“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he said, not wanting to waste the opportunity to get a conversation started. He could see her thinking about it before she finally put her tablet away and smiled at him.

“My boyfriend dumped me on Thanksgiving,” she said. Her facial expression was amused, and there was a self-deprecating tinge to her voice, but Tristan found he couldn’t tell how she felt about the situation. He didn’t know if he should offer empathy or congratulations, so he stuck with what he knew for sure was the truth.

“What I’m hearing is your ex is the kind of man who makes bad decisions?”

Her lips curved into the hugest smile before peals of melodic laughter spilled from her mouth.

“He made the right decision,” she said after her laughter died down. “He made the decision I was too chickenshit to make. My ex was — is — great. It’s just that over the seven years we were together, we grew apart, and I didn’t want to leave something that was mostly okay, you know?”

“I don’t,” Tristan admitted. “My ex-wife and I started dating when we were young, and when we grew in separate ways, things weren’t okay. They were toxic as all hell. We were on and off for a good few years when breakup sex led to a pregnancy, and so we both did the most foolish thing you could do in a situation like that — we got married.”

Tristan shook his head slightly as he thought of just how quickly after their courthouse wedding both he and Lorraine realized they had made a mistake.

“We stuck it out for another year and a half before we realized we weren’t doing our daughter any favors by creating a household where her parents were always at each other’s throats.”

She raised her wine glass and motioned it toward him, clinking their drinks together when he finally got the point and raised his beer.

“Here’s to making mature, reasonable decisions for the sake of a little human who didn’t ask to be here.”

He chuckled. “And we’ve kept on making them…hence me sitting in this restaurant with the intention of having my favorite meal while I mope about not having my daughter with me for Christmas.”

Understanding dawned in those beautiful eyes. “Oh, Nia?”

Tristan smiled the way he smiled whenever he thought of the vivacious, giggly, intuitive little girl he had the privilege of nurturing through life. “She’ll be five in February. I was supposed to have her from tomorrow until Christmas, but her mother had a very special moment she wanted to share with her, and I couldn’t stand in the way of that.”

Her smile softened. “Much like you couldn’t stand in the way of that family getting your table.”

“Guilty.”

“What I’m hearing is that you’re a sweetheart.”