She tried to convince herself that this was no big deal—after all, what was she really losing? They were just hopes. They’d been intense, maybe, but she could live without them. Put off her chances at happiness for another few weeks until all this was over, just as she’d done so many times before. Waiting to schedule dates until after she got home from this next trip, after she finished up this project, after she lost a little weight. After, always after, until her romantic life became a kind of stasis, cryogenically suspended in a perpetual state of anticipation.
