After 2 decades of reading endless romance novels, watching every rom-com imaginable, and being completely enamoured with tales of adoration and happy endings, Ines thought she had this whole "love" thing figured out...Except for the fact that her knight in shining armour seemed determined to evade her. As it turns out, he was waiting for his opportune moment to swoop in and sweep her off her feet. On a warm fall evening in 2017, Ines attended a football watch party where she spent the entirety of the game sitting in the back corner with the host's snuggly Shiba Inu on her lap. Alex and Ines crossed paths for the first time in that living room, and while Alex knew of her through some of their mutual friends, he (rightfully) had the sense that she much preferred her isolation with Piccolo over awkward conversation. As the night wore on, they engaged in typical small talk as they bar hopped with the group, celebrated the Dawgs winning another game, and parted ways amicably. As fall turned into winter and winter turned to spring, Ines and Alex crossed paths several more times, engaging in polite conversation about the weather, their friend's antics, or their mutual love of dogs and mountains. Ines began working at a local Athens bar, where Alex and his friend Max quickly became regulars during NBA Season. On one of the many game nights they spent drinking Ines's (exceptional) $1 cocktails, Alex finally built up the courage to ask for Ines's number. Ines took his phone, punched in her digits, and told Alex to text her if he was serious. Surprisingly, that's not where their real love story begins. Spring turned into summer, Ines and Alex returned home to their families, and still Ines never received a text message from the charming man who frequented her bar. When the 2018 fall semester rolled around, Ines assumed Alex had forgotten about her… Until one Friday evening he strolled into her bar again, before the crowds arrived, and walked right up to her. “Hey! We never went on that date!” he said unashamedly. Ines IMMEDIATELY blew off his obvious attempts to play innocent when he’d clearly written her off. Throughout the rest of the night and that Saturday morning, Ines heard nothing from Alex. That evening, Ines started another long shift at the bar. She was busy restocking napkins and straws when a hand suddenly slammed on the bar top in front of her. “You need to tell me what you want.” A familiar voice said. As she looked up, Alex stood before her, his face determined. "You tell me to text you and then never reply," he remarked, before whipping out his phone and showing Ines a string of unread messages, all sent to a contact with her name on it. That's when Ines realized that in the chaos of the bar, she had accidentally given Alex the wrong number...So she quickly corrected her mistake. The very next day Ines asked Alex to join her at the dog park, and somehow got him to agree with 10 minutes of warning. That first meet up at the dog park turned into 8 hours of talking, laughing, and watching Game of Thrones together in Ines’s apartment. From that point forward, Ines and Alex were virtually inseparable. Alex moved into Ines’s apartment 3 months later…And the rest is history.