Chapter 1

It was the first day of the year, and I had a date. 

Maybe this was it? A new decade – a world full of possibilities. A lifetime of bliss could be only hours away. 

Our love would be instant. A spark bursting into a flame so fierce we could do nothing but follow it into love. This would be it. Days would turn to months, and before we knew it, engulfed in love, a year would have passed. By then, my Lithuanian citizenship would finally be processed and we would move, together, gloriously to Paris to begin our European adventure as man and wife. As one. Together. 

Wait.

We met on Tinder. Obviously. Where else would a modern woman meet the man of her dreams if not on an app? 

HOW IS YOUR NYE GOING? he texted.

GOOD. GOING TO A SMALL PARTY. VERY CHILL, I replied.

It was very chill and I was totally chill for saying it was chill. I had plans to go to a laid back, intimate house party, hosted by a couple from my French course. Obviously, I can’t run off to Paris with the love of my life if I don’t speak the language. One needs to be prepared.  I brought my new friend, Brynn, whom I had just met a few months earlier by the open bar at a women’s conference.

“I really like your backpack,” I heard a voice say. 

I turned, double fisting mini plastic cups of white wine spritzer, “Thanks, it’s Danish.”

And that was it. We began chatting – we were in the Networking area after all – and things just clicked. She was tall and statuesque, with long, poker-straight chestnut hair and knew exactly what she wanted – as many mini mojitos as she could carry. We became fast friends. 

The party was just what I needed. Brynn and I chatted, smoked, and danced, heavy in the irony of being at a tiny party welcoming in a new decade. Lots of cheap champagne, fragrant Algerian hors d'oeuvres, and incessant French hip hop, interspersed with ads, streaming free on YouTube, you couldn’t ask for more.

At around 1 am I walked the twenty blocks home. I know, I shouldn’t have done that – for multiple reasons. First, women shouldn't walk home drunk, alone, in the middle of the night. But come on, an Uber on New Year’s Eve, that’s like forty bucks! Second, women also shouldn’t walk home alone at night when they, in fact, have a broken foot. 

Six weeks earlier, I had a devastating clog-related injury on the paving stones as I left the office. I, in my gorgeous Ganni leopard print caftan, was no match for the precariously balancing square of cement. As I stepped forward my left foot disagreed and stepped back, rotating in a way that I didn’t think was possible – and shouldn’t be. The bone broke. A week later, on the x-ray it looked like a chipped arrowhead I found as a kid playing around along the creek bed at my friend’s family cabin.  I say a week later because I myself was confident it wasn’t broken. I hobbled around the office in an old pair of Converse low tops saying, “It’ll be fine, I’ll walk it off,” until I was finally talked into going to the doctor’s office, confirming that, since it happened on-site, insurance would cover everything.

Now, donning my thick plastic boot, I clip-clopped like an old horse on my way home, reminiscing to myself about the year before when a guy gave me a ride home across town from a different New Year’s Eve party – just to be nice.

Maybe I should have fallen in love with him? Probably not. He was already married… to a woman he met on TV. Spoiler, it didn’t work out.

Right. A bright and sunny New Year’s Day. 

Ding! My phone lit up. WHAT ARE YOU UP TO? It was him, Josh, my new Tinder man.

Laying on the sofa, eating Doritos, drifting in and out of sleep watching ID on Discovery. What about you? Um, maybe not.

JUST HANGIN OUT. YOU? Much better. 

SAME. HEY, YOU WANNA MEET UP LATER FOR A DRINK OR COFEE OR SOMETHING? he wrote.

Ugh. Why can’t a man just ask you out? It’s always left to you to make the plans. Keeping with tradition, I said sure and arranged for us to meet at 4 o’clock at an old Italian bar I knew. If it turned out he sucked, I still would get some amazing meatballs out of the deal. Not a total loss.

Josh was from Alabama. I’d never actually met someone from Alabama – or at least I don’t think I’ve met anyone from Alabama. I mean, who was from Alabama? Well, Josh, apparently.

On his very in-depth Tinder profile, aka one sentence, no emojis – good sign – he wrote that he had just moved to Philadelphia from Nashville and that he went to Vanderbilt. On the plus side, he did look like his pictures. They portrayed his actual age and contained no fish of any kind. Point earned. 

He also had a photo of a beautiful piece by Yves Klein he recently took at a museum in New York. He liked it because it was… blue. Sigh. Point lost.

The first twenty minutes are crucial. This is when you make your first decision about someone. Are you willing to commit the next hour or two of your life to getting to know them? Or should you just quietly get up from your bar stool, grab your jacket and gently pat them on the shoulder as you walk out?   

He was intelligent, cute and fun. It was nice – eating meatballs, chatting, getting to know one another. He didn’t seem quite like the type I thought I would be with, but it’s important to give people a chance – or at least that’s what my friends kept telling me. 

