I had a Statistics final to study for, and while some guys might have balked at spending a date watching someone flip through textbooks, Pat didn’t hesitate.
That right there? It said a lot.
No grand gestures. No trying to impress. Just showing up,
being present, and settling into something simple and real.
He didn’t rush me.
He didn’t sigh impatiently or check the time.
He just... waited.
Sitting there, talking with my sister, munching on
homemade Christmas cookies, fitting so effortlessly into my space that it
felt like he had always been there.
And that? That said even more.
Seriously. How many guys would be perfectly content
hanging out in an apartment while their date flipped through textbooks,
drowning in formulas?
Well, I’m from the school of thought that the best nights
aren’t about big gestures or planned perfection.
They’re about someone showing up, settling in, and
feeling like they always belonged.
But the best nights don’t last forever.
And sailors don’t stay in one place for long.
Soon, the miles between us wouldn’t be just a few city
blocks.
They’d stretch across entire oceans.
Shoot! I cannot concentrate. I stared at the pages, willing
my brain to absorb something—anything.
But the truth was painfully clear.
Statistics and I would never see eye to eye.
Book closed. Date officially in motion.
With studying abandoned, we headed to Foggy’s Notion,
a hamburger joint with a dance floor, known for burgers so big, they came
with a side of regret.
What was I thinking?
How do you sit across from someone you're trying to impress
while eating a burger bigger than your face?
I did my best, attempting to maintain some level of
dignity, but clearly, Pat saw the battle I was fighting.
From across the table, he started quietly gesturing to
his face, trying to send me a message.
I paused mid-bite, confused. Did I have something on my
face?
He gestured to one side, so I wiped it with my
napkin.
Then he gestured to the other side, and I followed
suit.
The third time he did it, I finally caught on—he was
messing with me.
The grin on his face said it all.
So much for trying to look polished and sophisticated. At
that point, I gave up on impressing him and just leaned into the
ridiculousness of it all.
After packing away our burgers, we set out for Coronado,
dropping in for a drink at The Islander—or, as I originally thought,
just "The Island," since the last two letters were burned out on the
old neon sign.
Inside, it was obvious—wall-to-wall enlisted.
Settling in with some of his mates, conversation came easy.
Then, something unexpected when Pat left the table for a
minute—his chief came onto me.
Yeah—weird, right?
Coming onto me like I didn’t just walk through the
door with someone else.
Moron.
I let him know exactly what I thought. Don’t people
know better than to piss off a redhead?
Pat returned, and before he could even sit, I was out of
that booth and we were out the door.
"What just happened?" he asked, baffled.
"Your chief just came onto me. And I let him know
what I thought of him."
He laughed, brushed it off, completely unworried.
Not defensive. Not rattled.
If anything, he seemed impressed—like he knew I could
hold my own, and he respected that.
And suddenly, in that moment, I saw him differently.
Not just as someone I was drawn to, but as someone who
carried himself differently, who trusted me, who didn’t let things shake him.
A Full Moon and Coronado Beach
The moonlight cast silver ribbons out into the night, out
into the Pacific, reaching toward something endless.
The thought settled deep—him, soon out there, beyond the
shoreline, beyond the horizon, beyond where I could reach.
The breeze wrapped around us, cool, effortless, alive
with possibility.
His hand tightened around mine, and I felt it—the quiet
understanding that this moment was inevitable.
No grand declarations. No rehearsed words.
Just connection, timing, and a kiss that lingered just a
little longer than expected—as if neither of us wanted to step away from it.
A slow lean-in, the warmth of his hand in mine as the world just faded out.
Soft. Unscripted.
One of those rare moments where time slows.
A moment beyond a memory. A moment meant to shape you.
And that kiss? It was one of them.
Two dates. Six months. Oceans between
us.
Two dates. That was all we had.
Yet, in those fleeting hours, something settled between us—unspoken,
inevitable, carrying the kind of weight that lingers even when goodbye is
certain.
The finality of parting ways, yet the quiet pull of
something unfinished.
An ending wrapped in possibility.
A goodbye that carried the weight of something not yet written, something waiting—just beyond the tides, beyond the horizon.
Yet, it felt like the end - and not at the same time.
A fleeting connection, a quiet hope, a feeling both
complete and unfinished all at once.
Would it last? Would time smooth it into just a memory, or
would it remain—waiting, stretched between moonlit nights and miles of ocean?
I didn’t know.
But I did know that some distances aren’t barriers.
They are simply waiting to be crossed.
Maybe, just maybe—this wasn’t the end at all.
Just the beginning of something undetermined, unspoken,
yet undeniably there.
Something that time and distance might not erase.
Hope that six months, a city on the other side of the country, wouldn’t change the certainty sealed in moonlight, wrapped in possibility, held steady by the warmth of his hand.
Beyond hope. Beyond longing. Beyond distance.
A hope that the oceans and time between us were only temporary.
What happens next? Stay tuned!
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