Love the one you're with

seven

Thoughts of Leo fade almost completely over the next week, which I credit to my contented life with Andy, Margot's exciting news, and maybe most of all, my work. It's amazing what a productive, satisfying week of work can do for your psyche, and I consider myself very lucky (or as Margot would say-blessed-a nice, spiritual spin on the source of good fortune) to have the kind of job I can get happily lost in. I read once that when the hours pass in a blur while you work, you know you have found your calling, and although every day isn't like this for me, I certainly am no stranger to that immersed feeling.

I now own my own one-woman photography business, working on a freelance basis. I have an agent who books assignments for me-anything from advertising shoots for hefty sums, sometimes as much as several thousand dollars for a couple days' work, to smaller, editorial assignments, which I actually prefer from a creative standpoint.

I love portraiture most of all-perhaps because I'm not a very outgoing person. I don't talk easily to strangers, although I wish I could, and taking someone's portrait allows me to make that inroad. I enjoy meeting someone for a leisurely afternoon, becoming acquainted over lunch or coffee, and then getting down to business. I love the trial and error of it all, tinkering with various positions and lighting until I get it just right. There is nothing more satisfying than capturing that one, perfect image. My interpretation of another soul. I also love the variety of the work. Shooting an entrepreneur for Business Week, for example, feels very different from taking photos for a piece in The New York Times Style section or a glossy spread for Town amp; Country, and the people I'm photographing vary as much as the publications. In the past few weeks alone, I've shot a bestselling author, the cast of an art-house film, a college basketball star and his legendary coach, and an up-and-coming pastry chef.

In short, I've come a long, long way since my days of processing film on Second Avenue, and my only lingering regret about my encounter with Leo-other than that it happened at all-is that I didn't have the chance to tell him about my career. Of course I would rather he know about Andy than my work; but ideally, I wish he knew about both. Then again, perhaps he knows more than he let on. Perhaps the reason that he didn't ask about my career is that he has already found my Web site or stumbled across one of my more prominent credits. After all, I've sheepishly poked about for his bylines, skimming his features with a bizarre combination of detachment and interest, pride and scorn. It's a matter of curiosity-and anyone who says they are utterly indifferent to what their significant exes are doing is, in my opinion, either lying or lacking a certain amount of emotional depth. I'm not saying it's healthy to be past-obsessed, ferreting out details of every ex. But it's simply human nature to have an occasional, fleeting interest in someone whom you once loved.

So assuming Leo has come across my Web site or work, I hope he goes on to surmise that our breakup was a catalyst in my life-a springboard for bigger and better things. In some ways, he would be right about this, although I don't believe you can fully blame anyone else for your own lack of ambition-which was certainly a trend during our relationship.

To this point, I cringe when I think back to how complacent I became on the career front when I was with Leo. My love for photography never waned completely, but I certainly loved it with far less urgency-just as everything in my life became secondary to our relationship. Leo was all I could think about, all I wanted to do. He filled me up so completely that I simply had no energy left to take photos. No time or motivation to even contemplate the next rung on my career ladder. I remember riding the bus to the photo lab every day, well after I had learned everything I could possibly learn from Quynh, and saying things to myself like, "I don't need to look for another job. Money isn't important to me. I'm happy with a simple life."

After work, I'd head straight for Leo's new place, back in Queens, ever available to him, only returning to my own apartment when he had other plans or when I needed a fresh supply of clothes. On the rare nights we were apart, I sometimes went out with Margot and our group of friends, but I preferred staying in, where I would daydream about Leo or plan our next adventure together or compile cassette mixes of songs that seemed cool enough, smart enough, soulful enough for my cool, smart, soulful boyfriend. I wanted so much to please Leo, impress him, make sure that he needed and loved me as much as I needed and loved him.

At first, it seemed to work. Leo was just as smitten as I, only in the less sappy guy way. He never completely abandoned his work like I did, but he was also older, and further established in his career, with important assignments and hard deadlines. He did, however, include me in his professional life, letting me tag along to his interviews or bringing me into his office on the weekends where I'd organize his files or simply watch him while he typed up his stories (or seduced me on his desk). And he was just as willing as I was to blow off his friends and family, preferring our time together to be alone, just the two of us.

For months, things stayed that way, and it felt blissful, magical. We never tired of talking. Our good-byes, whether on the phone or in person, were always lingering, as if it might be the very last time we would ever speak. We sacrificed sleep for conversation, asking endless questions about each other and our respective pasts. No childhood detail was too trivial, which is always a sure sign that someone is in love-or at the very least obsessed. Leo even took a photo of my six-year-old front-toothless self from an album in my bedroom, declaring it "the cutest thing ever" before tacking it up on a bulletin board in his kitchen.

