“Is that how it was with your last girlfriend?”
Devin casts me a sidelong look.
“Perry mentioned you recently got out of a bad relationship with someone named… Susan? Samantha?”
“Sadie,” he says darkly.
“What happened with Sadie?” Devin sucks in his cheek as though he’s biting it and looks everywhere except at me. Happy, tipsy chatter fills the bar, and I scoot my stool closer to him. “You don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s a fair question. We met at a bar in Columbus last year. I’d just graduated from my MBA program at Ohio State, and she was going into her third year of law school.”
“I see you have a thing for lawyers,” I say, teasing.
“They’re smart and ambitious. What’s not to love?” He offers me the ghost of a smile.
“How long were you together?”
“Eight months. I know it doesn’t sound like a long time, but Sadie was like a keg of gunpowder. Being with her was… explosive. But we burned out just as quickly.” He jabs a tortilla chip into a bowl of salsa and crams it into his mouth.
Jealousy claws up my spine like a slithering swamp monster, and I shove it back down. I have no right to be jealous. What he did, and whom he dated, before we met is none of my business. “What happened?”
Tipping his chin to the ceiling, he blows out a long breath. “She turned out to be a world-class liar. I didn’t see it at first, but she manipulated me the whole time we were together. We broke up about three months ago. I haven’t talked to her since.”
“Is she still in Columbus?”
“No idea. I blocked her number and unfollowed her on Instagram. I have no desire to see or speak to her ever again.”
Well, that sounds healthy.
“How about you? Any bad news ex-boyfriends I should be aware of?”
“Are we sharing our rosters?”
He chuckles. “If you like.”
“Well, mine’s pretty short. Besides a few short-term relationships in college, there was only Ben. We dated for a couple years in law school, but our breakup was blessedly free of drama.”
“What happened with Ben?”
“We sort of… drifted apart emotionally. We dated for almost two years and even lived together our second year of law school, but after a while we realized that except for making fantastic study buddies, we didn’t actually make sense together. I like museums, he likes sports. I wanted to travel, he wanted to stay home. My dream is to make partner at Smith & Boone, travel in my time off, and enjoy what city life has to offer—like art museums, live music, and festivals. His big dream is to become a tax attorney, get married, raise a couple kids in the suburbs, and score season tickets to the Browns.”
“And you don’t want that? A family, I mean. Not Browns tickets,” he says.
“Someday, sure. But I want more than that too, you know? I want to be with someone I can have adventures with. Someone who shares my interests and wants to get out and explore as much as I do. I have such a small family that I’d like to have kids of my own—one day, in the far, far future—but I’m in no rush. I have a lot of living to do before then.”
“Fair enough. So how did the end come about with Mr. Browns lover then?”
“We were eating dinner one night at home—with the game on, of course—and he looked at me over a bowl of spaghetti and said, ‘I don’t think this is working.’ And I said, ‘You’re right, it’s not.’ I moved out three weeks later.”
“Wow. That’s very mature.”
I shrug. “We were in the same law school class and had the same circle of friends, so why make things harder than it had to be? I think we only stayed together for so long because it was comfortable, and it beat being alone, especially during such a stressful time in our lives.”
“Hmmm,” he grunts.
“What, you’ve never stayed in a relationship because it was easier than breaking up?”
“Ahhh, no. Before Sadie, my longest relationship lasted three months. Four, tops.”
“Oh. Okay then.”
“Not that I was a player or anything,” he says.
My lips quirk. “No, of course not.”
“Really!”
“With that face? I totally believe you.” I give him a playful shove and his eyes twinkle.
“Believe what you want, but my one-night stands have been few and far between. I’m more of a serial dater.”