A Whirlwind Summer Romance-Part I of III
A meditation on impermanence from both parties
This one is a little different…
This post is the first time I’ve had something to write about with someone. The voice bounces back and forth between The Boyscout and my own. I’d love to know what you think about this style!
Guest contributions from The Boyscout are in italics
SHATTERED: (The Boyscout)
“I do not love you. I never have.”
Imagine that your spouse of over 20 years, with whom you’ve raised three children, is the one who said those words to you. She verbally cauterized the wound with “I want a divorce”.
This is how my summer of 2025 began. Immediately upon her return from a 6-month deployment, we’d planned a family vacation to New York. So while there had been obvious distance between us for the week we were together prior to this vacation, this admission happened while on vacation there. I’m probably the only person to have had an anxiety attack in the middle of a Broadway musical (I’m sorry, Hugh Jackman, it wasn’t your fault; You were great.).
That was my forever person; the mother of my children; the girl my parents loved, God rest their souls. The life as I had known it, and had imagined it would look like forever, quickly crumbled around me. Suddenly, we were separating bank accounts, property, credit cards, agreeing on how to split our retirements, and both privately dreading how we would break the news to our kids. We had to be quick though, because as soon as the vacation was over, I had to leave for a week-long work trip, then come back for a week, and then finally I’d be moving 2,100 miles away to what I viewed as the middle of nowhere.
ALONE: (The Boyscout)
The time came, and I went. She and the kids remained. I moved into a giant home fit for a family of 4, while more than half of my stuff stayed behind with her and the kids. A big, empty house to do little more than remind me of how alone I now was. I chose to live minutes from work so I could drown myself in work to keep my mind occupied. It did not work.
Being alone with my thoughts night after night quickly wore me down. I’d lay in bed imagining all of the life goals that would never happen now. I’d check on her Insta to see how she was doing: Partying and seemingly having the time of her life. I wondered if any of the people she was partying with was the reason she’d left me. Who knows. The worst part was that I even guilted myself for being upset about it. She’d finally been honest with me. I can’t blame her for feeling how she felt. I was heartbroken, hurt, and angry…. and I didn’t even have a right to be angry at her.
I could feel my mental and physical health declining. I knew something had to change or I would continue a negative spiral. I began spending hours in the gym every day. I was eating healthier and taking better care of myself. I decided that what I needed was to make friends, but I wasn’t interested in dating. I wasn’t ready for that physically or mentally. I clicked on a Facebook ad titled “Dinner with Strangers” that would facilitate exactly what the title implied. I was hoping to meet people in the local area to perhaps join a hiking group or something of that nature to make friends.
Wednesday (Me)
I go to dinner with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension in my gut. The venue is new, a winery and bistro in Albuquerque. The hostess stares at my phone with some confusion as I try to explain that I have a reservation with people I don’t know that was set up by a third party. I’m supposed to be sitting at Table 1.
With the help of an older waitress, I’m led outside where a group of three people are sitting with their hands in their laps, simultaneously looking on curiously and avoiding direct eye contact. I sit and willfully transform into a gregarious hostess at the head of a table. I am not the hostess, but I stage the confidence of a leader, asking questions and listening attentively.
Soon, I’m at ease. Others around the table relax into open conversation and playful gesturing. Wine hasn’t even arrived yet when I notice an enigmatic energy coming from a coy smile and cautious blue eyes at the other end of the table. The energy emitted does not appear to be targeting me or anyone else but rather emanating from the curious carrier.
We start with wine but are so wrapped in easy conversation that the waitress comes to the table three times before we are ready to order food. We start with appetizers. We discuss what we do for work, recent happy happenings, and what we would do on a surprise day off.
Some folks are new to New Mexico. A couple are natives. And there’s me, just passing through.
When I explain that I grew up here, in the East Mountains, on a dirt road with no streetlights, the blue eyes across the table fixate on me. “You delt with what I imagine was severe poverty?” I nod. “And you’re getting your doctorate?” I nod again.
Silence.
“You all are so quiet!” I say, a flutter of social panic in my sternum. “It’s okay to feel sorry for me, it sucked!” I laugh and direct my attention to an Indian woman, a Geologist, who shares that she recently finished her doctorate and wishes me strength and good luck.