I exposed every part of myself to him, keeping no secrets, no defense mechanism in place. I revealed all my insecurities, from insignificant but embarrassing things, like how I've always hated my knees, to deeper issues about how I sometimes felt inadequate around Margot and our other well-traveled, wealthy friends in the city. Most important, I told him all about my mother, including uncut details of her death that I had never discussed with anyone. How she looked so frail that it conjured images from the Holocaust. How I had watched my father clear out her throat with his hand one night when she literally couldn't breathe-an image that continues to haunt me now. How at one point I actually said a prayer for the end to just come-and not only so she'd be put out of her misery but so the hospice people and the smell of sickness would be purged from our house, and my father could stop worrying about her death, hiding his notebook of funeral arrangements whenever I came in the room. And then how horribly guilty I felt the moment it finally happened, almost as if I made her die sooner than she would have otherwise. I told Leo how I sometimes felt almost ashamed to be motherless, like no matter what else I did in life, I would always be marked and categorized and pitied for that one fact.

At every turn, Leo listened and consoled me and said all the right things-that although I had lost her at a young age, she had still formed the person I was today. That my memories of her would never fade and the good times would slowly supplant the end. That my descriptions and stories were so vivid, that he felt like he knew her.

Meanwhile, the confessions weren't one-sided. Leo shared his own secrets, too-mostly dysfunctional family tales about his passive, homemaker mother who had no self-esteem, and his mean-spirited, controlling father whose approval he could never quite win. He told me that he wished he had had the money to go to a better, bigger-named college and actually graduate, and that he, too, sometimes felt intimidated by the Manhattan rich-kid set with their fancy journalism school credentials. I felt it hard to believe that someone as amazing as Leo would have any insecurities, but his vulnerability only made me love him more.

And then, aside from everything else, and maybe more important than everything else, there was our chemistry. The physical connection. The mind-blowing, ridiculous sex which was the stuff of both poetry and porn-so unlike anything else I had ever experienced before. For the first time, I wasn't at all self-conscious or inhibited when it came to sex. There was nothing that felt off-limits. Nothing I wouldn't do for him, to him, with him. We kept saying that surely it couldn't get any better. But somehow it did, again and again.

In short, we were completely in sync, insatiable, and sickeningly, crazy in lust and love. So much so that it seemed too good to be true. And so it shouldn't have surprised me to discover that it was too good to be true.

I can't say exactly when it happened, but about one year into our relationship, things began to change. There was nothing dramatic that happened-no rift based on a major life issue, no big fight with nasty, irretrievable words. Nobody cheated or lied or moved across the country or delivered an ultimatum about what should come next. Instead, there was just a shift I couldn't quite pinpoint, a quiet transfer of power. It was so subtle, in fact, that for a while I thought I was just being paranoid-a typical, needy girl, something I had always prided myself on not being, and something I never had to be with Leo. But after a while, I knew it wasn't in my head. Leo still loved me; he told me he did, and he would never say those words if he didn't mean them. But our feelings definitely became lopsided. Only slightly perhaps, but that's the thing about love-even slight differences are readily apparent, marked by small but irrefutable changes in behavior. Little things, like instead of calling me right back, he'd wait a few hours, sometimes even a full day. He started going out with the boys on a regular basis again, and joined an ice hockey intramural team that played on Saturday nights. We began to watch television at night rather than just talk, and sometimes he was too tired for sex, unfathomable in our early days when he'd often wake me up in the middle of the night, touching me everywhere. And when we did make love, there was all too often a feeling of remoteness afterward. A disconnect as he'd roll away from me or stare into space, lost in his own, private thoughts, another mysterious place.

"What are you thinking?" I'd ask, a question both of us once posed ad nauseam, the other answering with exacting detail. A question that now seemed to set him on edge.

"Nothing," he'd snap.

"Nothing?" I'd say, thinking that such a thing is impossible. You're always thinking something.

"Yes, Ellen. Nothing," he'd say as I frantically took note that he wasn't calling me by his usual pet form, Ellie. "Sometimes I'm just thinking nothing."

"Okay," I'd say, determined to give him space or play it cool, all the while relentlessly, doggedly analyzing his every move, speculating about what was wrong. Did I get on his nerves? Was I too far from his ideal? Did he still have feelings for his ex-girlfriend, an Israeli artist six years his senior (which made her a dozen years more experienced than I)? Was I as good as she in bed? Did he love me as much as he once loved her-and more important, did he love me as much as he once loved me?

