Maybe Timing Is the Real Love Story

I met the love of my life because a gaggle of lesbians was hungry.

Yes, I said gaggle.

Is that the official collective noun? Absolutely not.

Do I care? Also no.

At the time, my youngest was about a year old. I was in cosmetology school, which, as it turns out, was not my calling. 

I was living with my sister and her first husband. Later on, my sister left him for another man, and somehow I ended up staying with my brother-in-law, who, for the record, I still adore to this day. It wasn’t weird. It was just my life, and honestly, compared to some of the chapters that came later, it was relatively normal.

My ex-husband, Steven, would bring the kids over on weekends so I could spend time with them, I was scraping by, and life wasn’t wonderful, but it wasn’t awful either.

One night, my sister and I made the incredibly responsible decision to grocery shop at Walmart at two o’clock in the morning.

We loaded my ’88 Camaro with enough food to survive a small apocalypse and headed home.

While we were unloading groceries, we noticed a group of women standing on the second-floor balcony watching us.

A gaggle of lesbians.

They yelled down asking if we needed help carrying groceries inside.

We said yes.

Within about ten minutes, my sister and I realized something.

These girls weren’t just being nice.

They were hungry.

Like… genuinely hungry.

Now, I’m from Oklahoma.

If you tell a Southern woman you’re hungry, congratulations. You’re about to eat whether you planned on it or not.

So my sister and I made homemade biscuits and sausage gravy.

I told them, “I cook every evening. If you’re hungry, come by around seven.”

And they did.

Pretty soon our apartment became this revolving door of people eating dinner, hanging out, laughing, and somehow turning complete strangers into friends.

That’s where I met Danielle.

She was the youngest out of all of us, so naturally I nicknamed her Baby D.

She’s adorable.

Like… unfairly adorable.

She has this sweet little voice that somehow makes everything she says sound ten times cuter than it should, and she’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. Not loud funny. Sneaky funny. The kind that catches you off guard until you’re laughing so hard you can’t breathe.

We started dating.

And then…

I screwed it up.

About a month into our relationship, I started seeing another girl in the group behind Danielle’s back.

I wish I had some deep psychological explanation that makes me sound complicated and misunderstood.

I don’t.

It was selfish.

Tara was older.

She seemed more stable.

Back then, stability felt like something I desperately needed, and instead of being honest, I hurt someone who had done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

I broke Danielle’s heart.

I wish I could tell you it worked out with Tara.

It didn’t.

Turns out relationships built on dishonesty have an expiration date.

Who knew?

Eventually Tara found out that Steven and I had continued sleeping together while she and I were together. His pregnant fiancée found out, told Tara, and that relationship exploded exactly the way you’d expect it to.

Honestly…

I earned that one.

Over the next twenty years, Danielle would pop back into my life every so often.

She’d come visit.

We’d catch up.

Then life would happen again.

But here’s the strange part.

I never really stopped thinking about her.

Ever.

Maybe not every single day, but often enough that she’d cross my mind and I’d wonder what would’ve happened if I’d just… not been an idiot.

Missing out on something wonderful because of my own decisions?

If you’ve read much of this blog, you already know I left my husband for a woman years before Danielle ever came into my life.

My mom… bless her… had opinions.

She absolutely hated my girlfriend Christina. Not because I was dating a woman. She made it very clear she didn’t care whether I was gay, straight, or somewhere in between.

She just wanted me to bring home what she called “an acceptable lesbian.”

To this day, I still laugh wondering what qualifications an acceptable lesbian is supposed to have. Is there a committee? A certification process? Do they issue a card?

Years later, Danielle came to visit while Mom was living with me in our tiny apartment in Coweta.

The two of them hit it off immediately.

They sat there talking and laughing like they’d known each other forever.

At one point Danielle got up to use the restroom.

Mom leaned over toward me, waited until she was completely out of earshot, and with perfect comedic timing whispered,

“Now THAT is an acceptable lesbian.”

Apparently she’d been sitting on that punchline for years.

My mother may have been stubborn as all get out, but I’ll give her this…

The woman knew how to land a joke.

Danielle came to visit a few more times over the years.

Then life happened again.

The last time I saw her was in 2017 after my husbads suicide.

I honestly thought that chapter of my life was over.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago.

I was doing what every emotionally healthy adult does…

Mindlessly doom-scrolling Facebook.

Against my better judgment, I clicked on Memories.

Facebook Memories are emotional terrorism.

Sometimes it’s baby pictures.

Sometimes it’s your dead friends.

Sometimes it’s a hairstyle that should’ve been prosecuted.

This time, Facebook reminded me that fifteen years earlier I’d checked in at TNT’s, a lesbian bar in Tulsa, with Danielle.

That one memory hit me right in the chest.

So I did something ridiculously simple.

I messaged her.

It had been over six years since we’d talked.

When she called me, it felt like we’d picked up a conversation we’d paused the week before.

We made plans for me to go to Lexington.

It was one of those visits where the hours disappear and somehow you still don’t get to half the things you wanted to say.

So we planned another visit.

And then another.

During one of those conversations, she told me something that honestly broke my heart.

She told me how deeply I’d hurt her all those years ago.

Hearing that wasn’t easy.

She was right.

She didn’t deserve what I did.

There wasn’t a defense.

There wasn’t an excuse.

Just regret.

Then she told me something else.

She’d been in love with me for twenty years.

Twenty.

Freaking.

Years.

And that’s when I admitted something I’d never really said out loud.

Me too.

I had spent two decades believing I’d missed my chance.

That some mistakes are simply too big to come back from.

Apparently…

Not all of them.

Now we talk every single day.

From the moment we wake up until we’re telling each other goodnight.

We drive hundreds of miles just to steal some time together.

Every visit makes leaving harder.

Every goodbye comes with another plan to see each other again as soon as humanly possible.

People keep asking if I’m happy.

Happy doesn’t even cover it.

For the first time in my life, I know what it feels like to love someone without chaos attached to it.

No games.

No pretending.

No wondering if I’m enough.

Just peace.

It’s funny.

For twenty years I thought Danielle was the one who got away. Now I think she was the one who had enough grace to let me grow up first.

I spent a lot of my life chasing excitement, mistaking chaos for chemistry and confusion for love. Danielle has never made me wonder where I stand. She makes me feel safe. She makes me laugh until I can’t breathe. She loves me in a way that doesn’t require me to earn it.

Maybe that’s what real love feels like.

Not butterflies.

Not drama.

Just coming home.

And after twenty years of taking the scenic route… I finally found it.