As the conversation weaves around the table, occasionally isolating at each end before wrapping back around, I catch Blue Eyes in a couple of stealthy glances while others are talking. Flirtatious eyes? Intrigued eyes? Beautiful eyes.
When it’s time for us to move on to a second location for drinks, we all exchange numbers for a group chat that, a week later, no one will have used. Blue Eyes and a beautiful woman working in the healthcare field both agree to help me with my research—the undercover motive for my attendance at this dinner. The woman will see us at drinks, but Blue Eyes has an early morning.
I notice the sinking feeling in my stomach that indicates disappointment. I allow myself to feel it without embellishment.
Later that night, I receive a text message from Blue Eyes. He’s sorry he couldn’t come to drinks—he wanted to so he could get to know me better. He sends me a link to a TED talk he had mentioned at dinner. Was I free this weekend?
DINNER WITH STRANGERS: (The Boyscout)
The night came, and this dinner had a good mix of people and backgrounds. We made small talk and told bits and pieces of our stories to one another in response to questions asked throughout the night. Everyone was genuine and pleasant. Though all of their stories received my attention, I found one in particular that attracted my focus. A beautiful, 5’6 woman with gorgeous blue eyes and auburn hair. While attractive, she wasn’t what I had long thought of as my “type”. I had always preferred women on the shorter side, with dark hair. I’m 5’8, so she was barely shorter than me, and had light hair…. but it was her story that gripped me. As the night went on, and she shared tiny bits… I found myself piecing them all together like a puzzle. By the end of the night, the picture it revealed to me was a story so similar, yet different, to my own that it was remarkable.
She’d grown up in deep poverty: check
She’d lived her formative years in a rickety trailer in the middle of nowhere: check
Despite being dealt a bad hand in life, she put herself through college: check
She’d achieved, or at least was well on her way to achieving, her career aspirations: check
She was divorced after a long marriage: check
Additionally, she was doing a study on people who’d had interactions with Child Protective Services. I had exactly that (though I later found that mine fell outside of the scope of her study since I was not the subject of the investigation).
Sensing the end of the night was near, I could not help but vocalize how impressive and inspiring I found her story to be. It must have been slightly awkward to the other 5 people at the table…. but by that point they were little more than supporting characters in the drama that was unfolding in my mind. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning. The entire group of us exchanged numbers, but there was only one number I cared about…. and boy did I.
To my surprise, she texted me first! “Hi, this is Heidi. So nice to meet you!”. It felt cookie cutter, sure, but it was unsolicited and it was just to me. We chatted for a bit, and then I realized that I hadn’t even told her how closely her story paralleled my own. I felt as if I was uniquely aware, and I wanted to continue to pull on that thread to see how far it went.. But I also don’t want to come off as a psycho, so I have to play it slow. So I ask her on a date… and boy did I totally blow it.
Thursday (Me)
We text back and forth off and on from 7:45 in the morning until 11:23 at night. We’re both introverts from humble beginnings who enjoy road trips and want to write about our lived experiences. It was my story that “hooked” him. He proposes a coffee date with a walk in a park. If the vibes are right, we’ll road trip it up to a hot springs spa mentioned by the beautiful woman at dinner.
I can’t make the hot springs work. I have a scheduling conflict. Disappointed, but also slightly relieved, I suggest that we make it a day trip on Sunday instead. He admits that the hot springs was a bit much, but we plan to discuss other options when we get together for coffee on Saturday.
THE NUCLEAR OPTION, PART 1: (The Boyscout)
I ask if she’d be interested in something simple, like a coffee date on Saturday morning…… followed by a 2 hour road trip across New Mexico with an overnight stay at a hot spring resort/hotel together. For a first date!?! Smooth…. “You blew it. You really are a psycho” I thought. She laughed and accepted the coffee date idea but politely declined what we came to call the “nuclear option” second half with a complete stranger she’d met exactly one time… in which we’d sat on the farthest, opposite ends of a large table full of people.
