Hi, it's Alyssa. It turns out, Charlie and I have quite a few mutual friends. In fact, I used to work with one of his high school friends, Jack. At a post-work happy hour, I asked Jack if he had any single friends for me. As one does. He whipped out his phone and showed me a picture of a guy wearing a St. John's sweatshirt, standing on a boat holding up a fish. Charlie likes to tell people I looked at his picture and said, "meh." In my defense, it was more of a "he's cute, but like that picture isn't doing it for me." Thank you, next. A week or two later, mutual friends brought us together once again. My friend, Jaimie, brought some of us girls to Stella's Bar in Uptown, where her now husband, Tyler, and his roommates were celebrating a birthday. We walked upstairs into a dark room lit by colorful dance floor lights. I scanned the crowd and locked eyes with a guy in a black athletic shirt standing near a corner. It was Charlie. And he was staring at me. After lots of uncomfortable eye contact and a clear assumption neither of us was going to talk to the other, Jaimie took the initiative to physically push me into him, like one might do in third grade. But I guess it worked. We danced a little, talked a little and exchanged numbers. The end.