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“You make her sound much worse than she is.”

“I’m paraphrasing,” Sebastian replies.

“Badly,” I say.

“Still, she asks,” he says.

I look down at the next document on my desk.

“She can keep asking.”

The answer comes out more quickly than I intend, and Sebastian notices.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says, his tone losing the teasing edge.

“I know,” I reply.

He is quiet for a moment before asking, “Have you spoken to Vanessa?”

“No,” I say.

“Recently?” he asks.

“No,” I repeat.

Sebastian nods once. “I liked her.”

“So did I,” I say.

“She was good for you,” he replies.

“She was good,” I say.

The distinction hangs there, and Sebastian does not miss it.

“What happened in the end?” he asks.

I close the document in front of me.

“She wanted marriage,” I say.

“She wanted kids. She wanted something permanent.”

“And you didn’t?” Sebastian says.

“I couldn’t give her that,” I reply.

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” he asks.

I look at him. Sebastian lifts one hand slightly.

“Fair question.”

“It is,” I say.

I lean back in my chair and look toward the windows. Vanessa never asked for anything unreasonable. She was patient with my schedule, understood the demands of the company and never treated my work like an opponent she needed to defeat. She simply reached a point where she wanted to know whether the relationship was going somewhere, and I never gave her a convincing answer.

“I knew what she wanted,” I say.