We often joke that the only reason we ever met was because Matt had a car. We met in Halifax in 2017 because I needed a ride. Matt was living and working there at the time and I was in town for a conference. I really wanted to visit Peggy’s Cove, but didn’t have a way of getting there, so the obvious solution was to ask a stranger from the internet to drive me. Luckily, Matt was the nicest stranger, not only did he agree to drive me to Peggy’s Cove, he also offered to take me to the airport after. From the start, I made it very clear it would be strictly platonic, I even made him promise not to murder me. What was supposed to be a short drive to Peggy’s Cove turned into spending 7 hours together. As cliche as it sounds, we really hit it off. We drove to Peggy’s Cove, visited other landmarks, walked around and just kept talking. When Matt drove me to the airport later, it felt like we were in a scene out of a movie. The sun was just setting, he helped me with my bags and we were both sheepishly looking at each other, waiting for someone to make a move. In the end, we just gave each other a hug, said goodbye and parted ways. As I was living in Toronto at the time, we had no intentions of ever being together. We thought we’d keep in touch as friends and that would be the end of that. Before we even met, Matt had plans to move back to Ontario the next year to be closer to his family. Since he was still going to be four hours away and neither of us wanted to move, we still had no intentions of being together. Even though we talked almost every day for the next year and he stopped in to visit me on his way to see his family and I flew out to Halifax another time to see him, we still just wanted to be friends. I guess you could say that we’re both pretty stubborn. It took well over a year, but a couple of months before he was moving back to Ontario, we came to our senses and decided to give it a shot. One of our best decisions!