Love was in the air, or perhaps it was the strong lining of meat and marinara in my stomach that allowed me to be a bit more impetuous in the drinking department, so we headed off to the next bar. 

One of the biggest problems we face in the dating world is rarely discussed. Beyond the ghosting, the orbiting, the endless cycle of date after hopeless date, is a question as old as time… Where do you take them? 

Over time, living in the city, you build up a collection of bars and restaurants where you feel at home. You come back to these spaces, time after time. You know the vibe. You know who’ll be there, nursing a beer at the bar. You know who’ll be behind the bar with their own secret stash of hot sauces on taco night, ready to share with you because you put your time in and you’re on the list.

These public places become intimate spaces that are a reflection of your life. Do you really want to share them with, essentially, strangers? What’s the alternative? Going to places you don’t really like all that much because you want to keep the sanctity of your favorite spots? I wonder, how many men have the bartenders at my favorite dives seen me traipse through their doors? Do they keep count? Do they hope that this one will finally be the one? Or are they even more jaded than me and know love is hard to find, especially in a dark, dimly lit corner bar?

Forget it. It’s New Year's Day, take a chance! We made our way to my favorite local, dimly lit all the same, just blocks from home, where we then sat, nursing beers, knees touching, watching Home Alone 2. Did the bartender just give me a little wink? This could well and truly be something real.

After a staggering eight and half hour date, Josh walked me to my door, got in a Lyft and went home. No more, no less, but it felt good. An uncomplicated ending for a great night out. I opened the door and found my little old beagle, Alfie, grumpy, attentively waiting for me. After a pee break and a treat, his worldly annoyances drifted away and we padded up stairs to bed. With my skin routine complete, I turned out the lights.

Brrr! My phone lit up. I glared at it in the dark – it was Josh. 

Oh god, why’s he calling?

Did he have such an amazing time that he misses me already?

Fucking weirdo calling me already, before he’s even home.

I hesitated, “Hello?” Alfie perked his head up from his quick fallen slumber.

“Hey, it’s me. I’m really sorry, but can you check and see if I dropped my keys outside of your house? I can’t find them,” he laughed, tipsily.

I sat up. “Oh no! Really?” I took a breath, paused, “Where are you?”

“I’m still in the Lyft. If you don’t see them out there I’m gonna have to go back to the bar,” he said. 

“Oh shit. Ok, hold on,” I jumped up, turned on the lights and bounced down the stairs. The January cold seeped into my bare feet on the concrete as I searched the dimly lit street.  No keys. “Shit, no. Nothing,” I sighed into the phone.

All went quiet. I was about to say something when he broke, “Ok, I’m gonna have to go back. What was the place called?”

“Watkins,” I replied. “What’re you gonna do if they’re not there?” I asked nervously. Was I going to have to let him stay at my house until the morning when he could get back into his building? 

“Let me call you back.” He hung up. 

Now what? Should I just go back to bed? Was he expecting me to help him in some way? I returned to the darkness of my bedroom and waited as Alfie softly snored at my feet. I texted, What happened? 

He wrote back, OMG!

Fuck, now what? Even if this was the first day of the greatest relationship of my life, I didn’t want this guy in my house. 

Brrr! My phone lit up, again.

I took a deep breath, “Hey.”

He’s laughing, “So, my keys were in my pant leg!”

Huh?

Apparently, a small, disregarded hole in his front pant pocket had grown, allowing for his keys to slowly dig their way through, shimmying down his pant leg, grappling the top edge of his sock. Skinny jeans, who knew. 

“Oh, wow,” I began to feel very mono-syllabic. What else was I supposed to say?

“Yeah! But I told the Lyft driver to go, so now I’m just gonna walk home,” he paused, “I guess.” 

“Wow. Ok. Yeah.” There I was again. “Well, we can chat while you walk. Home. If you want.”

Safely knowing he was not going to come to my home, we picked up right where we’d left off in the bar, now laughing about how it was lucky that it was such a good date or the key thing could have become awkward. Twenty minutes flew by, he was approaching his apartment in Old City. 

“I had a really great time tonight,” he chuckled, “minus the keys, of course.”

“Of course,” I smiled through the phone.

“Ok, well, I’ll talk to you soon!”

I hung up, placing the phone on the nightstand, and gazed at the ceiling in the dark. Think of the story! Not only did we meet on the first day of the new decade, but it was the best date I had had in four years! I hadn’t had such a good time since my first date with Greg. 

Greg, the man I thought I’d marry, but then dumped me after four months. 

But that wasn’t going to happen this time. This was it! And now, we had ended our first date with an adorable story – well, it would become adorable, in time – about the first time we met. 

I woke up the next day feeling fresh, even with all the meatballs and alcohol from the day before. By mid-afternoon he texted to see how I was. We passed a few messages back and forth. I went about my day feeling good in a way I hadn’t felt in ages, like things were looking up. 2020 was going to be my year. I was sure of it.