Ryan hadn’t planned to stay over on Wednesday night. He couldn’t. I knew he had to get to work the next day, and I needed to go to class, but it sucked when he pulled away from me. My bed felt instantly colder.

“I wish you could stay,” I told him, reaching out a hand to touch his back. “I like sleeping next to you.”

He lay back next to me and kissed me. “I don’t want to go,” he said eventually. His voice was soft. His hair was mussed, sticking out at strange angles and making him look both younger and more carefree. “I’d stay with you if I could.”

I glanced over at the new alarm clock sitting on the bedside table I’d gotten for free off of Craigslist. It was already two a.m. It was definitely time for Ryan to go if he wanted to get enough sleep to rise early tomorrow.

“Do you have an a.m. meeting tomorrow?” I asked.

Ryan nodded. “I’ve got a few morning meetings for that new, big client I’m trying to land.”

“The one that will take Jason Kane’s place?” I was sleepy, but I was still—mostly—paying attention.

“Hopefully,” Ryan replied, pulling out of my arms again and hunting for his clothes on the darkened floor. “It’s still early. We’ll see if it works out.”

“Good luck,” I told him, yawning.

“Thanks,” he replied, dressed now and standing next to the bed. “I’m gonna need it.” He tucked me into the bed, kissed my forehead, and promised to text me in the morning. Then he was gone, and I was suddenly wide awake.

A thought had occurred to me just after Ryan softly closed the door. What would happen once Ryan landed his next big client? It was a thought that I really should have had before.

Ryan had told me how much of a lull his law practice has suffered since Jason Kane’s retirement. But even so, he seemed incredibly busy. Would he even have time for me once that happened?

I knew that plenty of busy couples made things work, but it seemed like Ryan and I were both on the cusp of some pretty mammoth life changes. If things went well for me with my new and improved YouTube page and new gigs, I’d be really busy, too. A sudden worry that Ryan and I wouldn’t be able to weather a new relationship at the same time we were both trying to build—and in his case, rebuild—our careers.

Once I opened the Pandora’s box of relationship insecurity, there was no closing it again. A whole host of new worries lined up for my attention.

The truth was that I didn’t know a whole lot about functional relationships. The best examples I had were in movies and on TV. My parents certainly didn’t qualify.

My parents’ relationship was short. They were married and divorced within a year. Just long enough to really, really figure out that they hated one another. Also, just long enough to make me.

My mom had never attempted to date other guys after breaking up with my dad, or if she did, she kept it from me extremely well. I suspected that she didn’t have any interest in repeating her miserable experience with my dad. She never said as much, but I got the feeling that she preferred to be alone.

My dad was a different story. He seemed to have a new girlfriend every time I visited. He even got married again, twice, during my childhood.

His relationships weren’t very stable or successful. The women he dated—inevitably much younger and better looking than he was—never stayed for long. Maybe it was because he made it very clear that he wanted no more children. Maybe it was his generally difficult personality. Whatever it was, they would leave him, and my dad would be unhappy and then find someone new within a few weeks. It was an unending cycle that continued to this day.

My first step-mother, Irina, had told me once when I was eight that she liked the idea of my father a lot better than she liked him. I hadn’t realized at the time what that meant. By the time my second step-mother, Maya, told me that she thought my dad would be different once they were married (I was twelve), I understood better.

The women that my father dated and married thought that they could fix him. I’m not sure if my mom ever thought that—lord only knows what went through her mind at any given moment—but at least as far as Irina and Maya were concerned, they each thought that they would be the one to change him. They were very, very wrong.

At least I didn’t want to change Ryan, I thought to myself as I drifted in and out of drowsy contemplation. I liked him exactly the way he was. I hoped he didn’t want to change me, either.

I knew that I was my father’s daughter. I wasn’t as cutthroat as he was, but I was stubborn. Really stubborn. Once I got something in my head, I rarely let it go. I pursued my goals with dogged determination. And I liked to win. Except for birthday party games like bowling, bumper cars, and laser tag, there were no games that I played just to play. I played to win.

Then there was the fact that I’d acquired quite a lot of my dad’s haughty negotiation and scheming skills. While useful, being so single-mindedly competitive could be a real drawback sometimes, especially when it rubbed people I cared about the wrong way. Like that time, I made Trina cry when we played monopoly. All of those qualities, I got from him.

Although I tried to reign those questionable qualities in, I knew there was probably no chance of eliminating them from my personality. Plus, they were truly useful and beneficial in certain situations. If I wasn’t like my dad, I’d probably still be homeless right at this moment.

I hoped that Ryan really liked me for me, despite my somewhat difficult personality flaws. I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I was falling in love with him. Piece by piece, Ryan was claiming my heart without even trying. Soon he’d have it all. I just hoped that he wouldn’t mind when he realized it.