By Catherine Mattice
True love is the outward demonstration of inward conviction.
~Author Unknown
Nick and I met online. I saw his profile first, and thought he came across as a fun, genuine, and silly kind of guy. We also had a few things in common — we both worked in human resources, and the movie Nick listed as his favorite in his profile was a movie a friend of mine had worked on.
After a few days of e-mailing back and forth, Nick invited me to dinner. I thought that dinner might be a little too much too soon so I suggested we meet for a beer instead — an "interview" as I called it. I was going to be attending a networking event after work one night that week, so I recommended that we meet at a restaurant up the street from the event at 8:00 p.m.
Nick arrived shortly before 8:00 and grabbed a table. He ordered a beer and sent me a text to let me know where he was sitting. At 8:10 p.m., I was still at the networking event working on my polite exit. As I walked to my car I noticed Nick's text and responded, "Running late. I will be there in ten minutes."
Nick never received the text. As he sat there thinking he was being stood up, he decided that he would take his last few swigs of beer and leave. With only a swig left and a minute to spare, I arrived. Our "interview" wasn't necessarily eventful or amazing — we just spent an hour chatting. As Nick walked me to my car, I could tell he wasn't going to ask me out again. So I went ahead and asked him, "Are we going to hang out again soon?" He said that he would call me, and within a few days we had a real date set up — dinner at a romantic wine shop and bistro.
Our date was amazing! We had a great time sharing different items from the menu, drinking great wine, and getting to know each other. Nick must've gotten over my being late to our "interview" because I can distinctly remember noticing him scooting closer and closer to me in our booth over the course of dinner. By the end of the night, he was sitting right next to me and touching my leg with his. We had a lot of great laughs, and the list of things we had in common just kept getting longer. He drove me home and we had an amazing goodnight kiss!
One night, after about a month of dating, we had plans to hang out. He called my cell phone to figure out the details but my roommate answered. The unthinkable had happened. She told him that I was in a terrible accident and in the ER at a local hospital. I had broken three of my four wrist bones. One eye socket collapsed, my cheekbones, nose and jaw were essentially shattered, and I'd lost some teeth.
Nick asked my roommate if he could come visit me, and she told him that my ex-boyfriend received the call from the ER — and was there with me — so she didn't advise it. I didn't have my cell phone with me when I was in the accident, so the ER nurse had to find contact information for someone I knew through the white pages. Cell phone numbers don't appear in the white pages, and my ex-boyfriend was the only person I could think of who had a home phone.
Over the next seven days, Nick texted or called my roommate every single day for an update. With each conversation he asked if he could visit, and the answer was always no. After so much trauma, I wasn't prepared to see someone I'd only been dating for about a month, nor could I really even interact with visitors because of my situation. It took about four days for me to snap out of being a vegetable and become aware of what had happened to me. Nick sent me flowers every other day and continued to check on me at least twice a day.
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Finally, after seven days of being in the trauma unit, plus wrist and facial reconstruction surgery, I called Nick. I told him that I was a complete mess and had no idea when I would recover. Dating me was going to be no easy task, and since we'd only known each other for five weeks, I thought it would be best if he just walked away from me. Nick disagreed. He wanted to see me and continue to date me, so I agreed to let him come.
It's hard to let someone you've known for so little time see you at the lowest point of your entire life — generally those moments are reserved for your very closest friends and family. But, he visited the next day with more flowers in hand. His co-worker tells me that he was white as a ghost the next day at work, perhaps in shock over my state.
Once I got out of the hospital, Nick kept courting me — even though I was missing teeth and the eye with the collapsed socket was completely misshapen, and my mother had to join our "dates" in the living room because I couldn't go anywhere. (She moved in with me for six weeks so she could take care of me.)
In addition to meeting my parents early on, all of this happened in early December, so Nick spent Christmas Day with my mother, my sister, one of my girlfriends, and me. I also got to know Nick's mother a bit through the frequent cards she sent me to cheer me up.
To say the least, our relationship unfolded very unconventionally. Within approximately two months of our "interview," Nick saw me in my lowest state, met my family, and spent Christmas with me. As it turns out, he was the sweetest man I could possibly have around during such a horrible time.
Exactly one year from our "interview" we moved in together, and we are now expecting our first child. There really are great guys out there — and I was lucky enough to snag one.
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