“Do you want to move in with me and try to run my life?” I asked with a sigh.

She looked mildly bewildered at what to her was an abrupt segue. “No.”

“Do you want to dump me, break my heart, then call me now and again, but only when I'm having problems in my current relationship so you can tell me that it'd be 'nice to try again, so it's too bad that you're seeing somebody'?”

She started to get it at this point. “Definitely not,” she said firmly.

“Good,” I said with feeling, “because I don't know how many more times I can suffer through that one before giving into either temptation or stupidity and hating myself forever.” I took a deep breath and I felt my face twisting up in consideration. “Let's see . . .” I mused. “Do you want to do everything with me but have sex, because having sex would make it a 'real' relationship and you don't want that with me even though you get jealous whenever I'm with somebody else? Do you want to cry on my shoulder every time your latest 'real' boyfriend hurts you, expect me to listen to your every problem day or night, then pat me on the head and promise that if neither one of us has found anyone by forty, then we'll marry each other?”

“No,” she answered with a wry but sad twist of her lips.

“Then you're right,” I said with a smirk. “There is no comparison between you and the live girls I've met, making it officially worse that I've blown it with you . . . um . . . how many times, exactly?”

“I'm not going to answer that, I think,” she said with a dazzling smile. “You're depressed enough as it is.”

“Terrific,” I swore while privately, but incorrectly, telling myself that at least I couldn't feel any worse this night. I dropped my eyes in the process, thereby for the first time really looking away from her face and getting a good look at the rest of her.

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