breathe in, laugh out

He messaged me on Tinder a couple of weeks back. He had a witty opening line, and kept interesting conversation going.

A few days into our conversation, I had a couple of glasses of wine at happy hour, looked over his pics again, and messaged him:

“Are you a ginger?”

His response was a solid, “No,” but I didn’t really believe him.

We were both busy in upcoming days with weekend plans and work trips. We kept in contact throughout, with conversations ranging from ear cleaning with q-tips to our biggest life fears. He occupied me via text during a week-long of loneliness I spent traveling around Arizona. I appreciated his virtual presence, even though I hadn’t yet met him.

I could not wait to get home after that week… I felt like I had been in solitary confinement (I was very dramatic and cranky about it). The Ginger wanted to get together. I made plans to do dinner and happy hour with the girls on Friday night when I got back, but suggested that we could meet up after. For some reason I forgot that I hate talking to people for an extended period of time before meeting them. I really do hate that. But I had done it anyway. When I realized that’s what we had been doing for two weeks, I all of a sudden got a little bit nervous.

I felt comfortable enough with him at this point to suggest we make a plan to escape each other immediately after meeting, if we decided we didn’t like each other in person. His response?

“If you want, but I already know I’m going to like you.”

Oh, a sweet talker. We planned to meet at Dirty Birds in PB. I somehow timed a really long trip to the bathroom perfectly for right before he showed up (this is sarcasm. This was really not perfect at all). He walked in, and apparently really awkwardly looked around for me. The girls saw him looking and thought it might be him, so they picked up my phone from the table and checked his Tinder pics to confirm. I came out several minutes later, saw him already standing there with them, and thought “Crap…” [pun intended]. Thankfully, even after I’m sure an awkward introduction to the girls, (my sister was involved, it was obviously awkward), he was holding his own.

We hugged hello, I apologized for being missing for so long (I wonder if he knew I was pooping?) and then he went to the bar and bought a round of Fireball shots for everyone. Sold.

The night progressed, we made our way to our usual spots. The Ginger was tall, and had a hot bod. I learned he was a D-1 baseball player which made him juuustttt a little bit hotter (I’m shallow… what can I say?)

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…. I started writing this post almost two weeks ago. I got pretty distracted. I just pulled it up to continue, but realized it would turn into a novel at this point… so… until next time.