The Start of Something New

Let me take a moment and fast forward from the days of taking care of my little sister to being so perfectly content with my life now.
Almost 4 years ago I quit working for Wells Fargo and took on a new job, one of which couldn't be more perfect for me, I'm working for the county as an Investigator Assistant. Without going into too many details about what I do I'll jump ahead to the day that I knew my life would change forever.
On April 12, 2007 I was sent to attend an Internet Sting class by my boss. I had gone with one of my co-workers, Heather. We drove to San Jose with the understanding that we'd learn how to create an undercover profile and pose as a minor surfing the general chat rooms, with the end result that we could catch and arrest an internet predator. So we get to the class and I immediately spot a handsome guy sitting on the right side of the class, assuming he was an attendee. Although I immediately took notice to him I quickly diverted my attention to the speaker who was giving us an outline of that days course. After about 20 minutes or so the speaker introduces the instructor of the class, Rob D., who happen to be the handsome guy I was checking out. Could it get any better than this?!? I get to stare at this guy all day. Sweet!
Well unbeknownst to me, I had been caught eyeballing Rob by his closest friends who were sitting directly to my right side. By lunch time I couldn't stop talking to Heather about how incredibly gorgeous this Rob guy was. I wanted so badly to talk to him but I had no courage. I hadn't dated anyone new in a long time so I wasn't sure what approach to take. AND I didn't want to make an ass out of myself. At this point Rob's friends were pointing out the fact that I was into him. Rob being the modest guy that he is denied the fact that I was checking him out. He insisted that I was looking at him since he was the instructor for that particular class. But I guess his buddies decided to put me to the test to see if I really was into him. Mind you I was oblivious to all of this.
Mid afternoon we're all on the Internet with our undercover profiles sitting in chat rooms talking with various people. Rob was walking around asking people if they needed help or had any questions. At one point he asked if anyone had a perv that they were talking to. I thought I was communicating with a total creep online so I raised my hand. Little did I know that earlier he had walked by and wrote down my screen name which he gave to one of his buddies. His buddy was the perv I had been communicating with online the entire time. This was Rob's way of having an excuse to talk to me. So now he is squatting down by my side talking to me about my conversation. His friends were watching us from across the room laughing at me. They could clearly see that I was nervous, excited, and red in the face just from having Rob so close to me. Now looking like a fool, thinking I've got a true internet perv online, I'm trying to keep cool acting like I know exactly what I'm doing. At this point he could see that I was smitten by him so he did me a big favor and left me for a while to cool down.
At the end of the day I wanted to try and talk to him. I made Heather stay with me and wait for all of the attendees to leave the class. Just when I got exactly what I wanted, I didn't know what to say or do. Idiot! I stood there fumbling with my words. He politely saved me by asking Heather and I where we were from. So this eased us into light conversation. At the very end he had made a comment to me about not knowing Santa Cruz too well and stupid me I said "You have my e-mail address", my work one at that. Stunned at what I had just said I quickly wrapped up the conversation, thanked him for his time for teaching us that class and left.
A week goes by and I can not get him out of my head. Nor forgive myself for not giving him my cell phone number. So after the week had passed by my friends got so sick of listening to me talk about him so I decided to e-mail him. And I did. In my e-mail I made sure to include my phone number by playfully inviting him to Santa Cruz. A few days later I received a phone call from him and had a great conversation. And from that phone call we've been together ever since. A history in the making.