Excerpt:

As I look around now at all the architecture books standing up neatly, I can’t help but have a brief second of disbelief in which I wonder "Where did that reality go?" Or, more appropriately, "Why didn’t it appear?" In support of my sanity, I would like to state that I did not truly expect to meet any man, Asian or otherwise, in the cookbook section of this book store and be swept away. I’m really not the type of person to strike up comfortable conversations with strangers, even less the type to give out my phone number. I won’t even start on how unlikely it is such a gem, as of course he is, would approach me out of the blue and want to see me again. I’m sure there have been men I have impressed in the past, but in such a fashion…? Still, there was that small part of me wondering, if it could happen in a world of infinite possibilities, why didn’t it? Was I leaving Seattle too soon? Well yes, but would sticking around for any length of time put me on the path to this relationship? But then again, we don’t often think of this reality having infinite possibilities, exactly, but instead of those Star Trek alternate realities that plot out the consequences of the options left alone, and I already know in which reality I meet him and exceed all my expectations.

As consolation, I left with a book on English diplomats in Meiji Japan.