“Right after you left for the hospital.”

He made a thoughtful humming sound. “Was it mutual?”

“No, but it’s . . . complicated.”

Mr. Alvarez made a wistful tutting sound. “Always is.”

“Well, I wish it wasn’t. I ended up with this roller-coaster romance that totally broke my heart, and all I wanted was to date someone for once. Maybe even settle down. Is that so much to ask?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Mr. Alvarez said. “Depends on how he felt about it, though. Was he looking to settle down too?”

“I thought he was.” Zack stared hard at his shoes. “But I guess I was wrong.”

“Might’ve been that you just expected too much too soon. People aren’t the visions we make up in our heads of what a perfect life looks like. If you try to cram a person into a mold, something’s bound to break.”

Zack had to admit there was some truth to that. From the moment he met John, he’d spent more time wondering where their relationship was going than how it was going. Maybe that wasn’t the right question to ask. If he hadn’t been so caught up in worrying that dating John was a mistake, he might have realized that John could make mistakes too. Perhaps then, he wouldn’t have been so completely blindsided when John did just that.

Zack shook his head. “That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t matter. He cheated on me. I don’t know if there’s any coming back from that.”

Mr. Alvarez looked horrified. “He slept with someone else?”

Zack floundered. “Um, kind of? See, he—well, he sort of . . . Look, the point is, he cheated. That much I know for certain.”

“But I thought you two hadn’t made things official yet?”

“We weren’t together, but we weren’t not together,” Zack said. It occurred to him how bizarre this must sound. “Like I said, it’s complicated. But needless to say, he betrayed my trust, and we’re over.”

“I’m sorry he did that,” Mr. Alvarez said. “Rebuilding trust after it’s been broken is one of the most difficult things two people can do. I’m not going to tell you to forgive him, but I am going to tell you one thing.”

“What?”

“Happy people don’t cheat.”

Zack furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“When someone is content, they’re unlikely to stray. It’s usually when they’re not getting what they need that they start to look elsewhere.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault he cheated on me?”

“No, of course not,” Mr. Alvarez said with a hint of ferocity. “That man made his own choice. I’m just trying to give you some insight. It sounds to me like he was missing something. Whatever it was, he shouldn’t have gone looking for it while he was still with you.”