Then Sophie Warner came along. She was beautiful and fun. She wasn’t weighed down by constant disappointment. She was buoyant. There was just another part of me that Sophie seemed to easily tap into. She didn’t care that I was a waiter. She looked at me with eyes that seemed to really see me. Not my job. Not my past. Just me.

When we started sleeping together, I’d go home feeling less of a man than I ever had in my life. Kristen would be there waiting, and I knew on some vague level that she suspected something. My betrayal was a poison. I tried to rationalize what was best for Sophie, her SkyAero manager husband, Adam, and me. If Sophie and I were soul mates, then we should be together, right? I even asked God to help me sort out what I should do.

God didn’t give me the answer, though Sophie did.

I met her at our place in Pioneer Square.

She started crying before we even sat in our usual booth, one in the back that we were sure had been the territory of adulterers before us.

“What is it? Is everything okay?”

I wondered if she’d lost her job. If her husband had found out about our affair. Or maybe she had cancer.

“No,” she said. “Not by a mile.”

She didn’t say anything for the longest time. When the waitress came and she ordered a club soda with lime, I knew.

“You’re pregnant,” I said.

She shifted her stare to the tabletop. “I found out this morning.”

I was in shock. Really, I was.

Nothing but silence.

“Is it mine?” I finally asked.

She pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear and drank her club soda. She fiddled with the lime.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Sophie’s answer astonished me, though it probably shouldn’t have. She had insisted that she and Adam barely slept in the same bed. That he was probably having an affair at work, and she didn’t even care. She told me that I was the only man she wanted to touch her. I was her soul mate! And yes, I was sleeping with Kristen. But that’s because I had a job to do. Kristen wanted a baby. I felt I owed it to her.

And now this.

I ordered another tequila.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

I knew the answer before she reached for my hand. “We’re going to say good-bye, Connor,” she said. “We’re going to stop.”

My throat tightened. I could hardly talk.

“But I love you,” I said.

She nodded. “I know. I love you too.”

It didn’t seem right to me. It seemed all kinds of wrong. “This is my baby,” I told her.

As much as I loved Sophie, I could see in that moment that I was alone in this relationship.