I push open the front door to find my sister waddling from the kitchen over to the couch with a spoon of something stuffed into her mouth. She stops dead in her tracks, her eyes moving over me from top to bottom.

"You look like you just got hit by a dump truck full of orgasms.” Her dark eyes glimmer with excitement. “Was it awesome? You look like it was awesome!"

Sighing, I kick off my boots and pad over to the couch. I drop down onto the cushions with a thump. “Yes, I got hit by a truck full of orgasms. Wonderful, exhilarating, toe-curling, orgasmy orgasms. And then, I got flattened by a steamroller full of uncertainty and self-doubt and guilt.” I unravel the scarf around my neck and tug distractedly on the fringes as I speak.

“What do you mean?” Sophia comes and sits down next to me. She props her bowl of pudding on her belly.

I bite down on my bottom lip and flinch. “He wants more than sex, Soapy. He wants to get back together. He’s dead-set on winning me back.”

Her eyes bulge in her head. “He still cares about you. He loves you. How is that not amazing news?”

“Because he’s Ben.”

She scoffs. “Only you would find fault with a man who looks like a Roman god, gives orgasms by the truckload and saves pet hamsters from burning buildings.” She thrusts a newspaper from earlier this week my way. “God—I so want your life right now.”

And true enough, there he stands on the front page in full turnout gear, grinning from ear to ear with a little critter clutched to his chest as smoke rises from the building in the background. Local Firefighters Save Sleeping Family From Blaze, the headline reads. And my ovaries weep…

“I want to be with him. How am I supposed to trust him, though? He betrayed me before…”

My sister angles her head to the side and looks at me. "Gosh, sis. Why are you so jaded? I don't want to compare apples to oranges but I got dumped at the altar for no good reason and now I'm about to face motherhood on my own. Still, nobody and nothing can stop me from believing that love isn't a real entity that I'll have in my life someday. On the other hand, you got your heart broken by a teenaged boy seven years ago and you're so bitter that you can't even allow yourself to see the kind of man he is today. Do you remember who you were at 17?” She waits. “You thought that black roots on bleach blonde hair was a good idea. But now you’ve grown and you see the light. So cut Ben some slack. He runs into burning buildings to save furry hamsters, Angela.” She snatches the paper from me and shakes it in my face. “If that doesn't melt your hardened myocardium, then I don't know what will!"

“Oh gosh. Soph, you’ve been spending way too much time with me. You’re even speaking my language now.”

She licks the spoon clean. “Let me ask you this—do you feel like he’s lying to you about how he feels?”

“Y’see, that’s the thing…he seems completely genuine and my gut tells me to believe him, but I just don’t want to be a fool all over again.”

“Your gut is always right,” she tells me forcefully. “Take me and Josh, for instance. He always said the right things and he bought me nice stuff and he came from a good family and all that. But something just always felt a little off with him. I don’t really know how to explain it. My instincts told me it wouldn’t end well but I stayed with him. Now, look at me,” she says ruefully as she turns to the classifieds section of the newspaper, “Here I am, pregnant and putting ads in the paper to get preorders for my placenta so I don’t end up sleeping under a bridge come rent time.”

She laughs. I cringe.

“I never did have a bad feeling about Ben,” I admit. “Yes, when his dad died, he shut down and he wouldn’t share his feelings with me. But I guess that’s normal. He was grieving and he didn’t know how to handle it. The breakup, though…it just came out of nowhere.”

“Well, have you ever considered that there may be more to the story?”

“What do you mean?”

“If it was so damn out-of-character for him, maybe something else was up. Something he didn’t want to tell you about. Maybe he was trying to protect you from something.”

I roll her words around in my brain. I’d never considered that possibility and although I’d like to believe that there was some bigger reason for the breakup, I’m sure that’s just wishful thinking on my part. Ben never mentioned anything that would clue me in to there being some big conspiracy at play.

She rises up from the couch. “Anyway, what do I know? I’m the last person who should be giving relationship advice, really.” Her hand moves in circles on her belly. “The baby’s taking a nap on my bladder. I need to go pee.” She hobbles over to the bathroom. “And heads up—mom called to summon us to the house this weekend. She says that if we don’t show up this time, she’s coming here. And I don’t possess the mental and emotional fortitude to entertain Agata Gallo in my humble abode. Sorry but I don’t think we’ll be able to weasel our way out of this one.”

The door closes behind her and I’m left alone with my thoughts.

My sister is the eternal optimist. Even after everything that’s happened to her she still believes in love. And though I do feel like her rose-colored glasses sometimes blur her vision, just for once, I’m tired of being afraid. I want to have stars in my eyes, too. I want to believe in ever-afters and happy endings. I want to believe that Ben is my Prince Charming.

Just for once, I want to try on those rose-colored glasses and see if they fit.