In 2017 Kyle invited me to come out for a drink with his childhood friend, Carter, who was visiting from Oakland. I picked up a slightly drunk Carter and Kyle from a brewery and headed towards dinner. Right away Carter had me laughing and I found his floral Nikes oddly endearing. For the next two years I dropped hints to Kyle about how much I liked Carter but he never seemed to pick them up. Instead, he would make infuriating comments about how we should set him up with various other friends while I went on terrible date after terrible date. We saw each other a few times after that and occasionally after another bad date I would console myself by eating Taco Bell and thinking maybe I'll be lucky and end up with Carter in the end. On my 29th birthday, he sent me a text saying “Happy Birthday Florence, I think you’re the best and probably my favorite person per minute hung out with” which only got my hopes up even more. In 2019 Kyle decided to celebrate his birthday on a brew bike, when he told me Carter was coming I hoped this would be my chance. Despite already having a plane ticket to Washington I changed my flight so that I could stay in town to be on that brew bike. We talked until 5 in the morning that night. The next morning I flew to Washington and decided to send a risky text saying that I liked him and knew he wasn't really excited about dating someone long distance but that I hoped he might make an exception. He told me we could try hanging out and if I didn’t get tired of him we could see how it went. From there we started visiting each other on weekends until as Carter tells it he was leaving to head back to Oakland one weekend while I was crying because he was leaving and he realized he was going to have to move to Sacramento. We’ve been through multiple broken hips, broken heels, injured wrists, hernias, and surgeries since we started dating and we are looking forward to surviving more injuries and global pandemics together in the future!