn't much of an improvement as far as how things played out in my dating life. I saw the occasional date movie or action flick with a guy here or there and went out for a few uninspiring dinner dates at off-campus restaurants, but no man really captured my interest long term, nor I his. Can't say I fared much better during the second year of grad school either.

So, a couple of months short of graduating, I ventured home for spring break and spent several lazy days ruminating on my single status and overdosing on pricey, caffeinated beverages.

Maybe, I projected, things would get better once I was officially in the workforce.

Maybe I simply needed to move across the country to find my man. Angelique, whose funny phone calls always seemed to brighten my day, kept telling me that California guys were the way to go, and she was getting increasingly serious about "her Leo."

Or maybe making my brain move faster by drinking more coffee would provide me with the answer I sought.

I grabbed a windbreaker and bolted out of the house to test the latter theory. The day was sunny, though, so I left my jacket unzipped and inhaled deeply. The scents of late March pervaded the air of neighborhood Glen Forest. Crabapple blossoms. Wet gra.s.s. The distinctive odor of worms out for a squiggle after the morning's rain. And I was walking the sidewalks like a tourist. Weird.

About two blocks from my parents' house stood my favorite corner coffee shop, Brew Masters. I entered to the piped-in, vintage sounds of Echo & The Bunnymen. Appropriate enough, I supposed, for early spring.

Jane and I chitchatted silently about the differing musical styles of our eras (Beethoven versus the Beastie Boys-who proved more rebellious? Discuss...) as I ordered a cappuccino and wandered over to the condiments counter. I was deeply involved in the delicate process of flavoring my drink with cinnamon when I heard a voice from the past.

"Ellie? Is that you?"

I swung around to see none other than Jason Bertignoli (Oh, my G.o.d! We were both twenty-three. How did we get so old?!), sitting alone at a tiny table, reading a newspaper and sipping a small coffee.

Jane groaned and said, Oh, heavens. But I waved and walked over to him.

"Hi," I said, trying to keep the surprise from my voice. It'd been more than two years since I'd seen him in town. "What's up? I haven't run into you in ages."

"You either." He stood and gave me an awkward hug. "Finished grad school yet?"

I nodded. "Well, nearly. Two more months. You?"

"Not exactly." He pointed to the paper. "I've been job hunting this semester and have a bunch of interviews lined up for April." He grinned. "A lot's happened this year, Ellie."

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 cla.s.swork and starting the job hunt for a librarian position this summer." I paused to consider what pa.s.sed for Big News in my world. I came to the rapid conclusion that my life was boring as h.e.l.l. (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 cla.s.ses 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/fiancee at having someone love her like that, stick by her, be loyal to her. I didn't covet Jason-both G.o.d 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d-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 a.s.sortment 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.

"I'll see what I can do to expand my social circle," I said, leaning against the doorframe, "but I'm starting to think there's got to be an element of magic involved somewhere. I'm not saying you and Leo don't work at your marriage, but you two didn't work that hard when you first met. You spotted him in that Renaissance Music cla.s.s of yours, thought he was cute, talked to him. He saw you and thought, 'Oh, she's hot and a brainiac to boot. We could have beautiful genius kids together.' Then he asked you out and you got to know each other. It was a natural thing. It progressed to the next stage without being forced or manipulated. Without strategy. That's what I want this time."

Angelique fashioned a few more ringlets and took in my words. "It's always more work than you think, Ellie. Even in the most compatible of relationships there's still strategy-on both sides. And things can change between two people in an instant. There are never guarantees." She shrugged. "But knowing that doesn't help you much, does it?"

"Nope." I blew her a kiss. "Thanks for the words of wisdom, though. I appreciate them. But no blind dates. Got it, Angelique?"

"Fine, fine. Have it your way." She paused. "But if you ever change your mind, there's this really gorgeous professor of Gaelic studies who-"

I slammed the bathroom door on my goofy cousin and went in search of her daughter. Lyssa's conversation might be limited, but at least I didn't have to defend my pathetically single status to her.

Problem was, I'd totally lied to Angelique. I didn't require magic. I was willing to work at a halfway-decent relationship until I turned a shade of toxic green. I would've even gone on yet another blind date if I thought it'd do any good.

Why?

Because the fringes of desperation danced through my bloodstream every time I met a new man or even spotted one walking down the sidewalk.

Because I'd look into his eyes as we pa.s.sed each other and ask myself, "Is that My Guy? Could he be The One?"

Because I was so worried True Love would never happen for me that I was willing to expend huge amounts of energy trying to maneuver a compatible match into place.

Because I knew the clock was ticking on finding someone, and soon all the good ones would be taken.

Because I was twenty-six and so lonely. Still.

But my optimism, which I used to think had been my birthright, had faded, or at least gone into deep hiding. And that was my biggest lie to my cousin: The inherent implication that the happily-ever-after thing was really possible.

Truth was, except for an occasional spasm of something resembling hope, I'd stopped believing.

Work resumed a few days later and, as the students struggled to re-a.s.similate into the school-day structure, the staff was abuzz with post-holiday gossip.

While I checked back in books the high schoolers had checked out over winter break, my friend and colleague, Sarah, leaned against the library desk and appraised me.

"You ought to give The Dragon's Lair a try," she told me, raising a dark eyebrow that all but twitched from the possibility of near-future matchmaking. "That's where my roommate said she went over vacation. And she found herself a new man."

"You know I'm not a club-hopping type." I checked in a copy of Twain's The Mysterious Stranger with the scanner and put it on the to-be-shelved cart.

"Technically, there's no hopping involved. You just go to that one club, you stay there, scope out guys for a few hours, take down a few phone numbers and go home. It's really a very simple process, Ellie."

She smirked, of course, as she said this. I narrowed my eyes at her.

"I'll go with you," she volunteered cheerfully. "Liam won't mind." She paused. "Well, he won't know about it."