At first, these questions were all internal musings, but slowly they surfaced, sometimes in the middle of a heated argument, other times as I broke down in frustrated tears. I demanded assurances, fired off questions, painted him into corners, started arguments about everything and nothing. One night, when I was alone in his apartment, I even snooped through his drawers and read a few pages of his journal-the sacred book stuffed with cards and clippings, photos and musings. A book that he carried everywhere and made me feel a rush of love for him every time he cracked it open. It was a huge mistake-not because of what I found or didn't find, but because I was left with an awful, hollow ache afterward, an almost unwashed feeling. I was that kind of girl now; we were that kind of couple. I tried to put it out of my mind and move on, but just couldn't get past what I had done-what he had made me do. So, a few days later, I broke down and confessed, leading to an explosive fight in which I got him to admit that he didn't believe he could ever make a permanent commitment. To me. To anyone.

"Why not?" I said, filled with devastation and frustration.

"Marriage just isn't for me," he said, shrugging nonchalantly.

"Why not?" I said, pressing him for more. Always for more.

He sighed and said marriage was essentially a contract between two people-and contracts are signed when people don't fully trust one another. "Which clearly you don't," he said, throwing all the blame my way.

I apologized and cried and told him that of course I trusted him and that I had no idea what had come over me and that I didn't care about marrying him, I just wanted to be with him, forever.

His expression became steely as he said, "I'm twenty-nine. I don't want to talk about forever."

"Okay," I said, feeling the onset of groveling. "I'm sorry."

He nodded and said, "Okay. Let's just drop it, all right?"

I nodded, pretending to be placated, and a few minutes later we made love and I convinced myself that everything would be fine. We were just going through a rough patch, a few growing pains, and I needed to be patient, ride the wave, take the bad with the good. I told myself that love is sometimes a war of attrition, and that through sheer force of will, I could fix our problems, love him enough for both of us.

But days later, we got into our final fight, which was dramatic only as far as the calendar; it was the New Year's Eve of the new millennium.

"New Year's is amateur night," Leo had been insisting for weeks, every time I begged him to come to the party I had promised Margot I'd attend. "You know I hate those scenes. And this Y2K hype is unbearable. It's just another year."

"Please come," I said. "It's important to Margot."

"Then let Margot party it up."

"It's important to me."

"Well, it's important to me to stay home," he said.

I negotiated, pleaded. "Just come for a little while. An hour or two. Then we'll go home."

"We'll see," he finally conceded-an answer that almost always means no.

But that night, I clung to the faith that he'd surprise me and show up. I imagined the gauzy, backlit scene. Our eyes locking and the crowd parting as he found my lips, right at midnight. Just like in When Harry Met Sally. I spent the whole night watching the clock and the door, and feeling generally heartsick, but ever hopeful. Until eleven fifty-nine came, and I stood in a corner alone, listening to Prince's pulsing remix of "1999" and then the final, stomach-turning, ten-second countdown. A drunk, giddy Margot found me minutes later, hugging me hard, gushing about how much she loved me and how much we had to look forward to. But then she returned to her own date, and I went home alone, sleeping with the phone next to my pillow, waiting, even praying.

But Leo never called that night. Nor did he call the next morning. Around noon, when I couldn't stand it another second, I took the subway to his apartment. He was home, reading the paper and watching MTV.

"You never came," I said, pathetically stating the obvious.

"Sorry," he said, sounding not at all sorry. "I meant to. I fell asleep around ten-thirty."

"I was all alone at midnight," I said, pitifully, self-righteously.

"So was I," he laughed.

"It's not funny," I said, now more angry than hurt.

"Look. I never promised you I'd come," he said, agitated.

I quickly backed down, resting my head on his shoulder as we watched a bowl game on television, then made Greek omelets-Leo's specialty-followed by sex on the couch. But some time afterward, when he stood abruptly and told me he had to go work on a story, I got upset all over again.

"It's New Year's Day," I whined, detesting the sound of my own voice.

"I still have deadlines," he said flatly.

I looked at him, my head spinning with bitter resentment and desperate grief, and then opened my mouth and uttered those infamous words.

"This isn't working," I said, believing in my heart that I was only testing the waters, pushing the limits, trying another tactic to reel him back in. "I think we should break up."