I offered to pick her up, to which she smartly declined and stated that she’d feel safer driving herself and meeting me in a public place. “Yup. She thinks I’m crazy and I’m not even sure she’s wrong at this point!”.
Keep in mind that I haven’t really been on a first date in over 21 years! I’m rusty, and my knowledge of courtship is decidedly dated. I had this idea in my head of picking her up from her house by knocking on the door and giving her flowers. Can’t do that though, she thinks I’m a psycho and insists on driving herself and meeting me there. So I decided I’d bring her a gift instead, and I remembered that she said she loved to write. I went with a journal style notebook. Remember that, because it’ll come in later.
I felt as if the “nuclear option” had been successfully disarmed. To create levity I made a joke about what a ridiculous idea that was and that it should only be discussed again if “tensions escalated”. The unwritten subtext being if we developed strong mutual, romantic interest and sexual tension…. which wasn’t anywhere near happening at this point. After all, we hadn’t even been on a coffee date.
TEXTING: (The Boyscout)
Thursday night, we continued texting throughout the night. It got spicy in some weirdly awesome ways. I made a joke about pedophilia, she cyberstalked me and asked me about my dead family members, I implied I was concerned she’d roofie me in the coffee shop. We exchange fantasies (Rated PG13, mostly). It helped soothe the nerves of both of us following the nuclear option first date pitch, lol.
The talk of fantasies (and not that I’m bragging, Heidi, but I think mine is what did it) got us both a bit hot and bothered. She made a comment that was very slightly more than PG13 and I took the chat straight to R-rated in response. We both seemed to enjoy the escalation, but she cut it short before any talk of clothes coming off began.
Though I was enjoying it, the truth is that it was a relief. The timing was perfect. I wasn’t quite sure where to go from where we left off, lol. I hadn’t really done anything like this before. It was all new to me. Fun, exciting, but new and completely unfamiliar. Besides, I needed to get a good sleep so that I could be hyper-productive at work the following day so that I might be able to leave a bit early in order to prepare for the coffee date on Saturday.
Friday (Me)
I call my mother and tell her about this intriguing man with whom I’m going to have a first date. Him calling it a first date feels strange—flattering, exciting, but also a curious likely misnomer. Aren’t first dates meant to be a screener for future dates? For possible relationship potential? Isn’t that entirely impractical? Impossible?
The usual script begins to play in my head. There is, after all, a script to these proceedings. It’s already begun. The script is in motion. And I’m trying to rewire my understanding of what is supposed to happen, what could happen, what should happen.
I take a deep breath and remind myself that this is temporary. I’ve never been in this situation before. Perhaps the script is yet to be written.
But Mom wants to know everything about him. I don’t have much to tell her. At her insistence, I type his first name and last name into a search bar. His picture comes up right away, a handsome smile atop unmistakable dress blues. The second entry is an obituary. From this I learn about the structure of his family. The resemblance to his father is undeniable.
We continue our text message conversation once I’m in bed. It goes for hours. He teases me for looking him up and I throw Mom under the bus. But our conversation is playful and tender, despite the topics being occasionally serious. He tells me more about his childhood and his family. He says he feels like a teenager, talking with me. I do too.
We open up about intimate desires and lament the inaccessibility of the spa, what he has dubbed the “Nuclear Option.” A confession that resonates with my own primal proclivities prompts an admittance of arousal. The conversation turns quickly to an easy fantasy. But after six minutes of tension-building imagery, I’m ready to run away. It’s after midnight. We have coffee the next morning. Time to end the conversation.
THE NOTEBOOK: (The Boyscout)
I got up early Saturday morning. I ran a few errands, to include getting my car washed with the intention that I would write a note in the journal that I’d tell her not to read until after our date had ended. The thought was that it would give her something to look forward to. A tiny bit of excitement to read something from me even after we’d parted.
So I open the notebook to write the note, and I hear the front cover tear. “DAMNIT!” Somehow, I’d opened it wrong and it caused the inside of the front cover to tear a bit. It wasn’t bad, but it also was no longer the perfect gift. I had to make the note good enough to make up for it.
