July 2021 was when I first saw your picture. I had been online dating for over a year! While you were new to the app that week! I was losing hope in online dating, and you were finding it. My friend Frankie was in town Friday, July 16^th. After talking to him, I decided to wrap up a break I was on from the app. On my first day back on, I saw your profile. In my bleak year of online dating, your profile piqued my interest well beyond all the others! I scrolled through your profile three or four times and felt you couldn’t be real. What you said in your prompts, the hints of your personality and interests I saw in your pictures, and you being spectacularly cute!

I thought I had no chance to be completely honest. Luckily by this point, I learned I had to shoot my shot and fight past negative self-talk. Hinge had added a feature where you could send a rose to someone. I didn’t think too highly of sending roses. My feelings on the feature were that it would make no difference or might scare a girl off by making you seem desperate. I had never sent one, but I felt like this woman was in a different league. It felt disingenuous to send a mere like. Let’s pause for a second. I have to say that reading what I have written about what led to us matching and chatting sounds so cheesy to me. It makes me second-guess if I remember it right! That night, despite being so against it minutes earlier, I sent Danielle a rose and a message over the app. After sending that first message, I felt like there were a million butterflies in my stomach.

As soon as I sent it, I entered the familiar struggle of trying to move on with my night while waiting to hear back. Not sure if I would at all. She messaged me back in record time! Like no joke, probably the fastest I heard back from a girl. It was more unnerving to hear back just minutes after sending a message compared to not hearing back after a reasonable amount of time. I wasn’t prepared to make conversation that would determine my future. I didn’t want to screw this up!