I expected resistance, a fight, at least a robust discussion. But instead, Leo quickly agreed that I was right. He said so tenderly, almost lovingly, which made me feel worse than an angry response would have. He put his arms around me, his relief almost palpable.

I had no choice but to play along. After all, it had been my suggestion in the first place.

" 'Bye, Leo," I said, sounding way braver than I felt.

"Good-bye, Ellen," he said, at least feigning sadness.

I hesitated, but knew there was no turning back. So I left his place, in shock and denial, springing for a cab home instead of taking the subway.

When I got back to my apartment, Margot was in the family room, reading a magazine. "Are you okay?" she said.

I told her I didn't know.

"What happened?"

"We broke up."

I considered saying more, confiding all the gory details, but could feel myself shutting down, becoming defensive and closed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I shook my head and said, "I don't know… It's really… complicated."

And it felt complicated in the way that all breakups feel complicated when you're embroiled in them. While in cruel actuality, most are really quite simple. And it goes something like this: one person falls out of love-or simply realizes that he was never really in love in the first place, wishing he could take back those words, that promise from the heart. Looking back, I can see that that was likely the case with Leo and me-the simplest explanation is often the right one, my mother used to tell me. But at the time, I didn't believe that could be the case.

Instead, I hoped for what all girls hope for in my situation: that he'd change his mind, come to his senses, realize what he had in me, discover that I couldn't be replaced. I kept thinking, even saying aloud to Margot and my sister, "Nobody will love him like I love him," which I now realize is far from a selling point to a man. To anyone.

Even worse, I kept replaying in my head that dreadful saying that starts, "If you love something, set it free." I pictured the laminated poster-size version of it that my sister hung in her bedroom after a particularly scarring high school breakup. The words were written in purple, sympathy card-style script, complete with a soaring eagle and mountaintop view. I remember thinking that no eagle in the world is going to willingly fly back to captivity.

"Damn straight, he was never yours," I always wanted to tell Suzanne.

But now. Now Leo was that eagle. And I was certain that he would be the one exception to the rule. The one bird who would return.

So I stoically waited, desperately clinging to the notion that ours was only a trial separation. And, incredibly enough, my feelings became even more intense post-breakup. If I was obsessed with Leo when I was with him, I was drowning in him afterward. He occupied every minute of my day as I became a cliche of the brokenhearted woman. I tortured myself with his old answering machine messages and sad, bitter songs like Sinead O'Connor's "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance." I wallowed in bed and burst into tears at the most random, inopportune moments. I wrote and revised long letters to him that I knew I would never send. I completely neglected my personal appearance (unless you count candlelit pity parties in the bathtub) and vacillated between eating nothing and gorging on ice cream, Doritos, and the ultimate cliche, Twinkies.

I couldn't even escape Leo during sleep. For the first time in my life, I remembered vivid details of my dreams, dreams that were always about him, us. Sometimes they were bad dreams of near-misses and poor communication and his cold, slow withdrawal. But sometimes they were amazing dreams-Leo and I wiling away the hours in smoky cafes or making hard, sweaty love in his bed-and in some ways, those happy dreams were more agonizing than the bad. I'd awaken, and for a few, fleeting seconds, I'd actually believe that we were back together again. That the breakup was the dream and that I had only to open my eyes and find him right there beside me. Instead, grim reality would set in again. Leo was moving on to a new life without me, and I was alone.

After weeks, nearly months of this sort of melodrama, Margot intervened. It was a Saturday, early evening, and she had just failed in about her sixth straight weekend attempt to get me to go out with her. She emerged from her bedroom, looking radiant in a funky, indigo sweater, hip-hugging jeans, and pointy-toed, black boots. She had curled her usually stick-straight hair and applied a shimmering, perfumed powder along her collarbone.

"You look awesome," I told her. "Where are you going?"

"Out with the girls," she said. "Sure you don't want to come?"

"I'm sure," I said. "Pretty in Pink is on tonight."

She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. "I don't know what you're so mopey about. You were never really in love with him," she finally said, as matter-of-factly as if she were stating that the capital of Pennsylvania is Harrisburg.

I gave her a look like she was crazy. Of course I was in love with Leo. Wasn't my profound grief proof of a grand love?

She continued, "You were only in lust. The two are often confused."

"It was love," I said, thinking that the lust was only one component of our love. "I still love him. I will always love him."

"No," she said. "You were only in love with the idea of love. And now you are in love with the idea of a broken heart… You're acting like an angst-ridden adolescent."

It was the ultimate slam to a woman in her twenties.