Within seconds of me finishing the note, the car wash attendant came in to tell me my car was ready. Perfect. So I got up to walk outside. Before I got to the door, a nice old lady notified me that my shirt was inside out. “DAMNIT!” So I set the notebook down, fixed my shirt, and thanked the nice lady. She said something to the effect of “I just didn’t want to see you go all day without anyone telling you”. I explained that I’m super thankful to her because I’m about to go on a date. We both laughed. I went to my freshly cleaned car and drove towards the coffee shop we agreed to meet at.
Like a thief casing his next target, I arrived early in case I had to look for parking, but parking wasn’t an issue, so I parked the car and prepared myself mentally for my first first date in 21 years. I even used AI to help figure out what the proper first date greeting etiquette is “these days”. Is it a handshake (god, no); is it a hug (still no); is it a kiss (yes, a peck on the cheek). Okay, peck on the cheek it’ll be, Don Juan.
My car is clean; my hair is neat, my cologne smells good, and my shirt is (now) on properly. What an absolute stud. I grab the notebook as I get ready to go inside….. except the notebook isn’t there. I left it in the carwash waiting area on the other side of town. “DAMNIT!”. I drive across town like a bank robber in a getaway car (thankfully I hit every light on green like a small miracle), grab the notebook from the car wash, and drive back to the coffee shop.
THE COFFEE SHOP: (The Boyscout)
My nerves now finally calming down, I enter the coffee shop. Since I arrived before her, I grabbed a booth for the both of us… and waited. Unfortunately, when she entered the coffee shop, all the bravery left my body in an instant. Artificial Intelligence has given human beings instant access to the near sum total of human knowledge and experience…. and despite all of that, I still chickened out and went with the hug greeting instead of the peck on the cheek. “DAMNIT”.
Once we sat down, however, a warm, comfortable, easy feeling washed over me. She was so easy to talk to. I gave her the journal and told her I made an entry in it, but she couldn’t read it until after our date was over. Her smile lit the room. We shared stories and it was clear that she was as comfortable talking to me as I was talking to her. We even made fun of me using AI to decide on a greeting and then not going through with it.
After a couple of hours of conversation, she invited me to walk to a nearby dam. We walked up a rock path onto the top of the dam. It was perfect. Isolated, yet high enough that we had a wonderful view. It was a perfect place for a first kiss, but it still felt a bit soon. I set my mind that I would kiss her in that perfect spot on the way back.
We could see a good 300 yards from where we were…. Which is how we saw a Coyote, that after seeing us, appeared to decide to move quickly towards us. Deciding to approach people is not a behavior natural to Coyotes, which are normally very skittish creatures, but it is if it's rabid. We decide to take a faster path back to the road, and to the safety of civilization. Unfortunately, this means my plan for kissing her in that perfect place will not happen. “DAMNIT”.
Although a rabid Coyote chasing us (I’m taking a bit of artistic license here) robbed us of a kiss, the walk itself was magnificent. All those things about her that interested me most were growing even stronger. We had far more in common than we thought. Her son was 21, and so was my daughter. I said that despite not being in love and being unwilling to marry my daughter’s mother, I begged her to keep the unborn child with the promise that I would be a good dad….and I did. She had a near identical story of the decision to keep her son.
That was another powerful moment for me, because making such a responsible, adult decision at the age of 20 in spite of literally every single other person (including the mother) advising me against it, has always been a point of pride for me. Learning that this woman, with whom I’d already had so many remarkably similar life stories, had made an identical decision in nearly identical circumstances on the other side of the country… simply electrified my interest in Heidi. I could feel that same energy from her. I wasn’t the only one noticing it now.
It was clear that she was now just as interested in me as I had been in her. Now we both wanted to see where this whole thing goes and how deep the similarities are. As we continued walking, she asked me if I’d be willing to take a short road-trip with her so she could show me where she grew up. Of course my answer was yes, because by this point I was simply in awe of the commonality. We walked back to the coffee shop and got into my car.
Saturday (Me)
Miscommunication. Are we meeting at the cafe on this street or that? In this neighborhood or the other one? Which is more convenient for you? Well, I’d rather, but I can… Finally, he tells me to pick. I go with my original option.
