Now, the perfect man is like the perfect set of luggage—strong, stylish, durable, and dependable. Adjustable, fit to travel, and fit to suit whatever the need at whatever the time. Full of compartments. So many that just when you think you’ve figured him out, and you’ve seen all there is to see, he surprises you with a hidden nook or a forbidden cranny.

Unfortunately, I haven’t quite managed to find the perfect set of luggage or the perfect man. Only individual pieces. And not even matching ones. Just a bunch of random sizes, shapes, colors, and textures. Never the right pieces for the right purposes for the right predicaments. In fact, I’ve accumulated so much baggage from my past relationships, I’m starting to think that it’s not a man that I need, it’s a skycap.

Chapter 1

10:00 A.M. EST
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23RD

History is repeating itself. Here I am once again sitting in the back room of a church, preparing for another wedding, not my own. Five times the bridesmaid, and never once the bride. It’s not like I haven’t been asked. It’s just that the offers seem to come at the most insincere times. Like during sex: “Girl, you gon’ make me marry you!” or, “Ooh girl, I got to have it like this till death do we part.” You know the kind. The open-ended, always-pretended, but never-intended-to-be-a-proposal kind of proposal. Once I was even given a ring. Actually, it was a fax of the appraisal on a ring he was allegedly considering purchasing. I don’t know which faded quicker: the ink from the fax or him.

But to date, no husband, no real proposal, and no actual ring. There was this one time in the third grade during lunch. My next-door neighbor, William, got down on his knees, his upper lip coated with milk, reached deep into his box of Cracker Jack, pulled out a caramel candy–covered plastic ring, and said those four magical words—“Will you marry me?” If I had known then that my proposal drought would last for another twenty years, I would’ve accepted his then.