There once was a bartender who was single as a Pringle—the kind at the bottom of the tube that's been there so long it's achieved tenure. She'd been slinging drinks and dodging pickup lines for years, her feet developing the kind of calluses that could double as bulletproof vests.

Enter our hero: a man who burst through those bar doors like the Kool-Aid Man's more subtle cousin. While our oblivious heroine continued her mixology ballet, this gentleman immediately identified her coworker as a potential wingman and recruited him faster than a pyramid scheme at a family reunion.

The newly minted accomplice executed "Operation Liquor Well Shuffle" with the precision of a chess grandmaster who'd had three martinis. Suddenly, our unsuspecting bartender found herself stationed directly in front of Prince Charming. Coincidence? In this economy?

"Would you like to grab a drink after work?" he asked, with the confidence of someone who'd practiced this line in his bathroom mirror exactly 47 times.

"No thank you, I have to close tonight and open tomorrow," she replied, delivering the kind of scheduling conflict that has crushed a thousand romantic dreams.

But our hero—this absolute madlad—looked her dead in the eye and said, "Well, not with that attitude."

The sheer audacity. The unmitigated gall. The... wait, is he actually kind of cute?

She scribbled her number on receipt paper (the most romantic of all paper products) while mentally preparing herself for the possibility she'd just given this stranger directions to her emotional doom. Meanwhile, he clutched that receipt like it was the last Harry Potter book at a midnight release, secretly terrified it might actually be the number for "1-800-HOT-DUDES" or his local Domino's.

Plot twist: it was real!

Their first date at a rock & roll bar revealed beautiful contradictions. Here was a man eating chicken fingers with a knife and fork like he was at tea with the Queen, while she—having worked 12 hours on nothing but spite and Red Bull fumes—attacked a gluten-free burger like it owed her money.

Mid-conversation, they discovered their parents practically shared zip codes on Long Island. Cue the most romantic moment in modern dating history: him frantically calling his uncle to ensure they weren't accidentally starring in a HBO documentary. The uncle confirmed they were not, in fact, related—though the fact this needed verification should have been the first red flag. Or green flag? In this story, who can tell?

Six years, one pandemic, and an incident involving handcuffs that we're legally advised not to elaborate on later, these two beautiful weirdos are still going strong.

Because sometimes love looks like forcing your coworker into corporate espionage. Sometimes it's eating chicken fingers like you're at a state dinner. And sometimes, just sometimes, it's making sure you're not accidentally dating your cousin before ordering the second round.

Chapter One begins...