“My last serious girlfriend, Kasey, started off wonderfully. She was fun, full of life, and really open to trying new things. We went camping, paintballing, road-tripping.”
“She sounds great.” Her stomach clenched. Is he still stuck on his ex?
“She was.”
“What happened?”
He frowned. “About a year and a half to two years into things, she started to change. It was gradual at first. She began to defer to me before we made choices. The first few times, it was a nice gesture.” He cringed.
“But then it got annoying?” she guessed.
“Very. It was like the personality leeched out of her, bit by bit until she was this version of herself she thought was the most desirable. I tried to reassure her I was happy with the woman I first met, and I didn’t want things to change from the way they had been.”
“And she didn’t respond?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not that I could tell. It got to be stifling. I felt like I was dating an actress, and I wondered what else she’d change. It broke my trust.”
“How could it not?”
“She started dropping hints about making things more permanent, and I knew it was time to go our separate ways before we hurt more people. Our families adored each other. They took the breakup hard. I should’ve known she wasn’t the one. All the time we dated, we never moved in together.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t see her in my space that way. I always needed to regain my space and peace after we were together toward the end.”
“All relationships are work, but it shouldn’t be a burden.” She shook her head.
“Exactly. I wish she’d seen it that way, too. She insisted we just needed time apart and we were worth working on after so many years as a couple.”
“It’s hard when breakups aren’t amicable.”
“The first six months were painful. The town is too small for us to avoid one another, and my mother wasn’t ready to let the thought of us walking down the aisle go. She encouraged Kasey when she should’ve told her I’d already made up my mind. It was a point of contention between us.”
“Is she still doing that?” Rosaleen asked, floored by his mother’s meddling. Her mother would never become so involved in her personal life that way.
“No,” he hesitated.
“But Kasey isn’t sold on the relationship divorce?”
“Mmmhmm. She comes around every now and then trying to stir things up. And I let her down a little less gentle every time.” He shook his head.
“It sounds stressful.”
“It can be.” He glanced down at her. “You must be magical. I never talk about this with anyone, and now I can’t stop spilling my guts.” He smiled bashfully. “I can’t be the only one with a difficult ex.”
She paused. She didn’t speak about Jamie often. The intense sense of failure still stung. Peering into his warm eyes, she didn’t feel judged. They’d begun to build a solid friendship. The distance from her old life gave her space she hadn’t known she desperately needed from expectations and preconceived notions that came with the people who’d known you for a large portion of your life. Swallowing, she took a chance and opened up to her new friend. “I was engaged until about a year ago.”
“Whoa.” His eyebrows shot up. “What happened?”
She smiled wryly. “You know, I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself that.” She sighed. “I met Ryan at the restaurant in the luxury hotel we both worked at. He was a new hotshot, executive chef we hired to update the menu and bring in fresh blood. I worked under the pastry chef, so we passed each other like ships in the night, working together indirectly.
The place we worked at was extremely progressive. They always tried to stay on the cutting edge and create new experiences that kept people coming from all over the state and beyond. Professionally, we hit it off immediately.” She could still remember the first time she saw him walk in. At six foot two, he was tall and lithe in his crisp white chef’s coat. His golden blond hair was combed back neatly, and his hazel eyes were bright and intense. His rich baritone commanded attention and respect. Attraction sparked in her immediately.
“He was intense, but in a good way.” Looking back at it now she could smile as she remembered their late-night conversations sharing their visions for the creations they were dreaming up. “It was refreshing to find someone who loved their job like I did. I think we connected over our passion for food originally. Neither of us minded the long hours, and we put a lot of ourselves into our dishes. I was just getting a bit of free reign. We’d stay at work after hours talking about our work, and then it moved to coffee spots, and getting together for dinner.”
“It sounds straight out of Hallmark.”
“For a long time, I thought so, too. We took it slow. He proposed after dating for two years, and we weren’t in a rush to walk down the aisle. I mean, we were both so busy.” She shook her head.
“Why aren’t you Mrs. Chef right now?”
She shrugged. “What drew us together ended up tearing us apart. When we went to start planning the wedding and talking about fully merging our lives, we found our expectations for the future didn’t fit. He wanted a wife who’d man the house while he pursued his career. I’m just hitting my stride. Stopping cold turkey and standing on the sidelines wasn’t an option. Not after I’d worked so hard to get to the point where I could run things.” She shook her head, disgusted at his high handed, self-centered anticipations. “I felt like a fool. We’d been living together for a year. How could I have missed it?”