The Meet Cute
Sometimes, common wisdom says, you'll find the right person when you're not looking. A week before they met, both Matt & Lydia had decided to definitely stop looking for a relationship.
After a rough week, Matt had cautiously agreed to join a friend at the National Novel Writing Month Write-In at the Starbucks in Monterey, California. Sure, he liked writing, and yes, he did have an idea for a novel, but he wasn't really certain he wanted to go out and be around people. Curiosity and sociability won out. And so, he found himself sitting on a brick patio on a cool November evening, listening to people describing their burgeoning novels.
The Write-In was already underway when Lydia arrived, five minutes late. She wouldn't have been there at all, except for a well-meaning brow-beating delivered by a friend from halfway across the globe. That friend had told her she should go outside and consider seeing people in person, instead of via World of Warcraft—and she knew he was right. But, she'd countered with an argument of her own: this Write-In was guaranteed to be nothing but teenagers and the occasional, middle-aged married man. Lydia held out no hope for meeting anyone, not even a new friend.
On the way in, she immediately spotted a college friend, Megan, whom she hadn't seen in ages. And who was that guy sitting next to Megan?
During the first break, Lydia made her way over to chat with her friend—the friend who happened to have the tall, brunette stranger in tow. Lydia was immediately curious about him, and would later say that she recognized that he was a wanderer looking for a path—just like she was. Megan excused herself to visit the washroom, leaving the two of them to chat. They had just enough time to talk about a much-anticipated video game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, before the next writing session began.
It was the walk home that cemented their interest in one another. Megan, Lydia, and Matt walked back to the parking lot, troubleshooting a plot problem: cell phones can ruin almost any story with just a few calls. How could an author eliminate instant communication in a modern story? Well, Lydia answered, flipping the magnetic poles of the Earth would do it. That could, plausibly, ruin most electronics for quite some time. Megan wondered if such a thing were possible, and Matt and Lydia answered in unison: sea-floor spreading proved it had happened regularly in Earth's history.
Both Matt and Lydia were astonished to discover someone who knew about such an obscure detail in the geologic record. It was the nerdiest meet cute that Alvarado Street had ever seen.
In the Parking Lot at Trader Joe's, Matt casually rattled off his work schedule for the next few days, to help Megan plan her own schedule. Lydia memorized the details and showed up at the Demo table the next day--completely by accident, of course.
They'd met in November and by September of the next year, they were moving to Portland, Oregon together.
The Five Sails // Vancouver, Canada
The sun was just starting to set when Matt proposed in the Five Sails Restaurant at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver, Canada. Lydia thought that the startlingly beautiful ring and scenery were the sum total of the night's surprises. She's never been quite so happy to be wrong. Shortly after Matt had asked her to marry him, the restaurant staff started bringing over extra tables and chairs. Then, one by one, their parents appeared. Not only were they engaged, but they were able to share their joy with their families. Matt had secretly planned for everyone to be there, together, during that beautiful sunset.
Lydia swears she's never been happier to have been the unwitting victim of a vast conspiracy.