a tired smile, but my reassurance never truly reached him.
Each rejection broke his heart.
“I don’t understand,” he’d whisper.
“They all seemed so happy.”
Watching him lose confidence was painful.
With every disappointment, he drifted closer to the quiet man he’d become after Mom died.
He stopped singing again.
He checked his phone constantly.
He reread old conversations as though the answer might suddenly appear.
The fourth woman disappeared after saying she wanted him to meet her sister.
The fifth vanished after making weekend plans.
When the sixth did
