Daniel and I met in 2015 working together at a retail store in the outlet mall. He was actually my boss for that holiday season. We quickly became friends and talked often about music and cracked jokes with one another, but life happens and we lost touch after I stopped working for him.

* 6 YEARS LATER *

I'm at this bar in Clarksville, Tennessee on October 30, 2021 and I'm watching this lady doing a ring of fire dance at a Halloween party just kind of sad about how life had been lately when suddenly my phone gets a message request from Dan McKinnon. I knew I knew his face, but I couldn't place it.

Dan strikes conversation with "Hey! What the hell happened to you? Where have you been?" (a lot has happened Daniel it's been 6 years) and we just hit it off. Once I realized Dan was the super cute boss I had at Wilson's Leather it was like lighting struck.

"When are you coming back to Michigan?" He asks and I'm sitting at this bar states away 9 hours from this person and I'm like, lets take a shot. Let's just see what happens. So I tell him "Oh I'll be home in a few days for *insert some made up event*" What Dan didn't know is I had just been home for about 2.5 weeks a month prior to him reaching out and had absolutely no reason to come home again.

We talked every second of every day leading up to the night I chose to drive back to Michigan. I hate driving at night, but I'm so glad I did because if I hadn't who knows where we would've ended up or if I would've chickened out all together.

I get in town I'm staying at my sisters apartment and day 1 Daniels like "Can I pick you up for a date?" I said "Don't be ridiculous, your house is like an hour and a half from her apartment you don't need to pick me up!" (I drove 9 hours in the dead of night to see him but drew the line at him picking me up). I ended up convincing him to just let me drive myself and we had our first date November 3, 2021. We watched Shrek 2 and I was just so nervous I quoted the whole thing start to finish because I didn't know what to say or talk about. We had a couple more dates after that and took a weekend hiking trip up to Marquette and the night before I was going back to Tennessee. November 15, 2021 he asked me to be his girlfriend while I was falling asleep leaning on his arm. (I said "Are you sure?") We did A LOT of video dates and skype calls just always talking to each other or doing video dates where we start the movie at the same time and "watch" it together, until I came home mid-December and haven't left since.

We always joke that I forgot Dan but Dan never forgot me, and I'm so glad he didn't. My soul has always known his and on that first day when he messaged me it was like being called home after spending years abroad. I always said I would never move back to Michigan unless I had a really good reason, so I guess you can say a really good one found me.

Q + A

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