As I approach the doors of the cafe, my stomach pulses with anticipation. I see him right away and I’m immediately at ease. I’m happy to see him. I feel comforted and joyful. We eagerly embrace and wait for our turn to order coffee. “I got you something,” he says, retrieving a muted, dusty pink pleather bound journal with gilded edges. A ribbon holds the place of a page in the back.
The script begins playing. What on earth is he doing, giving me a gift? This is too much. But I’m overjoyed, my whole body feeling lit from the core. I wonder if he can see the surprise and gratitude in my eyes. “I wrote something for you, but you have to wait until later to read it.” His eyes are playful, twinkling, and I’m. . . smitten.
We’re playful and flirtatious, exchanging stories back and forth, each one revealing a deeper layer of who we are, where we converge, diverge, or have healing to do. He shares accomplishments for which he’s been recognized, and I get the innocent sense of a boy looking up eagerly into his mother’s face, awash in the glow of her pride and admiration. I’m occasionally aware of waiters walking by or the dart of his eyes towards an incoming customer. Otherwise, my attention is rapt.
With no definitive second location to progress towards, I steer him and the conversation north, toward a concrete dam I used to climb with friends in high school. I’m not wearing the right type of shoes, and, at his suggestion, we mount the dam along the side, him holding my hand to steady me on the incline. At the top, where the view from the street is obstructed, but the view of the gorge below is wide, I keep a slow walking pace, careful not to give into the urge to continue holding his hand. I keep talking, because the silence would be pregnant with desire.
A coyote in the gorge takes notice of us. We walk down toward the street and back in the direction of the cafe. I leave my car and sit comfortably into his sporty Tesla. I giggle to myself, feeling like a hormonal teenager, thrilled to be riding in a boy’s fancy car. And just like a teenage boy, he shows it off, slowing to nearly a stop before shooting it forward with such force that a surprised gasp, sounding far too sensual, flies through my lips. I’m willing to bet he enjoyed that moment as much as I did.
We walk around the college at a steady pace. He holds temperate political ideologies and reads non-fiction books that resonate with his values. At each new discovery, I take it in and gently pat down the impulse to compare his intricacies to my own as a measure of compatibility. Permission to allow the present moment to be just as it widens me.
With plenty of time left in the afternoon before my next commitment, we drive nearly half an hour to the East Mountains so I can show him where I grew up. His upbringing was similarly tucked away into a remote, rural, dirt road. As we follow the roads according to my recent memory, the GPS useless and phone service non-existent, he shares that the surroundings give him an uneasy nostalgia, similar enough to his own beginnings to make mine feel. . . familiar?
Just as my previous visit to the East Mountains had been, ours was brief, just enough to say we’d been there. As we drive away, he tells me, “I’m 42 and I’d still love to climb up that hill there and explore.” I smile, wishing we could do just that.
In the parking lot of the cafe, we kiss. Before our lips even make contact, I feel a wave of release ripple from the base of my skull, over my shoulders, and down my legs. Everything is right in the world. He retreats, saying we should go in for another coffee. I answer him with another eager kiss.
Over another cup of coffee, we agree to schedule the Nuclear Option for the following weekend.
I eagerly read the entry in the journal when I arrive for an interview in Belen:
Heidi,
I have thoroughly enjoyed the past few days of conversating with you. Truthfully, I have dreaded re-entering the world of dating. From everything I’d seen and heard, modern dating, especially on dating apps is shallow and lacks in genuine connection. Our experience has been exactly the opposite. It was a welcome, pleasant surprise to meet such a wonderful person.
When I signed up for Timeleft, it was more to meet people and make friends than anything else, but I’ve been surprised in a way that I rarely am. Enjoy the journal!
P.S. Tensions escalated. . . :)
I eagerly type out a text message letting him know that I’d arrived, read the journal entry, and was likewise pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t looking for anything at all and the universe was just like, “Here, have this gift.”
Before bed, I send him a YouTube video about how people in Albuquerque talk, and a link to a song with a sensuous beat. I admit that I’m nervous about the Nuclear Option. Perhaps having such a plan would put pressure on us when surely part of our attraction to one another was the lack of future-oriented pressure. With a bubble of poetic prose, he convinces me that anticipation for the following weekend could only build the right sort of tension.
