Once upon a time, I believed in love. Don’t misinterpret that though… I was never one of those girls who put a pillowcase on her head as a stand-in for a bridal veil. My dolls were my students or my co-workers… never my children. Most everything my parents did in the way of parenting was to ensure I’d grow up smart — not pretty or popular. In spite of all that, somewhere, in the back of my mind, I grew up believing in the fairy tale… true love… what I saw in my parents and grandparents every day.

But then I grew up. The real facts of life hit me hard when I came to realize how imperfect we humans really are. I still remember the day it occurred to me that no boy had ever loved me as long as my dog had. I gave up on the fairy tale.

I spent a lot of time alone… trying to figure myself out. I wondered what it was about single-me that kept me that way. The short answer? Too many scars. I just no longer felt the need to self-inflict pain and heartache. This was going to be my life — working, writing, and eventual eating by wild dogs. I (mostly) got my act together, dropped a ton of weight, went blonde again and got a new job. I had changed everything so whatever was broken must have then been fixed, right? I accepted my state of single-ness as cold, hard fact and started working on being happy with myself. But I couldn’t stop looking, right?

And then there was him. He appeared to be the exact opposite of every other boy I’d dated. He wasn’t a geek. He wasn’t a gamer. He wasn’t geographically or any other type of unavailable. He was southern and charming and his voice was like a slow, country ballad on a starlit night. His hands were scarred and perpetually stained with motor oil. His eyes were the brightest blue I’ve ever seen off the silver screen.

And he wasn’t a boy at all. This one? He was a man.

And me? Turns out I wasn’t broken after all.