At 32, I honestly thought I’d learned enough about people to spot disaster before it sat down across from me in a red dress and ordered lobster with extra butter.
I wanted that night with Chloe to go well so badly that I ignored every warning sign dressed up as confidence.
I’d been out of the dating world for a while. Not dramatically, not because of some huge heartbreak that left me unable to function. My last relationship had just faded out quietly, the way some things do when neither person has enough left to fight for it. After that, life became routine in the dullest sense—work, leftovers, reruns, and friends who loved me but were too busy building their own lives to notice I’d quietly stopped trying to build mine.