This love story will give you chills

I get really excited when someone asks me, “How did you and Jessie meet?” Over the past four years, I’ve told our story countless times, and yet it never gets old to me.

Let me rewind about seven years. I was living in Chicago, but spending the weekend in Indianapolis visiting friends. I was fighting with my girlfriend at the time and needed to get away. My best friend took me to a gay bar in Indy called The Ten, and I see this girl standing at the bar that I was immediately drawn to. It’s not my style to hit on random girls I’ve never met before, but I had a little bit of liquid courage so I approached her. I hadn’t hit on anyone in years, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Apparently it showed, because the girl didn’t even give me the time of day. She said a few words to me but kept turning around to talk to her friends. I knew I was failing miserably, but I saw her phone sitting on the bar and for whatever reason thought it would be a good idea to put my number in it. I put myself in her phone as “The Girl at The Ten Leigh.”

Needless to say, I went home alone that night and the girl never called. I woke up with the harsh realization that I should never hit on anyone ever again, and I should just go back to Chicago and work it out with my girlfriend. But I always wondered who that girl was…

Fast forward three years to 2013. My relationship in Chicago had failed, and I decided to move back to Indianapolis, where I knew absolutely no one in the lesbian scene, besides my best friend. I started putting myself out there and met some really cool people, one in particular being Jessie. I asked my friend for Jessie’s phone number and shot her a quick text. I will never forget her response… “Wait a minute. Why are you showing up in my phone as The Girl at The Ten Leigh?!”

Jessie was the girl at the bar that I had always wondered about. And after all this time, my number was still in her phone. After that realization, it was like a little light bulb went off for both of us. We started hanging out, just as friends at first, but it didn’t take long for that friendship to turn into something I don’t think either of us saw coming.

When we “met” in 2010, it just wasn’t our time. Jessie came into my life exactly when she was supposed to, four years ago. The past four years I’ve spent with her by my side have been the best years of my life. She is my absolute best friend in the world, and I have never felt more myself than when I’m with her. We’re just enough alike and just enough different that we’re able to teach each other and learn from one another every single day. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world to be with someone who makes me a better person, who keeps me laughing every day, who reminds me that life is what you make it and who loves me for everything that I am without condition.

It might’ve taken a few years, but I found the love of my life and I am forever thankful for that.

From the couple, Leigh and Jessie