This is part of an ongoing series. Start with Part 1.
He brought it up in person.
We were talking — about the apps, about other people, about where things stood — and he got this look on his face. Uncertain. Almost shy. Like he was trying to figure out where he stood before he committed to the question.
"Like... what are we?"
I was caught off guard. I'd never been asked that before. I told him I didn't know, and I meant it — I wanted him to tell me.
Later that same night he was on the phone with security at his complex about something happening outside. I heard him say girlfriend. Twice. Casually, like it was already just a fact.
Then he hung up, looked at me, and got all bashful.
"I just called you my girlfriend."
That's how it happened. Not with a declaration. Just him saying it out loud to a stranger, getting caught, and turning red about it.
I thought it was the most endearing thing I'd ever seen.
A few days later he decided it needed to be made official. He planned a dinner.
We went to a local taco place — casual, close tables, the kind where conversations carry. We'd barely sat down before the questions started. How many kids did I want? Gender roles? Combined finances or separate? Public school, private, homeschool? What if we found out during a pregnancy that our child would have a disability?
I'd never been asked any of this before. I answered as honestly as I could — I'd always imagined being a stay at home mom, maybe two kids, maybe four, being in my mid-thirties was already something I thought about. Some things I genuinely didn't know, and I kept saying so, and he kept pushing, and at some point I realized I was trying not to cry and that the woman at the table next to us had gone very quiet.
It didn't feel like a conversation. It felt like an interview.
We talked about loyalty — keeping relationship problems inside the relationship, not talking badly about each other to outsiders. We agreed on that. Both of us. I remember feeling good about that.
Then he asked what I thought about abortion. I told him. He told me about his ex-wife — that she'd gotten one at twelve weeks, that it had devastated him, that he believed, like I did, that it was something you just didn't do.
By the end of the dinner I felt something I hadn't expected — seen. Like someone had finally asked the right questions and actually cared about the answers. Topic after topic, we landed in the same place. Politics, faith, family, values. It felt like alignment.
I believed every word of it.
I didn't find out until much later what actually happened to that baby.
When we finally walked outside he said, almost casually: "So you wanna be official huh? Okay."
Like he was doing me a favor. Like the whole dinner hadn't just made me cry in a taco restaurant.
I walked away feeling relieved. Happy, even.
Things moved quickly after that. I was at his place a lot. I'd bring him coffee or lunch at work — his schedule in armed security had him standing outside buildings for hours, and my food delivery work was flexible so I'd swing by. We'd talk. We'd just be near each other. It was easy.
He'd had a Bible verse on his dating profile — As iron sharpens iron — and we'd talked about faith over tacos like it was one more thing we agreed on. He asked to come to church with me. He'd wanted to come Easter Sunday but had to work, so the following week he did.
He walked in, looked around, and said: "Oh. You go to one of these churches."
He spent the service making comments under his breath about how the pastor was gaslighting him.
I laughed it off. I shouldn't have.
At some point he mentioned needing to move. His housing situation was complicated — a veterans voucher, strict requirements, hard to find something that qualified. He seemed embarrassed about it. Vulnerable, even.
He asked about staying with me temporarily while he figured it out.
My answer was no.
I don't believe in living with someone before marriage. I hadn't had a roommate since I was twenty. My apartment was my space, my sanctuary. The couple of times I'd tried to help someone before, I'd been screwed over and never paid back.
He said he would never do that to me.
I said no anyway.
Part 6 — Moving In, coming next.
If you've ever felt something click into place with someone and ignored the moments that didn't quite fit — you are not alone.
We see what we want to see. Especially at the beginning.