What started with a determined parking-lot pursuit and a dinner that may or may not have required a notebook, quickly became something neither of us expected. Somewhere between persistence and practicality, sushi and shuffleboard, we discovered that what we were really building wasn’t just a relationship, it was a home we could carry anywhere, together.
She started as an important client—one I wasn’t about to lose. Good clients are rare. She was rarer. Every meeting she touched felt lighter, sharper, more alive. She carried herself with a calm confidence that put everyone at ease, whether we were talking strategy or seven-figure gifts. The first time I met her, she was preparing to move away. I remember feeling the sting of bad timing and convincing myself she was out of my league anyway. I let it go. I wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
Months later, I walked into a meeting and there she was—setting up materials, effortlessly commanding a room full of millionaire donors. Watching her lead that conversation felt like watching a Michelin-star chef at work: precise, creative, completely in control. I was done for. This was my second chance.
Eventually, I gathered the nerve to ask her to dinner. It wasn’t cinematic. I hurried into the parking lot after a meeting, probably giving off more desperation than charm. “How about dinner Saturday night?” I asked. She mentioned training for a race, her daily run nonnegotiable. I heard the hesitation—but I wasn’t walking away again. Not when I knew what could be waiting on the other side of a little persistence.
When we walked into the restaurant, my heart was pounding harder than I’d ever admit. Then she pulled out a notebook and pen. Of course she did. She thought this might still be business. I realized I needed a strategy. I’m no sushi authority, but I do know this: otoro—tuna belly—is gold. I once watched a chef carve a massive tuna, slowing his blade reverently when he reached the belly. That melt-in-your-mouth cut stayed with me. If I was going to win her over, it would be with otoro.
The notebook never opened. We ended with a hug. Somehow, I earned a second date. Lunch turned into a walk, then shuffleboard, then pizza, then falling asleep to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Pancake breakfast the next morning felt easy. So did the next day. And the next.
Multiple moves, several homes, four cities later, I still think about otoro and second chances—and how close I came to missing both.
He says he noticed me first, though I’m still not sure that’s true. Our paths crossed twice—once when I was an administrative assistant in the eighth year of a long relationship, and again during what I think of as my “second chapter” in Gainesville.
That was the season I lived alone for the first time, discovering who I was in the quiet details—how I liked the toilet paper hung (over), what I wanted for dinner, how I preferred to spend a Saturday. Independence suited me. It taught me about myself.
I saw him first as a professional figure—confident, magnetic, always in motion between two bicoastal offices. A project kept me in his downtown Gainesville office for months, while he drifted in and out of meetings. I never considered him a real possibility. He was too polished, too charismatic.
After one Friday meeting, he walked me to my car and casually asked what I was doing Saturday night. I assumed it was small talk. When he pointed to a restaurant, Dragonfly, across the street and declared we’d be having dinner there, I laughed it off. Surely he didn’t mean it. But the next afternoon, mid-run, my phone buzzed: “What time are we going to dinner tonight?” He meant it.
I overthought everything—consulted my sister about an outfit that could pass as professional or romantic, even tucked my notebook into my bag in case it was somehow still business. It wasn’t. We shared tuna flatbread, easy conversation, and a moment when he brushed my hair from my face. After shuffleboard and honest talk about my hesitation to blur professional lines, we hugged—and shook hands (as the first of many jokes about the notebook).
We didn’t rush. Weeks passed between dates. But when timing finally aligned, it felt effortless. One dinner turned into days strung together—pool afternoons, apple-launching experiments, movie nights. Adventure mixed with ordinary rhythms.
Now I see those early days foreshadowed our life: gravel roads in Iceland, caves in Belize, kayaking past alligators, singing in the backyard, doing dishes (what we call “the dishes show”). And, no matter where we are in the world, he takes my hand at the end of the day and says, “Let’s go home.” And I know he means us.
What neither of us understood in those early days, was that we were standing at the same quiet threshold from opposite sides. She thought he was impossibly confident and out of reach, he thought she was out of his league and nearly lost to timing. He came armed with otoro and persistence, she came with contingency plans and boundaries.
Yet somewhere between tuna flatbread and tuna belly, caution softened into curiosity. What began as a client relationship and a second chance became a rhythm of shared days, long lunches, movie nights, gravel roads abroad, and dishes at the sink. We were both trying not to get it wrong, both pretending to be steadier than we felt, and somehow that vulnerability became the steady thing. In the end, “home” stopped being a place either of us lived alone and became something we built together.
