Meet Cute
By Molly Flinkman
@molly_flinkman
Harry met Sally on the side of the road in Chicago right before they drove cross-country together to New York City. Elizabeth Bennet met Mr. Darcy at a ball in Meryton. I met my husband, Jake, in the back seat of my friend Tallie’s 2000 black raspberry Saturn.
I already knew who he was because I had a class with his roommate, Nate. I had seen Jake around campus a few times—usually wearing a bandana and a cut-off shirt—but I had never spoken to him. “He has a girlfriend back home,” Nate had told my friends and me at lunch one day, “and he studies a lot, so don’t try to talk to him.”
I heeded his warning and sat silent in the back seat of that Saturn for the 15-minute drive to a mutual friend’s birthday party. When we pulled into the restaurant parking lot, Tallie turned around and asked, “Have you guys even met each other before?”
“No,” we both said.
She laughed. “Jake, this is Molly.”
That was the moment. That was our meet cute.
In movies, meet cutes are usually more unusual. J. Lo met Matthew McConaughey because her high-heel was caught in a manhole cover, and she needed someone to rescue her from the dumpster-on-wheels headed her way. Sandra Bullock met Bill Pullman after she pulled his unconscious brother from the train tracks. Meg Ryan met Tom Hanks on top of the Empire State Building, and also in a chat room, and, oh, also on a yacht in the Pacific Ocean.
The meet cute is the singular event that gets the story moving forward. Once the two lead characters meet, you’re just a couple of conflicts away from a happy ending. This story structure gives rom-coms a bit of a bad rap, doesn’t it? Their version of reality is idealized. Their love is more romantic. They lean toward the overdramatic and unrealistic. About a year after I met Jake and another year before our friendship turned into something more, I went with some friends to see the movie Pride and Prejudice. We walked out of that theater completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy until one of the girls let the air out of our giddy bliss: “It’s too bad we won’t ever know love that perfect,” she said.
The romantic comedy version of my love story would have ended in the front seat of a car (a tan Ford Taurus this time). It was late at night, and Jake had just driven me home from a coffee shop across town. We sat there for a while, dancing our words around the unsaid. I’d known I loved him since the moment I watched him try to get a tiny straw into his mouth after he woke up from wrist surgery four months earlier. I sat in the waiting room for three hours that day with only bad daytime television to keep me company. Finally, they let me back into Jake’s room, and when I held his straw steady for him, I realized there was nowhere else I wanted to be. He was it for me; it’s just that neither of us had spoken that sentiment aloud. Eventually, there in his Taurus under the glow of the streetlights, he said the words I’d been waiting to hear, and then he went on to tell me that he believed love to be a choice. “I love you, and I will keep choosing to love you,” he told me.
The end.
But of course the story goes on after the rom-com credits roll. Elizabeth Bennet had motherhood to deal with. Kathleen Kelly probably faced The Shop around the Corner each time she took her toddler to Fox Books for storytime. Jake and I had the realities of life ahead of us, too.
I was completely shell-shocked when our first baby was born—rattled by her presence and unsure how to engage with her—but Jake took to fatherhood so naturally. She cried constantly that first month (see: we both cried constantly that first month), and though our dual anguish disrupted his study sessions for his first board exams on a daily basis, he remained steady. He changed diapers and told me to rest. He assured me we were both amateurs and made me laugh even when nothing felt very funny. He was there for me when I needed him to be and cared for us both in a way I always knew he would but also never could have imagined.
A few years later, there were four kids, and I was completely overwhelmed by their cumulative noise and incessant needs. I spent that winter alternating between detachment and anger and, all the while, struggled to articulate exactly what was wrong. I tried one night to push my sea of thoughts through a channel to help Jake understand how I felt, and eventually realized I needed a better outlet for the words that lived only in my head.
“I need you to ask me how I feel more often,” I told him.
In the weeks ahead, he did this—touched base about my feelings—not too much that it felt forced or awkward, but just enough for me to know he heard. He learned to speak a new language in that season, and he did that for me.
A few nights ago, I stood at the stovetop and stirred kielbasa sausage and sweet potatoes. Our kids were occupied with an episode of Bluey, and Jake sat on the peninsula counter behind me. As we talked, Jake mentioned something about his hospital, and I followed up with some questions about how he feels when he’s there. Jake’s not one to bring work home with him, so I sometimes forget to think about this side of his life. I was suddenly curious if he regularly feels the exhaustion of the healthcare profession. He considered my questions and answered them honestly. In all, the conversation didn’t last much longer than five minutes, but I felt as though I had chipped away at something new—understood him in a way I hadn’t before.
In all these big and small moments of our life together, I’m continually surprised by Jake—delighted to discover new facets of his character and unearth pieces of his personality I didn’t know before.
We’re not the same kids who sat side-by-side on the bench seat of that Ford Taurus or in the back seat of that black raspberry Saturn. But that’s the real life version of a love story, don’t you think? It’s just a long series of meet cutes. You meet for the first time. Then, you continue to meet each other as the conflicts of life shape and mold you.
Ours isn’t a love like Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy’s. Our story stretches past the first conflict. It’s filled with continual setbacks and disagreements and hopes and aspirations, and someday, when the credits finally do roll, I hope to be able to say to Jake, “I’ve known almost every version of you, and I like this one best.”
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.