Dating apps are chaos. One week you’re juggling five conversations, the next you're ghosted by all five. So, naturally, my friends used code names to keep track of our dating lives, quick hints about who we were talking about based on memorable facts. My friends had Tinder Boy, TiVo Roku, Pipsqueak… and then there was Hannah. I already had multiple Hannahs in my life, so she got her code name before we even met, and it got way too much use. By the time I was introducing her to friends, it was a whole rebranding campaign to get them to just call her Hannah. I was always worried someone would slip up.
I’d tell you the name now, but I don’t want to get too ahead of myself.
For seven months, we went on dates, laughed a lot, talked about our feelings, and traveled upstate and out east. But we never became anything official, and as the cliché goes: right person, wrong time. We had growing to do, separately. So, Part 1 ended.
We broke up and decided it would be too hard to stay friends, so we left with no contact. Over the next seven months, we each, separately, became aunts and grew into semi post-COVID adulthood. We exchanged condolences and congratulations here and there, but nothing more. Then, Hannah texted me on my birthday, and it seemed like we were both ready to reconnect, which led to a walk in Central Park… bringing us to Part 2.