"You're wrong," I said, gripping my icy tub of pralines 'n' cream.

She sighed and gave me a maternal stare. "Haven't you ever heard that true love is supposed to make you a better person? Uplift you?"

"I was a better person with Leo," I said, excavating a praline. "He did uplift me."

She shook her head and started to preach, her Southern accent kicking in more, the way it always does when she's adamant about something. "Actually you sucked when you were with Leo… He made you needy, spineless, insecure, and one-dimensional. It was like I didn't even know you anymore. You weren't the same person with him. I think the whole relationship was… unhealthy."

"You were just jealous," I said softly, thinking that I wasn't sure if I meant she was jealous she didn't have a Leo-or was jealous that he had replaced her as the most important person in my life. Both theories seemed plausible despite the fact that she, as always, had a boyfriend of her own.

"Jealous. I don't think so, Ellen." She sounded so convincing, so borderline amused with the mere thought of envying what I had with Leo, that I felt my face growing hot as I retreated on this point and just said again, "He did too make me better."

It was the closest we had ever come to anything resembling a fight, and despite my rising fury, I was also nervous, unable to look her in the eye.

"Oh yeah?" she said. "Well, if that's true, Ellen, then show me one good photo you took when you were with him. Show me how he inspired you. Prove me wrong."

I put down my ice cream, right onto her April issue of Town amp; Country, and marched over to my roll-top desk in the corner of our living room. I pulled open a drawer, grabbed a manila envelope filled with photographs, and dramatically fanned them onto our coffee table.

She picked them up, flipping through them with the same detached expression with which one shuffles a deck of cards during rounds of mindless solitaire.

"Ellen," she finally said. "These pictures… They just aren't… that good."

"What do you mean they aren't that good?" I said, looking over her shoulder as she examined the photos of Leo. Leo laughing. Leo looking contemplative. Leo asleep on a Sunday morning, curled up next to his dog, Jasper. I felt a pang of longing for the surly boxer I never liked much to begin with.

"Okay," she finally said, stopping at one of Leo that I took the summer before. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that says "Atari" and is reclined on a bench in Central Park, staring directly into the camera, directly at me. Only his eyes are smiling.

"Take this one, for example," she said. "The lighting is good. Nice composition, I guess, but it's… just sort of boring. He's good-looking and all, but so what? There's nothing else going on here but a reasonably cute guy on a bench… It's… he's trying way too hard."

I gasped, at least on the inside. This insult was, perhaps, even worse than likening me to a lovesick teenager. "Trying too hard?" I said, now full-fledged pissed.

"I'm not saying you're trying too hard," she said. "But he definitely is. Just look at his expression… He's affected, smug, self-aware. He knows he's being photographed. He knows he's being worshipped. He's all, 'Look at my sultry stare.' Seriously, Ellen. I hate this photo. Every single shot you took in the year before Leo is more interesting than this one."

She tossed the photograph back onto the coffee table, and it landed face up. I looked at it, and could almost, almost see what she was saying. I felt a stab of something close to shame, similar to the way I felt when I went back and read my cringe-worthy junior-high haikus about the summer surf at the Jersey Shore. Haikus I once proudly submitted to a literary magazine, feeling genuinely stunned when the rejections came in the mail.

Margot and I stared at each other for what felt like a long time. It was probably the most powerful, honest moment of our friendship, and in that moment, I both loved and despised her. She finally broke our silence.

"I know it hurts, Ellen… But it's time to move on," she said, briskly straightening the pile of photographs and returning them to the envelope. Apparently Leo was no longer worth the energy it took for her to rip his face in two.

"How am I supposed to do that?" I said softly back. It wasn't a rhetorical question-I really wanted to know the mechanics of exactly what I was to do next.

She thought for a second and then gave me instructions. "Go ahead and sit around in your sweats with Molly Ringwald tonight. Then tomorrow, get up and take a long shower. Blow out your hair, put on some makeup. Then get your camera out and get back to it… He's not coming back. So do your thing… It's time."

I looked at her, knowing she was right. Knowing that once again, I was at a crossroads in my life, and once again, I needed to take Margot's advice and turn to photography.

