“Nice meeting you,” he said.
“You too.”
That could have been the end of it. But a few days later, Walter mentioned that Robert had asked about me. Nothing pushy, just curious.
A week after that, Robert called.
“Would you like to get coffee sometime?” he asked.
His tone was careful, respectful, not assuming.
I hesitated. Part of me wasn’t ready to open that door again. But something about his voice felt safe, so I said yes.
We met at a small coffee shop downtown called Dash Coffee Roasters. It smelled like fresh beans and cinnamon. We sat near the window watching people walk past in the spring sunlight.
At one point, Robert asked gently, “Walter told me you went through a rough breakup.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
He didn’t interrupt, so I told him. About Daniel, about the wedding, about the doctor appointment, and eventually about what his mother said.
Robert listened quietly the entire time. No dramatic reaction, no angry comments. When I finished, he leaned back in his chair and took a sip of coffee.
Then he said something simple.
“Kids aren’t everything.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want any?”
He shrugged. “I was married once,” he said. “My ex-wife wanted kids badly. I wasn’t against it, but I didn’t want it to become the only thing our marriage was about.”
“What happened?”
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