Well, it all began online: a swipe and a match. I started with the very straightforward question of: pick one of these 3 date options, to which Gigi agreed to go dancing. We set the date for December 19th, and conversation was going well. Finally, the day comes: I get a message at 4 AM, very politely letting me know that she would not be making it to our date that night. We continued texting into the next day, Friday, when I sent a long and well thought out message, and never got a reply. I did not hear back from her for the rest of the weekend. On Monday, December 23rd, I went to a high school buddy's house to watch the Saints @ Packers game (GO PACK GO). The first person I see when I walk in the door: the girl I was supposed to go out with last week and that had been ghosting me for 4 days now. I kept moving and sat at the table to chat with my friend Ian. The girl then proceeds to walk by holding my friend's child in her arms. The toddler reaches out to me, forcing us to make eye contact. She hands the kid off and scurries away. At that point, Ian says "have you met Gigi?", which confirms my sinking suspicion: that is the girl that ghosted me a few days prior. I told him no, I'd never met her before. As the game starts, I make sure to say "Go Pack Go", after which the girl that ran away earlier asks my friend "who invited this guy?" (yes, those were the first words she ever said to me). I then took the opportunity to shake her hand, and introduce myself with "Hi. I'm Sam, by the way". The "by the way" was quite exaggerated, making sure she knew I recognized her. At this point it was game on: the bantering began. We continued poking at each other throughout the evening, until she had to leave to go to work. I waited until everyone had left, so I could be alone with the hosts. I absolutely had to tell them what just happened: I ran into the girl that had been ghosting me for days now. They were more than amused by that fact. Stephanie, a close friend of Gigi's, then explained that "she works all the time and is really bad at texting people back". In the back of my mind, I thought she might have had her reasons for cancelling and not following through with our date. So I opted to leave it at that. But at 7 AM the following day, I got a long text explaining the disappearance, and concluding with "if it's not a deal breaker, I'd love to reschedule our date". We laughed about the coincidence of it all, and set a date for the following Monday. There is some debate if it was on date 3 or 4 that I asked her out - 2 days before her birthday. I still say it was definitely date number 4.

Our story starts like many modern ones do: swipe and a match. Sam was quite bold and direct: on the first message, he gave me three date options and said "which sounds better to you?" - which was quite attractive and made him stand out from the usual crowd of pen-pals and boring men. We opted to go out dancing for our first date. We scheduled that for December 19th. In the meantime, conversation flowed quite easily. Sam's personality drew me in, even through texting (we were texting paragraphs daily, which is very unusual for me, since I have no patience for that normally). I told my best friend about him, and her response was something along the lines of "He sounds like fun. You need fun. I want ALL the updates". Mind you, dear reader, that I am completely insane. I worked 5 overnight shifts into Tuesday, had Wednesday to flip back, was scheduled for a day shift on Thursday (the alleged first date), and was back on nights on Friday. Before you start hating whoever made that schedule, that was me. I am the problem. Obviously, I wasn't going to be a functional human by Thursday evening, right? Correct. I couldn't sleep from Wednesday into Thursday at all. So, by 4:30 AM, I had come to the unfortunate conclusion that I'd have to cancel our date, since by the time we were supposed to meet I would have been awake for 30 hours, and therefore not pleasant company. I texted Sam that (pretty much exactly that), and he was very gracious and understanding. We talked a bit into Friday, but by that point I'd had a week from hell. I opened his text fully intending on responding later, but (shocking absolutely no one) I forgot. Yeah, I completely forgot to text him back. Fast forward to Monday night. I was still on night shifts, but had made plans with some fellow Saints fans to watch MNF together (before I went into work - again). Unbeknownst to me, my friend invited some other people to join us. Care to guess who has been buddies with my friend's fiancé since High School? Yup, the guy I had been unintentionally ghosting for 4 days now. I know, right? My life, as my best friend will tell you, is somewhat the punchline of a joke. This was literally a "I CANNOT MAKE THIS UP" moment. As I saw him in the kitchen, I couldn't believe my eyes, so I did what any normal girl would do: immediately texted my best friend "I'm in trouble". This derailed into very entertaining text messages of her having fun at my expense, and me having to deal with the consequences of my forgetfulness. I then decided to face the music, and walk into the kitchen area, with my friend's daughter in my arms. Of course, the little stinker decides that it was a great time to reach out to uncle Sammy and force us to make eye contact. I handed her off to him and continued on my merry way (towards literally anywhere but right there). As the game starts - of course the intruder cheers for the wrong team -, Sam says "go pack go", which is quite unnerving, since that was a Saints watch party. So I look at our mutual friend and ask "who invited this guy?". Yes, those were my first words to my future husband... But don't worry, he doesn't let that slide. He looks at me, shakes my hand and goes "I'm Sam, by the way". That BTW was loaded, let me tell ya. He looked right into my eyes, and was clearly saying "I know who you are" (there went my hopes he wouldn't recognize me). So the night goes on, with both of us bantering and flirting, me texting my friend all about it, including great quotes like "he's nice and cute btw. I hate this"; "he's funny though, ughhhhhhhhhh"; and "am I joke to you?". This leads to a 45 minute phone call with her on my way to work, in which we figure out I'm an idiot and therefore I'm the one who needs to reach out if I want to see him again. So the following morning I texted him immediately after I got off work, and like they say, the rest is history. I'll let him tell you his version (and maybe we'll convince Beverly to tell her side of it too lol).