So the very next day I bought a new camera-the best one I could afford on my meager credit-and enrolled in a comprehensive course at the New York Institute of Photography. Over the next year, I learned the ins and outs of the equipment, everything from lenses and filters to flash, tungsten, and strobe lights. I studied in exhaustive detail aperture, shutter speed, and exposure as well as film and ISO parameters, white balance and histograms. I learned theories of composition, color, patterns, and framing, as well as "the rule of thirds" (something I think I knew instinctively) and how to use lines for more powerful images. I had already learned a ton about printing, but I was able to practice my technique on much more sophisticated machines. I took a course in portraiture, studying lighting and positioning. I studied product photography, food photography, architectural photography, landscape photography, even sports photography. I delved into digital photography, mastering Adobe Photoshop and the language of megapixels and chip size (which was cutting edge stuff at the time). I even took a class in the business and marketing side of photography.

With every fresh week, every new technique I learned, every photo I snapped, I felt a little more healed. Part of it was just the passage of time, an essential ingredient of any emotional recovery. Part of it, though, was that one passion was slowly replacing another. And although one broken heart doesn't make me an expert in the subject, I believe you need both things-time and an emotional replacement-to fully mend one.

Then, about nine months post-Leo, I finally felt ready-technically and emotionally-to show my portfolio and apply for a real assistant's job. Through a friend of a friend, I heard that a commercial photographer named Frank Brightman was looking for a second assistant. Frank did mostly fashion photography and advertising, but also some occasional editorial work. He had a distinct cinematic style that evoked realism-a look that I both admired and could imagine someday emulating, with my own twist, of course.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I called Frank about the opening, and he invited me to interview at his small Chelsea studio. Right away, Frank both impressed me and put me at ease. He had beautiful silver hair, impeccable clothing, and a soft-spoken kindness. There was also something subtly effeminate about his mannerisms that made me think he was gay-which at that point in my life, hailing from a blue-collar town and a conservative Southern school, still felt like a sophisticated novelty to me.

I watched Frank sip his cappuccino as he reviewed my amateur portfolio housed in a faux-leather album. He flipped the pages as he murmured approval. Then he closed the book, looked me in the eye, and said although he could see that I had promise, he wasn't going to sugarcoat it-he already had a first assistant, and mostly just needed a lackey. Someone to pay the bills, go on coffee runs, and stand around a lot. "Decidedly unglamorous work," he finished.

"I can do that," I said earnestly. "I was a waitress. I'm great at standing. I'm great at taking orders."

Frank remained stone-faced as he told me that he had just gone through four second assistants. He said they all had better credentials than I, but had been lazy and unreliable, every one of them. Then he paused and said he could tell that I was different.

"You have a sincerity about you," he said. "And I like that you're from Pittsburgh. That's a good, honest place, Pittsburgh."

I thanked him, flashing him an ever-eager-to-please smile.

Frank smiled back and said, "The job is yours. Just show up every day, on time, and we'll get along fine."

So I did just that. I showed up every day for the next two years. I willingly and gladly took orders from Frank and his first assistant, a quirky, older woman named Marguerite. Frank and Marguerite were the creative geniuses while I quietly handled all of the background details. I secured certificates of insurance for larger shoots-and sometimes even hired police. I handled the rental equipment and set up lights and strobes under Frank's detailed specs, beginning many days' work at dawn. I loaded film (by the end of my tenure, Frank said he had never seen someone load so quickly, which felt like the highest of praise) and took literally thousands of lighting meter reads. In short, I learned the ins and outs of commercial photography while I became more and more confident that I would someday strike out on my own.

And that's where I was when Andy came to me.

They say timing is everything, and when I look back, I am a big believer in this theory. If Andy had asked me out any sooner, I might have viewed the invite as a pity maneuver, something Margot had put him up to. I would have said no, flat out, and because Andy isn't the most aggressive guy, that likely would have been that. And, more important, I wouldn't have had time to squeeze in my incidental, insignificant, but still very important rebound guys, most of whom lasted only one or two dates.

But if he had made his first move any later, I might have become cynical-a difficult feat for a woman pre-thirty, but one that I felt grimly capable of. Or I might have begun to seriously date someone else-maybe someone like Leo since they say you usually date the same type, again and again. Or I might have become too absorbed in work.

Instead, I was optimistic, content, self-sufficient, and as settled as you can really be when you're young, single, and living in a big city. I still dwelled on Leo (and "what went wrong") much more than I cared to admit to anyone-even myself, and the thought of him could still stop me in my tracks, send a ripple through my heart, fix a knot in my chest. But I had learned to manage those emotions, compartmentalize them. The worst of the pain had receded with time, as it always does, for everyone. I mostly saw Leo for what he was-a past love who was never coming back, and I saw myself as a wiser, more complete woman for having lost him. In other words, I was ripe for a new relationship, a better man.

I was ready for Andy.