“He’s Not My Type” Could Be “The One”

by Leslie Bennetts

But I was 36 when I met him, and pretty soon I was 37. My biological clock was making quite a racket. As for Jeremy, every time we passed a baby in a stroller or saw a toddler at a restaurant, he was transfixed. He really wanted to start a family, an issue that hadbeen a source of conflict in his former marriage. “Do you want to have kids?” Jeremy asked me late one night as we waited for our hamburgers at a 24-hour diner.

“I would have loved to, but I’ve accepted the fact that it’s probably never going to happen,” I said. “I’ve made my peace with it.” He smiled understandingly—so understandingly that my eyes welled with tears. Horrified, I acted as if there were something wrong with my contact lenses.’

But Jeremy was always very kind. I had recently gone into therapy (mostly to try to figure out why I had such disastrous taste in men), and like a dope I had accepted an early-morning time slot. So I’d see my shrink, sob through my session, and come to the office with mascara smeared all over my face. One morning I arrived in particularly terrible shape, still weeping. Jeremy materialized at my desk. He didn’t ask if I was all right; he knew perfectly well that I wasn’t. “Go home,” he said firmly. “I’ll go tell them you didn’t feel well. Just get out of here.”

I nodded gratefully, took a cab to my apartment and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep. The phone rang at 4 P.M. “Just checking up on you,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“A little better,” I said, partly because that’s what you’re supposed to say and partly because I suddenly realized it was true: the simple fact that he had cared enough to call made me feel at least a little bit comforted.