(Spoiler alert: It was Tinder.) It was early fall 2017, and Anne Marie had only been dating again for a couple of months after a significant breakup. Having moved back home to Columbia following a year of nannying after graduating from college, the dating scene she found herself in was a minefield of childhood friends, guys with too many hunting trophies and too few books, and worst of all, cat allergies. After a few rounds of dates that went nowhere, she was ready to take a break from it all. So when she matched with David on Tinder and he asked within half an hour if she wanted to meet for drinks, despite having a few dozen mutual friends on Facebook, she asked if they could take a rain check. She was just being polite. She didn’t intend to reschedule. David wasn’t fazed— Tinder was just an amusing way to meet new people. But this girl knew a lot of his friends from college, and like him, she had an English degree. He took her at her word and decided to ask again another time, A couple of days later, it was Anne Marie’s mother’s birthday. She went to dinner with her parents and had a glass of wine. And then, a bit uncharacteristically, she had a second. Just after she had started her third glass, she received a text message from David asking if she wanted to meet up for the drink she had deferred a few days prior. And this time, she was just tipsy enough to say yes. Georgia, one of her best friends and closest thing Anne Marie has to a sibling, was roped into going with her to meet David at the Flying Saucer. A lover of true crime, Anne Marie has always been an advocate for the buddy system on first dates, and she warned David she was bringing Georgia along and that she would leave when she was confident that 1) he was unlikely to murder her, and 2) she’d seen his face well enough to describe it to a sketch artist. Anne Marie and Georgia beat David to the bar and ordered drinks. He arrived shortly after and found their booth. After introductions, he and Anne Marie started talking (a passion for both). They talked about where they’d gone to college, and about their families and friends. When they began discussing books (discovering Whitman was a shared favorite) Georgia declared David to be harmless and left the bar, rolling her eyes as their conversation moved to the other Romantics. As the night progressed, they returned to the topic of family. He mentioned his sister, Kristen, had recently gotten married at a rented beach house on Isle of Palms. Anne Marie told him she knew the area well— that in fact, she’d spent most of her vacations there as a child because her family had a beach house on the island they rented out most of the year. After showing Anne Marie a few photos of the wedding, they were shocked to discover Kristen had in fact gotten married in Anne Marie’s family’s house. They laughed over the coincidence. Closing time was approaching, and they headed out to the parking lot, not quite ready to go home. They climbed up the short but the steep asphalt hill and sat under the Generations mural, still talking. After half an hour, a man wandered up to them and offered to draw their portrait if they could pay cash. David agreed, and the man set to work. As he drew, they fell silent and gazed at each other with awe and growing affection. “How long have you two been together?” he asked. “This is actually our first date,” Anne Marie said. “Wow! Well, maybe one day you’ll get married and then you’ll have this picture to remember tonight by.” David smiled. “Yeah man, you never know.”