Knowing now how closely I communicate with my mother, he asks how my inevitable conversation with her went post-first-date. I share that, after describing copious amounts of detail, my mother warned me that his military retirement would go to his ex-wife. I’m embarrassed by this detail because it is so antithetical to our reality. Not only that, but the last impression I want to leave on him is that I’m scheming for money. Without missing a beat, he shares his agreement with his ex-wife and proves my mother wrong. He doesn’t seem bothered at all and I wonder if it is because he is doing a better job of truly living in the moment and taking each exchange as it comes, at face value, without assumptions or embellishments. Just the thought that this may be easy for him is like a balm to my catastrophizing mind. I want to emulate him. I notice my text messages are riddled with nervous lols and unnecessary exclamation marks.
We thank one another for the day. He says the timing is perfect—he needed a distraction from the fresh wound inflicted by his soon-to-be ex-wife. Sadly, I can relate.
ROAD TRIP: (The Boyscout)
At this point, a couple different thoughts were going through my head… both of which were good. #1 is that she now trusts me enough to ride in my car with me driving. It was strangely flattering that she no longer thought I was a psycho. She did warn me, however, that we’d be going down some dirt roads in an area potentially full of meth addicts. #2 was “wow, she was raised on a dirt road full of meth addicts TOO?!? Where does the similarity end?”. So we made pleasant small talk for the 20-mile trip. We finally reached the point in the trip where pavement turns into gravel, shortly after which smooth gravel turns into rough gravel with ruts and holes in it.
Driving down this dirt road she grew up on, for me, was like driving down my own memory lane. The rundown mobile homes and abandoned houses looked nearly the same, the many vehicles in the yards (most of which likely did not run), the spot where she’d meet the schoolbus in the mornings looked the same, and even the twists and turns in the road were similar. We’d share a word here and there, but for the most part we were quiet….. reliving childhood memories good and bad, that occured in this place… or one just like it 2000 miles away. It was clear that we were both imprinted by these places, but once we reached the site of her childhood home, it was time to go back.
In an attempt to lighten the mood after a period of such deep reflection for the both of us, I put on Karaoke in my car. She immediately went to what I can only assume is her “go-to” song, and she freaking nailed it. It was also intensely hot (she even nailed the CHORUS) and was an audiovisual reminder of the spicy texts we’d sent 2 nights prior. I’m insanely attracted to this person I now feel like I’ve known for years, and I can feel that same energy from her to me.
THE KISS: (The Boyscout)
As I pulled back into the coffee shop parking lot, I feared that the date may be coming to an end. I parked, and we said some words which are entirely lost to history due to the fact that all I wanted on earth at that moment was to kiss her. I removed my seatbelt and leaned far over the center console and kissed her. It wasn’t just a peck on the cheek. No way that rabid Coyote was going to rob us of this. It was how you’d kiss someone you just met but you’d somehow also been deeply attracted to your whole life. We said a few more words which are also lost to history and repeated the kiss before going back into the coffee shop for the waning minutes of our date..
Fast forward about 30 minutes, and I’m walking her to her car. She told me I’d get to see the “gift” her mother gave her to decorate her car: Penis valve stem caps. Cute, though internally I chuckled at the thought of her driving a car with penis valve stem caps through a meth hotspot dirt road in the middle of nowhere. I kiss her again because it felt amazing and seemed like we hadn’t kissed in forever despite it being only a few minutes. We agree to do this again sometime, and I walked back to my car…. Knowing she’s going to read the note I’d written in her journal which ends with “PS: Tensions Escalated” in a clear notice that all options, including the “Nuclear Option”, were back on the table.
Part II coming next week!
 | A guest post by
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I'm having almost as much fun writing parts 2 and 3 as I had living them.
For anyone wondering, we aren't coordinating our writings until we're each done. We're legitimately telling the same events from our respective perspectives, and it's just as fun and fascinating for us to read (each other's) as I know we both hope it is for you to read.
That was exciting! Can't wait to read the rest!!!