I ended my engagement after my fiancée asked for a break to see if her ex still meant something to her. She thought I would sit and wait inside the life we had spent four years building — until three days later, her mother called me, and Tessa finally realized I was never her backup plan.

You stop asking yourself whether the foundation is solid because you’ve already hung pictures on the walls. You’ve already bought the dining table. You’ve already learned how the other person takes their coffee, which side of the bed they like, what kind of takeout makes them happy after a bad day.

You mistake routine for certainty. That was what I did with Tessa. We met at a birthday celebration for a mutual friend at a small restaurant downtown, the kind of place with Edison bulbs over the bar and framed black-and-white photos of the city on exposed brick walls.

I remember she was wearing a green sweater, laughing at something across the table, and when our mutual friend introduced us, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “So you’re the project manager everyone keeps blaming when deadlines get serious.”