text: I almost cancelled..... A woman asked ME on a date. She offered to pay, offered to pick me up and told me it “wasn’t a date” all to make sure that I didn’t think anything more would happen besides just two people hanging out and I almost cancelled on her. Being the sarcastic man that I am, I said “well you better be opening my door for me too”. As I walked outside of my house she scooted past me and opened the passenger door of her car. I laughed, not even the slightest bit embarrassed and hopped in. I truly don’t remember much of the ride there. Light conversation and the underlying thought of *why am I here? Why didn’t I cancel??* flooding my brain. The sushi restaurant wasn’t far from my house so that feeling didn’t last for long. We get inside, sit down and begin to look at the menu. If there’s one thing I hate about restaurants it’s how quickly the serving staff approaches asking for food orders ESPECIALLY on a date. “Can I take your order?” the waitress says. In my head I recite “No sorry, can we have a few?” or something to that calibre but instead I hear from the blonde woman sitting across from me an entire order, drinks and all. To this day she tells me she’ll never forget the face I made. I wish I could tell you what it looked like. I can only imagine that it was a mixture of confusion and awe. The order was not only ready to go, but detailed. She knew exactly what she wanted. I’m assuming I just stared in amazement as she smiled that insanely contagious smile and said “what? Do you not know what you want?” I almost cancelled.... There wasn’t a single dry spell through the entire dinner. Not once awkward silence. It was as if we were old friends catching up, telling each other what had happened in the years we’d spent without each other. Every story, every sentence flowed into the next effortlessly. Never once was one of us forced to think of a generic question to keep the conversation alive. In fact the whole night was like that. After dinner I decide to do the cliche romantic thing and invite her for ice cream foolishly thinking the evening would be over at that point and that she would drop me off at home with an innocent hug and a “we should do this again sometime.” Much to my delight, I was so very wrong. She drug me into a bar where we drank and talked more. Again, the conversation was never ending and the laughter involved amounted to a weeks worth of ab exercises. There wasn’t a single thing that I didn’t like about her. From the way her eye twitched when she was telling a story about something that annoyed her, to the way her eyes would close slightly anytime she would be intrigued by something I would say. We made love with our eyes that night. Felt each other without touch, exchanged parts of our soul before even a single kiss was shared. I almost cancelled.... We went back to my place, drunk and entirely too tired to carry on for the rest of the night, but apparently we didn’t have enough of talking as we woke up just a couple of hours later. We sat and talked for 3 hours about anything and everything, both of us hung over, her needing to go to work but finding it hard to leave. I vividly remember exactly where she was sitting and precisely how her lips would curve when she smiled at me. We kissed as she got in her car, a kiss that felt like it had been shared between us a hundred times before in dreams. Neither of us knew that we’d be dreaming of finding each other our whole lives. I almost cancelled.... 8 months later we broke up. 8 months filled with laughter until we cried. 8 months of smiling till it hurts. 8 months of memories that were burnt into our hearts. 8 months and all that was left was the promise that it wasn’t over... but it was... 8 months and the words her and I live by are “until next time” as neither of us think it’s over but just know that for now, it’s over. 8 months of dreaming of being with this person for the rest of my life. 8 months of effortlessly weaving this person into your life, not to become part of me, but to become their own character in my story. 8 months, and then the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life I almost cancelled..... If I would have cancelled I wouldn’t feel the pain. I wouldn’t feel the loss. I wouldn’t miss her as much as I do. If I would have cancelled I wouldn’t know what I’m missing.