As in all good love stories, ours started in a hopeless place... a dating app.

Rose and Steve matched on Bumble in the fateful year of 2020. A year of uncertainty, utter despair and political strife. Yet they both found respite in each other within their long DMs where they talked about family, friends and their values. They became friends and although it seemed to be more, their love story was not meant to start here.

Rose's journey led her away from Steve and Georgia to a new unforgiving, cold terrain known as Chicago. Although she missed her friends quite dearly, she started to enjoy the new life she was building among the busy streets and even busier bars. She filled her time with making new friends, exploring vintage shops, and discovering a ghastly new liquor, Malort. Yet, even among all this fun, she couldn't fight the feeling that there was always something missing. Might that be something or, better yet, someone she left behind?

600 miles away, Steve felt content in the life he created with the friendships he treasured. Except he too felt that he couldn't get one person out of his mind. During the summer of 2021, they scheduled weekly facetimes with each other, lasting hours each time. When they weren't facetiming, they were busy texting each other throughout the day.

Birds started to sing more sweetly, the air felt fresher, the trees and flowers bloomed more beautifully. They eagerly waited for when they could see each other in real life, to see what this all meant. For they have started to suspect that fate had something in store for them.

Finally, the day of their first date came upon them. They were to meet at the Zebra Lounge in Chicago at 7pm. Steve came rushing into the bar, cursing under his breath that he was a few minutes late. He feared she would have left when not seeing him or worse yet, she never came at all. Yet when he walked around a column that partially hid a side of the bar, he found her patiently waiting there looking for him. When their eyes locked, they both knew that true love finally found them. They laughed, they flirted, they drank while the piano player played Trap Queen for them in the background.

You ask, "How was that fate? How did they know so quickly after meeting only one time?" Well, when you know you Ngo.