Issue 02 — She Was Stationed in San Diego and I Was Stationed in My Feelings

Let me tell you something about being a hopeless romantic with a Pinterest board for a brain. When I decide a date is going to be an experience, I commit. We're talking researched restaurants, curated playlists, and — in this particular case — an Airbnb in San Clemente with a balcony overlooking the ocean, a full bar cart worth of mixers, and two blank canvases with a set of acrylic paints because I thought maybe we'd do a little paint and sip situation after dinner.

The canvases are still in my car.

This is the story of Lacey.

We matched on an app — don't ask me how because she was based in San Diego and I was in LA, but proximity works in mysterious ways and I suspect I was close enough during a visit to family in OC that the algorithm decided to intervene. Her profile didn't say military. That came up later, casually, when I asked what she did and she told me like it was a footnote. It wasn't a footnote. It was eventually the entire story. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The conversation was good from the start. Easy, warm, the kind of back and forth that makes three weeks feel like nothing. She was from the east coast, stationed in San Diego, which — if you know anything about lesbian dating geography — is its own specific comedy. We cannot find each other in the same zip code to save our lives. I once matched with someone who lived four blocks away and we still managed to make it complicated, but that's a different issue.

After a few weeks we decided to meet. I booked the Airbnb, packed the drinks, packed the mixers, packed the canvases — I was prepared for every version of this evening. Dinner first at South of Nick's in San Clemente, then back to the balcony, then maybe we'd paint, maybe we'd just talk, maybe the ocean view would do what ocean views are supposed to do.

We walked around San Clemente before our reservation and it was easy in the way that first in-person meetings either are or aren't — no awkward recalibration between the person you'd been texting and the person standing in front of you. She looked like her photos. The conversation picked up exactly where it had left off. Good sign.

Dinner was great. We went back to the Airbnb and I made us drinks and we sat on the balcony and talked about everything — the kind of conversation that jumps from topic to topic and somehow all of it lands. And then two things happened in the same conversation that I filed away in different parts of my brain.

The first: she mentioned she was going to be deployed soon. I noted it, tucked it somewhere, kept going.

The second: the topic of kids came up. She wanted them. At the time I didn't. We were both old enough to have this conversation on a first date without it being weird — we weren't twenty-two, we knew what we were looking for, and there was no point pretending otherwise. But I sat there doing quiet math in the background. Kids plus deployment meant that if this became something real, there would be a version of my future where I was holding down a household alone while she went somewhere she couldn't tell me about. The military doesn't give you an itinerary. You just wave and wait.

I filed that information away too.

We moved past it — or around it — the way you do when you're on a balcony with a good drink and a better view and you're not ready for the evening to get heavy. Her glass was empty. I offered to get her another one. I stood up, walked past her, took her cup, and leaned in and kissed her.

Soft. Maybe two minutes. The kind of kiss that leaves both people quiet afterward because anything you say immediately after would be the wrong thing to say.

I went inside to make the drinks. She excused herself to the bathroom. I heard something — a sound I couldn't quite place from across the Airbnb — then water running for a minute, and I told myself everything was fine and kept making the drinks.

She came back out to the balcony looking fine. I handed her the drink. She took a sip, stood up, walked over to me, and straddled my lap.

The canvases never had a chance.

After about twenty minutes on the balcony we moved inside, which in theory was a good idea and in practice introduced us to the most aggressively slippery leather sofa I have ever encountered in my life. I don't know what that couch was made of but every time either of us shifted positions we both slid three inches in opposite directions and the whole thing became less romantic and more like a physics problem. We lasted maybe four minutes before I made an executive decision, stood up, took her hand, and guided her to the bedroom.

What followed was one of those evenings that starts beautifully and then reveals itself in layers.

My half of it was intentional. Present. I took my time — unhurried, attentive, the way I think intimacy is supposed to feel when you actually want the other person to feel good. I was there. Fully there.

Her half was efficient. Technically present but spiritually somewhere else — the kind of reciprocation that communicates obligation more than desire. I noticed. I didn't say anything. I pulled her back up to me and we shifted gears.

Several drinks into the evening she started fading. I waited until she was fully asleep and then went to the bathroom.

She had thrown up in the sink.

She'd made an attempt to clean it. I will give her that. But it was the kind of attempt that needed a follow up, and I was the one making that follow up at midnight in a San Clemente Airbnb because I was not going to get hit with a cleaning fee on top of everything else this evening had already cost me. I cleaned the sink. I showered. I went to bed.

In the morning we were both up early — she had to get to San Diego, I had to get back to LA, and San Clemente sits directly between those two places like a geographic punchline. She asked how bad it was. I told her maybe we should try again when we were less drunk. She apologized for overdoing it. I told her not to worry about it.

We hung out a few more times after that. Dinners, movies, phone calls. The intimacy kept happening but the imbalance never corrected — it was always one directional and I was never the one the direction was pointing toward. I noticed that too. I kept not saying anything.

Five months in she texted me. Said I was unexpected. Said things were moving too fast.

I want to be clear about the timeline here. We saw each other maybe once or twice a month. Nobody had asked anyone to move in. Nobody had said the word relationship out loud. We were two adults who lived in different cities having dinner occasionally and she was telling me we were moving too fast.

I sat with that for a while. And then I thought about the deployment coming. I thought about the kids she wanted. I thought about the sink. I thought about the slippery couch and the canvases still in my trunk and the quiet after that two-minute kiss on the balcony when everything still felt possible.

Ariana said it best. Thank you, next.

Some people come into your life to show you exactly what you're not looking for. Lacey showed me I don't want to be someone's obligation — in any room, in any context, under any circumstances.

She still texts occasionally. I still respond. We're friendly in the way that you're friendly with someone when the ending was nobody's fault and also kind of everyone's fault.

The canvases are still in my trunk. Unopened. Waiting for someone who actually shows up for the whole evening.

— Alex 🚦