As promised, I said I’d share the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s start with some good. I mentioned, I had been single for 10 years. The reason for that is because I had already had three failed marriages and I had zero intentions of there ever being a fourth. During these ten years my life had very minimal stress. Life was good, a little lonely from time to time but good! I had custody of my triplet niece and nephews, and we were doing ok. I kept myself busy with my side gigs and my full time job. I made salsa and did baking as my side gigs. Other than work, my social life consisted of spending time on Facebook and bartending on the weekends. (Another side gig).

One evening I was scrolling through Facebook and noticed this guy from high school had “liked” several of my pics I had posted. So over the next few days, I seen that he had liked several more. I was curious. I decided to private message him. I was kind of surprised he even remembered me. We were not friends in high school. We did not hang out with the same people. Also in high school, I thought he was loud and obnoxious. Needless to say, we started chatting alot through messenger. We had a lot in common I thought. We were both huge fans of the Dallas Cowboys, we both liked Trump, and we both worked a lot. So I thought. Oh and according to his Facebook photos, he wasn’t bad to look at either. He had grown up to be quite handsome. At least according to his photos he had on his page.

One chat led to another and before long we were chatting every day! Every morning I woke up to a “Good Morning” text. Every day on my lunch break, we would talk to each other until he had to get ready for work. At 11:00 pm every night he would video call me after he got home from work until we couldn’t stay awake any longer. We talked about everything we could possibly talk about and then some. We started developing some very strong feelings for each other over the next few months. We would both write the sweetest posts to each other on our Facebook pages. Since we were in the same high school class, we had a lot of mutual friends. Our friends followed along and were swept up in our love story! There were a few that were skeptical because they knew his history and some of the things he had been involved in previously. In hind sight, I sure wish I would have taken these friends more seriously, but I was falling in love. I thought this guy might just be the one I would spend the rest of my life with.

Eventually, the love word was finally spoken. I may have said it first, which was a shocker to those who had been a part of my life for the last ten years. I was truly falling for this guy. What more could I ask for? He wanted the same things I wanted. He wanted to get back in church, he wanted to be with someone he loved, and he had been clean and sober for two years. (So he said) It was too good to be true. I had allowed him to rip down the barbed wire that surrounded my heart. He tore down the walls I had put up brick by brick. That’s when we decided he would come back to Kansas for my birthday. As we made plans for him to come back, we decided that rather than for a visit, that he would move back. He would move in with me and the triplets. So we made the plans.

Mr. Amazing aka Mr. Disappointing informed me he wanted to give Boeing, his current employer a two week notice. Then he would get a bus ticket to Kansas on payday. Plans changed slightly after that. This should have been my first red flag. Payday rolled around, and then he mentioned he had to take care of some obligations. He had to pay his son for living with him and some other bills. He didn’t have enough for a bus ticket, and if I would buy it once he got here he would pay me back when he got his first check. Red flag number two- he worked at Boeing in North Carolina. My cousin Jay was a supervisor at Spirit here in Kansas. My cousin asked me to find out his supervisors name and he would go to HR and get his transfer expedited so that there wouldn’t be a lot of red tape. My cousin had given me an email address for Mr. D to send his transfer paperwork to. Needless to say, the paperwork was never found. He just didn’t understand why they didn’t have it. He sent it the week before, but he would just call them when he got here.

Bus tickets weren’t cheap from North Carolina to Kansas, so we decide he would ride the bus to Kentucky. I would drive all night to pick him up in Kentucky and then he would drive us back to Kansas. I would need to leave by 3am to make it to the bus station at the time of his arrival. My nephew Gabe went with me. He helped me drive so that we could make the 10 hour trip without stopping much, especially since this was gonna be a round trip. (Another 10 hours). So off we went on an adventure to pick up the man who broke down my walls.

That’s all for the night. The story is gonna get good, so be sure to check back. Be sure to leave me a comment below. Let me know what you think of the red flags. Would you have taken them as red flags this soon?