I was an artist and he was an engineer. To him, on time was late, while I aimed for ish, as in if my appointment was at seven, I aimed for sevenish, which was a built-in buffer of fifteen minutes on either side of the appointed arrival time, and hoped for the best. He had a place for everything and everything in its place, and I had already lost years of my life looking for my house keys. We simply didn’t suit beyond friendship, and Sophie was right, I hadn’t been doing us any favors by pretending we could sleep together and just be friends.

“What am I going to do without you?” he asked. He sounded plaintive, like a lost kitten, and my resolve started to wobble like a table with one short leg, but then his tone changed and became accusatory. “I came to Boston for you.”

The wobbling stopped. I had never asked him to come to Boston. In fact, I had been shocked when he left Georgia, and his mama, behind. Suddenly, Sophie’s words rang true. I was a lawnmower! I had been making his life easier, going to functions with him, charming his superiors to compensate for his social awkwardness, clearing my calendar for him when he needed someone to talk him through his moods and his mother wasn’t available. Enough.

“I have to go, Jeremy,” I said. I put every bit of resolve I had into my voice. Mercifully, it worked. He met my gaze for a moment and then glanced away.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” he said. He slipped his hand out from under mine and walked to the curtain. “I’ll take you home when you’re ready.”

It took three days for the blasted ring to pass. I won’t go into the details because . . . ew. Suffice to say, upon its reentry, I had the ring professionally cleaned and delivered to Jeremy. I simply couldn’t face him.

During the three days I spent afraid to leave the close proximity of my bathroom, I noshed on more prunes than was healthy, sublet my apartment to an eager grad student and his Labradoodle, packed and repacked my bags five times, and arranged for my other things to be stored in my dad’s basement.

When I called Soph to accept the job and explained about the proposal giving me a change of heart, she told me I’d made the right choice, after she laughed herself stupid at the ring debacle, of course.