This is a true story.
Names and locations have been changed.
This is the true story of how I met my ex-wife.
***
Once upon a time I was a snowboard instructor on Mount G. I had just returned from a couple of seasons in Colorado, Kiwi model girlfriend in tow. She was up at the mountain one day, hanging out in the lodge while I was teaching a private lesson, and my student and I ran into a coworker and her best friend. They were typical wannabe ski bunnies. Blonde hair, too much makeup, snowboard gear that obviously never gets worn. I thought it was a little bit strange that she and her friend were following my lesson and trying to talk with me while I was teaching, but they weren't slowing us down, so we entertained the attention briefly. Our conversation centered around their snowboarding skills and how they would like to be snowboard instructors, but didn't think they were good enough. The exchange lasted less than five minutes, and I didn't give it another thought.
Flash forward two years.
I was working as the national brand manager for two Norwegian companies, traveling all over the country, managing sales, marketing, events, etc., snowboarding much less than I wanted, but still in the industry, still what all ski bums would consider super cool. Neither of the companies that I managed were well established, or super successful, yet. As such, I did a lot of driving. Ten to fifteen hour stretches behind the wheel were common. I had recently received a message on social media from a woman who claimed to have met me while snowboarding with her friend on Mt G a couple of years back. I remembered the exchange, albeit vaguely, and so I had very little recollection of her, and no expectation. Still, I'm a sucker for anyone who is interested in me. Chalk it up to low self-esteem. Anyway, phone conversations made the long drives much more tolerable. So we began having long conversations on the telephone while I was driving, mostly late at night. Our talk centered mostly around self improvement, eliminating excess baggage from our social lives, and what seemed to be common values.
A few months into Spring, after my grandfather had passed away and I was flying home from Lake Tahoe to attend his funeral, she agreed to pick me up from the airport. It was meant to be a very casual engagement, not even a date. She would meet me at the airport, we would stop and get some food, and then she'd drop me off at my house. My brother would drive to the funeral, and she would pick me up the following morning and drop me off at the airport, so I could fly back to Lake Tahoe. To my naïve mind this all seemed very innocent. Of course, things didn't quite work out that way.
I had browsed her social media accounts, and so I knew what she looked like, since my hazy recollection of those five minutes on the ski slopes weren't going to be of any help. When I arrived at the airport in Seattle, I found her waiting, looking exactly like I expected. Frumpy brimmed snowboarder hat, outdated jeans, horrible tennis shoes. She had no sense of personal style, and while anyone would have said she was cute, very few would have called her pretty. She had a rocking body, however, and I thought that if she got a better haircut, and dressed herself with some pride, she could be pretty hot. She was visibly nervous, but walking through the terminal and out through the parking garage to her car provided enough of a purposeful distraction to afford easier conversation.
We went out to sushi.
She claimed she had never had sushi before, and I actually believed her. She grew up in farmland, but not very far from Seattle. Still, her country upbringing had resulted in a pretty sheltered life. Her first boyfriend took her to her junior prom, and she lost her virginity that night. That was the night she became pregnant with her now four-year-old daughter, and raising a kid as a teenager had stunted her opportunities for social development. She had missed out on a lot of things that most of us take for granted. She had never had a real sex life. She had never even really dated. She missed the majority of the high school parties, and all of the college parties. She never did the drugs thing, or even the booze thing. These are all factors I should have considered, before diving into whatever we were about to get into. However, like I said before, I was not only a little lonely, spending long hours on the road by myself, but also very insecure. I sincerely enjoyed the attention that she gave me, and the boost to my ego that came along with it. Still, we had a very natural chemistry, and conversation never felt strange, forced, or lacking. In fact, it was very easy for us to talk on the phone for three or four hours without realizing how much time had passed.
And so it was at the sushi restaurant, when we found ourselves being kicked out after closing time. She drove me back to my house, and I invited her in to continue our conversation. Sure, it was late, but this was the first time we had seen each other face-to-face since that chance encounter on the mountain two years earlier. We had spent long hours conversing, and it felt like we had a lot of face to face catching up to do.
We sat at my kitchen table, my laptop open, listening to music while we talked. She pretended to be engrossed in my music library, having never heard of 90% of the artists in my playlists. I told myself it was just her interest in the bands and the music that kept her attention for so many hours. Shortly after 2 AM, she said that maybe she should be heading home, and I offered to let her stay the night. She said that her daughter was with her parents, and would be fine until mid-morning, but that she was very reluctant to stay the night, as she didn't want this thing we were doing to get off on the wrong foot. I claimed to understand, and promised that I would be a good boy, and a gentlemanly host.
Of course, I was lying.
