First comes an awkward movie date, then comes an awkward dinner date
Our love story started as all of the classics do: on Hinge. He was the only guy I talked to that not only asked what books I was reading at the time, but had already read almost all of them. So I decided to give him a shot, and we had an extremely casual first date going to see possibly the worst movie of all time, Black Adam, and pretending that it wasn’t weird that we couldn’t really talk or get to know each other at all. After which, he promptly got COVID and I didn’t see him for 6 weeks.
Hence, why we consider our dating anniversary to be the day of our second date, dinner at Zuzu’s in downtown Napa. He did his best to pretend he was interested in small talk and not at all nervous to be getting to know someone in the middle of a crowded dining room, while I pretended not to be the most talkative person in the known universe and word vomit my entire life story at him. Neither of us succeeded, but hey, something clicked, and after that day, we became borderline inseparable.
Within 2 months, he was functionally living with me and my (soon to be our) two cats in my tiny studio apartment. Within 9 months, we formally moved in together. Within 13 months, we decided to go ahead and register with the state of California as Domestic Partners because we 100% knew that we were it for each other. And health insurance is really expensive, but that’s beside the point.
And now, two and a half years after that delightfully awkward dinner, we live in our very own Gothic Barbie Dream House with our 3 cats (and the deeply pervasive ghost of one more) (cat, that is) (oh, and the neighbourhood cat that we love and feed and also consider to be mostly ours). We are proud turbo nerds who adore not only attending Renfaires but making everything we wear to them, even at the expense of our sanity and our second bedroom craft palace.
We look forward to the lifetime ahead of us that will inevitably be filled with creativity and being buried under various lumps of purring bugs.