The Bartender

Today, NZ and I celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary..and we're working on 7 years together this December, even though there is no official "date" we became a couple..We both fought the label of boyfriend/girlfriend for a good few months before realizing that spending almost every available moment together makes you a couple by default.

If you ask him how we met, you'll likely get a shorter explanation, but I'm the novel writer here ( a useful quality when dating someone who needed help editing school papers.. haha). It's been a long time, but I can recall the night we met like it was yesterday. I was smitten from the start.

After a trip to San Francisco to see my old roommate JP was cancelled, my 2 girlfriends and I ended up at a little bar on the corner. It was a slow Saturday night in Davis, and we were in the mood to get caught up on each other's lives and have a couple of drinks.

My roommate at the time started flirting with the bartender as he took our order, telling him that we were interviewing prospective fathers for our unborn children ( keep in mind, none of us were in the mood to meet anyone , so asking random bartender dude a silly question that might scare him away was no biggie). I mean, not like any of us were his type anyways. He saw pretty girls on a nightly basis, and surely had a woman that was spoken for. Anyways, R. asked the bartender what 3 qualities he possessed that he hoped to pass on to his offspring.

I still remember his words, and now that we're working on the family thing, I hope he passes on the qualities he listed as well!

All this, and I didn't even know his name. ( was this guy for real??? He was pure awesomeness!)

He later introduced himself after the interrogation by us 3 girls, and mentioned he remembered me from the local gym. The girls and I continued to drink until closing time ( so much a for a "couple of drinks", eh?).

I remember walking up to the bar to thank him for the drinks, and he passed me what I thought was a credit card slip. I told him that it wasn't mine, and that I was going to pay cash. My friend H., who had been talking to him, laughed as he said to me, " I don't care what you write, but write something down."

Then I got it.

He wanted, MY number. Not theirs, but MINE. Flustered by his proposition, I did my best to write down the correct number..How bad would it be if I messed up giving him my real number?!

As my friends and I walked the 5 blocks to my little apartment on D street, I couldn't help but wonder, out of all the girls he sees every night, why pick me? I'm sure I "wondered" their ears off, and they were happy to see us go out on our first date a couple nights later.


With the years that have passed, we have had highs and lows, including career changes, moves, home purchases, personal fitness goals achieved, and the loss of two babies. There is nobody I would want by my side to share in these life experiences, other than him. I truly feel like I hit the jackpot, finding a stand-up guy who's the apple of my eye.

I laugh now when I think back to the night we met. Little did I know that a ruined trip to the City would turn out to change my life forever.