Apartment Hunting

Sum­mer 1998

A few months had gone by from the night we sat on the bed try­ing to avoid the real­ity that being with some­one means open­ing your­self up. It means being vul­ner­a­ble. It means being hon­est. We did all those things and in the light of the next day we did what many do. We woke up & went about our day as if it never really happened.

A chance lost and a les­son that we’d have to learn again.

In the days that fol­lowed we had to go apart­ment hunt­ing. With the lease com­ing up and Miss Coley who was our 3rd room­mate decid­ing not to move with us. I couldn’t blame her on that one. I don’t think I would have wanted to do that either. So instead it was going to just be the two of us.

Now it was time to search for a new place. Time for our place

We looked at a what felt like a hun­dred apart­ments around Wayne State’s cam­pus in Down­town Detroit. All within walk­ing dis­tance from where we cur­rently were. Some were total dives. I mean places you felt some­one had to have been mur­dered in at some point. Oth­ers had old city charm and felt like a place you could a life in.

I was far more roman­tic about the places we saw. Pic­tur­ing us hang­ing out, read­ing the paper, doing school work and talk­ing about our days. I was con­cerned about ambiance. He more prac­ti­cal look­ing at the over­all lay­out of the place, cost and lease agree­ments. He asked all the ques­tions one should ask when look­ing for a place to rent.

Me, I just wanted a place to feel like a home.

We had one apart­ment we both agreed on. It had a beau­ti­ful patio, large kitchen and was charm­ing in every way. We loved it. I mean seri­ously loved it. The kind of love that when you walk out of the place you both look at each other with that giddy excite­ment and say “I think this is the one” almost in the same breath.But we decided to talk a lit­tle more about it.

We hes­i­tated.

It was as if we had two call­ing cards in our pock­ets. One was implu­sive and said “Jump on in the water’s fine” and the other was more hes­i­tant “Wait, let me think about whether or not I’m ready to get in the water for a while even though I’m stand­ing here in my swim­suit.” Depend­ing on the day, the week or the hour either card could be pulled.

Finally, when we called to ask if we could rent it, the place had already been snatched up. We lost out. That meant we had to go with our sec­ond choice. An apart­ment on the 2nd floor of an old brick build­ing. It had less than 20 places in it and the apart­ment itself had a closet for a kitchen. But it was cheap, had a some beau­ti­ful open space and we could still walk to cam­pus in 5 min­utes.  Sec­ond choice it was.

With that we were ready to make the move. Just us. Mov­ing for­ward together.

[this is part of my “how I met your father” series]

Tagged as: how i met your father, love, love at first sight, Marriage