Enter Awesome Man Stage Right

Eight days later I found myself in Philadelphia. My mom and I had both gone to Philly to visit my brother and sis-in-law. Jeff came over to have dinner with us that night. He sat next to me at dinner. He drank out of my glass. He was funny. And interesting. And conversed well with my mom.

We had plans to hang out the next night. We ended up not getting away until about 11, which I thought meant we wouldn't be able to go get ice cream like we had planned, but Jeff was creative. We went to the grocery store and got a carton of ice cream. Then we went to a McDonalds and asked them for spoons. Then we went to the art museum and sat on the steps and ate ice cream.

It's a beautiful view of the city. And it was a pleasant August night. We talked for a while, and again, I had a blast.

My family and I went to the Jersey shore for a few days so I didn't see Jeff again until Friday. He already told me he intended to kidnap me for the evening, and I was pretty okay with that. I had no idea where we were going.

We ended up at this BYOB Italian place. It was sorta weird food, and we both agreed Chili's would have been better. He was actually a little relieved that we seemed to have the same taste in food. I mean, it was fun to try new things, and I had a great time at the restaurant, but I like old faithfuls like hamburgers and fries – his kind of girl.

He also had brought a bottle of wine, which I drank half of. I don't really like wine that much, but I liked him, and I was going to drink the wine he brought for us. Turns out, a half a bottle of wine makes me giggle.

Then we went to Cirque du Soliel. Have you ever been? It's totally cool. I imagine that Cirque is pretty cool when you are sober, but when you've just had half a bottle of wine, it's really cool. I kept saying, "Wow. This is amazing." And he said, "You're talking really loudly." Oops. Sorry, it was the wine.

After it was over, we decided to go for a walk. I was sober by then, which was good since I was in heels. We walked along Kelly Drive, which is right along the river.

KELLY DRIVE


Crew teams row on the river and there are bleachers where people can go watch them race. We ended up at the bleachers and at the bottom, there was this little wooden dock actually on the water tied to the edge. We walked down to it and sat on the dock, floating gently on the water.

Perhaps it is bad form to talk about ex-boyfriends when you are on a date. It probably is. But I did it anyway. At one point I mentioned that I felt bad because I dated this one guy for four and a half years and I knew I wasn't going to marry him and I felt like I let him waste those years of his life. And then I said, "I'm just tired of wasting time." Jeff said, "I hear ya, sister." And then he grabbed my face and kissed me.