Or… it would have been cute if I wasn’t so oblivious

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I decided to share an old post today. My very own meet cute! This one was pretty popular when I posted it a year ago, but I have way more subscribers now, so I figured I’d post it again! The story is, indeed, CUTE. But first…

Wow, y’all have A LOT of opinions about coffee. After last week’s research post, my DMs were flooded with people commenting on everything from the best way to make coffee to the best place to get coffee beans to the merits and drawbacks of the matcha I tried. I’m so glad to hear all of it! The fact that we all source and prepare our favorite beverages a little differently is fascinating to me, and I love hearing all of it.

I did learn how to prepare Turkish coffee this week, which was as much for research for the new book as it was for fun. And, let me tell you, it is DELICIOUS. My friend walked me through the whole process, and it took a few tries to really get it right, but I did!

It’s a really fun process! The pot is so tiny, so it brews really fast. It’s unfiltered, so the grounds kind of sit at the bottom as you sip. It creates a really rich, earthy flavor that is coffee-like, but also unique. I tried brewing it without sugar, but at the insistence of my friend, added sugar and milk, and… woah. Amazing. I’ll probably do a whole post on this next week, honestly. It’s that good.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for. How I met my husband, Troy*.

Here’s a picture of us from this summer, when we were all tan and relaxed and happy. Not that we aren’t happy now, but, in the doldrums of winter, we certainly are not tan, nor are we particularly relaxed. We are both high school English teachers and we have two small children. Enough said. (And, yes, he is wearing a Leade Park High School wrestling team sweatshirt. The man is my number one fan, and I love him.)

It was the summer of two-thousand*cough cough*. (I’m not giving too much away here. We’re elder millennials, so you can do some math.) I had just gotten a shiny new job and moved back in with my mom. I had also gotten accepted to a shiny new graduate program (well, the program wasn’t new, but it was new to me) for English. It was the perfect program for English teachers—we could double up on classes in the summers, and were only asked to take night classes once a week during the school year. Not everyone in the program was a teacher, but it really was a unicorn situation, as most English programs in the area at the time were not teacher-friendly.

I was very excited about it for a lot of reasons. My first job out of college was in a small school in a small town, which I loved but wasn’t really my long-term vibe. I wanted a master’s in English because I love books and literature, but also because it opens some doors when you teach high school, allowing you to teach dual credit classes and making you a better candidate for AP classes and the like.

I had also just ended the longest relationship I had been in since high school. It was a long-distance thing while I lived near my first job, and it wasn’t a bad relationship, per se, but I had (and still have) a sneaking suspicion that one of us was seeing other people… and that person was not me. It was fun while it lasted, but it wasn’t meant to be.

With all the change in my life at the time—new job, new grad program, new living arrangement, new singledom—I was definitely not looking for a relationship. In fact, I was actively not looking. Nope. No thank you. Not happening. I was honestly kind of excited that there were only three men in my class that summer—one was well over twice my age, one was wearing a wedding band and one…

Well, he held the door open for me after class.

That’s it. That’s what he did. And I, being an oblivious, self-centered, early-twenty-something who was actively not looking for a relationship, didn’t think anything of it because holding the door open for someone leaving a room behind you is a polite, classically Midwestern thing to do.

He struck up a conversation with me that took us all the way out to our parked cars, which I also didn’t think anything of because our grad class was the start of a cohort where we’d be spending the next two years in classes together. Why not get to know each other?

Then, he asked if I wanted to get a drink, which I also didn’t think anything of because it was a nice, summer evening and we were both teachers off for the summer with nothing to do the next day.

We walked to a nearby bar and ordered drinks. I got carded because I looked like a babychild at the time, and the bartender said, “Oh, she’s a looker. Hold on to her!” I laughed and looked over to see Troy smiling surreptitiously, blushing just a little bit and…

Oh.

I excused myself to the bathroom to text my friend that I was pretty sure this guy I just met was hitting on me and we were getting drinks and OMG WHAT DO I DO?! to which she responded: Go with it.

So I did. We had a drink, he walked me back to my car, we chatted a little more, someone leaned in for a kiss (I’m pretty sure it was me?), we exchanged numbers, we headed home.

But, remember, I was actively not looking for a relationship. It was just a kiss, nothing more. It was a good kiss. A great kiss, really. But… no. I couldn’t let myself go there. I had too much on my plate.

The next day, he called me. I let it go to voicemail because I was actively not looking for a relationship. I took a nap (ahh, the free and easy summers of my child-free youth), and when I woke up, I listened to the voicemail. He said: “I know I’m supposed to wait three days to call you to make it seem like I’m only sort of interested, but I’m not doing that. I’m very interested, and I want to see you this weekend.”

Maybe it was the great kiss. Maybe it was the bold admission. Maybe it was the vulnerability he let me hear in that voicemail. I don’t know for sure, but I asked him to come out with my friends and me for my birthday that weekend.

And the rest is history.

*All names have been changed to protect the innocent. He picked his pen name. I had nothing to do with this.

I will officially be at several conventions in 2024 and 2025! I’m very excited about them. Pre-order information for them both will be coming soon!

In September 2024, I’ll be attending Romance Con in Milwaukee, WI as a signing author. This will be my first convention, and looking at the lineup, I’m kind of star-struck. I’m really stoked to be there next to some amazing authors, and so ready to meat some readers and sign some books in real life! Tickets went on sale on Wednesday, and they’re still available. Come see me!

In October 2025, I’ll also be a signing author at Book Harvest Con in Chicago, IL! I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be at such a cool, fall-themed convention so close to home. I hope you’ll come see me there, too!

As far as Common Grounds goes, I’ve been mulling over the third act for a few days now while I work on some other projects that have been on my desk for a while. I anticipate finishing a draft of it soon! One step closer to getting it into your hands this summer!

Why, yes, this is a picture of me crying in my car. Why, you might ask? Because I was listening to the end of Crazy, Stupid Bromance on my way home from work today, and y’all. IT. IS. SO. GOOD. (Side note: You know who else is going to be at Romance Con in September? Lyssa Kay Adams. I’m going to be such a fangirl, it’s not even funny.) This is friends-to-lovers done right, with some heavier themes of grief, family, and forgiveness woven into Adams’ classic laugh-out-loud jokes. It is an absolutely beautiful book.

AND THE AUDIO. God, I love Andrew Eiden’s voice. Am I going to go download every single audiobook he’s ever narrated? Well… there are a lot of them, and not all of them are books I’m interested in. But you’d better believe that I’m going to be selecting my next audio after this series from his bibliography. *chef’s kiss*

That’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed this week’s cutie little meet cute story! And I hope you had a great Valentine’s Day, too!

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