A Beautiful Mess

You Know the Rules- Pics or it Never Happened

A Chapter Worth Writing: Timing is Everything

As with all good Bumble tales, we shared silly messages back and forth just like the thousands of messages I’ve exchanged with others over the last year.  I felt an honest empathy with his story and situation, so much so that I wanted to be a source of support for him, one that I never felt like I had.  Honestly, my motives were so pure and laden in good intentions.  But as they say “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The first time I heard his boyish voice something stirred deep within me.  It was an unfamiliar sensation triggered just from a voice, and in those brief moments, something changed for me.  It felt like this was someone I had known my whole life or could know my whole life.  While knowing VERY little about him at the time, it all felt so incongruent but also fun and exciting.  It seems that “fun and exciting” are always my hangups and irrational rationales to obliterate my boundaries.  I’m never one to say no to an adventure, no matter how small or great the risks.  So, I proposed the deal of a lifetime… I would be his friend IF he would help me perfect my dating profile.  He accepted, as predicted.

Initially, it was so much banter and sharing our daily dating sagas via text.  It stayed grounded and casual as a result.  He worked nights, I have insomnia, the friendship worked somehow. 

Beating Around the “Beer”

I still wasn’t sold on anything or him for that matter, but I did agree to meet up and hangout at a halfway rendezvous after I could tell he was prodding for a good time to ask me.  It was adorable and friendly.  I pretended to be a punctual person and showed up early to the brewery, grabbed a beer, and chose a seat inside next to the open doors so I could still hear the music.