We didn’t have an actual date planned. I stopped trying to nail down a specific date and time after plans fell through twice and he never rescheduled properly. I was sincerely losing faith (and patience) with him, so when he text’d me about getting together in San Francisco that same night, I had mixed feelings. Since I had a fabulous dinner date lined up with two of my best girlfriends early that night, I let him know that I’d be around in San Francisco and I’d just play it by ear. We decided to text each other through the evening and if we were destined to meet, then it would happen.

After dinner with the girls we decided on drinks and headed towards one of my favorite dive bars — the kind where the floor’s slightly sticky from spilled alcohol, there’s a moose head on the far wall, and the bartender calls everyone “honey”. Between beers we caught up on each others’ lives and since it’d been forever since I had quality girl bonding, I was completely consumed with the conversation. My girlfriends kept having to point out that my phone was flashing with text messages from the boy every 15 minutes — he was stuck in the Marina for the rest of night and if I wanted to meet up, I’d have to find my way across the city.  Maybe destiny needed a kick in the butt, so I asked my friend to give me a ride across town, to a bar I’ve never been, to meet a boy that liked to sniff my hair two minutes into a date.

Stepping downstairs into the crowded joint, I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of people. I took a deep breath and walked in. With searching eyes I scanned the room and spotted him leaning casually against a wall. I positioned myself directly in his line of sight and broke out in a ear-to-ear smile. He greeted me with a giant hug like he’d been waiting for me the whole night.

The rest of the date was a bit surreal. It included: sitting in the middle of a street for that getting-to-know you conversation, splashing in frozen puddles (made of the ice thrown out by bars/restaurants late at night), and sharing ice cream in 50º weather. Sometimes you don’t needs plans to make a great date happen because if you click with the right person, everything just kinda falls into place.