I Met My Husband at My First Job; I Was Terrified of Him | Invesloan.com

When I was a young 20-something, barely removed from earning my undergraduate degree, I moved to Bryan, Texas.

I was living with my sister and her husband and spending time with our dad whenever I could. My father is a wise man, and he knew that I needed a job and to be picked up and dropped into a completely new environment. If you’ve never worked in food service before, that environment is about as new as it gets, and he had a friend who owned the cutest little café I’d ever seen. She needed an extra set of hands in the kitchen, so I was hired without asking too many questions.

One thing I wasn’t expecting was to find a husband there.

I was told I was going to get yelled at

The Village really was something special. In addition to being one of those elusive third spaces where people were allowed to just exist without expectation of keeping a tab open, the café had a full espresso bar, hot breakfast all day, artisan sandwiches made on bread that was baked in-house, all produce purchased from local farmers, and a dessert case stocked with the best cheesecake known to man.

That cheesecake was made by a man the rest of the staff called “Curly,” a grouchy mountain man of a human who was the de facto chef de cuisine. As a part of my orientation, I was warned by a barista that this man was going to yell at me. It wasn’t a “probably” but a definitive “this is a thing that is going to happen.”

I made it my mission to avoid Curly as much as possible and never make eye contact with him. Shortly after I made that resolution, the man himself came around the corner into the kitchen, calling, “Happy Friday — who the hell are you?”

I froze momentarily, hands in the scone dough I was working on. I told him my name and promptly asked the man I was supposed to fear to try the dough I was working on to make sure that it wasn’t gross. It worked, and he was thrown off kilter long enough for me to scurry and find somewhere else to be.

I avoided him at all costs

Fast-forward a few months. I’d been working in that kitchen every day for months and was happy. I loved it there so much that I showed up early every day to drink coffee and flirt with one of the regulars.

He was a hottie with long, curly hair who was always there at the same time as me, and I was smitten. I was still actively avoiding Curly, but I was happy. Avoiding him was getting difficult, as I was scheduled to work with him almost every day. I was the slowest member of the team, so I didn’t understand why I kept being scheduled to work the busiest time of day with him.

Everything that I’d see him snap at the messenger for somehow became my job. Every time, I’d approach him with trepidation and relay the news while still steadfastly avoiding looking him in the face, waiting for him to finally explode on me, but it never happened. He’d always just take a breath and then thank me for letting him know. I would sag with relief, get back to work, and brace myself for the next day when it would probably be my turn to be yelled at.

I was flirting with my own boss

One day, when I arrived early, I was flirting with that cute regular. We were drinking coffee, talking about what we were reading, and just generally having a good time. A few weeks ago, I realized that I didn’t remember his name and decided that it was high time I put on my big girl panties and admitted it. So I asked him to remind me, and I was unprepared for what happened next.

I looked up to see him staring at me, eyebrows all the up to the hairline where his long, curly locks began.

“…are you serious?” he said. I rapidly explained that I have ADHD and my short-term memory doesn’t always function the way that it should, and to please not be offended, and I was very sorry, and —

He cut me off, laughing loudly. I was offended and began gearing up for a proper rant when he gathered the curly hair around his shoulders, gathered it into a bun, and secured it underneath the hat I’d never noticed. My stomach fell out of my butt as the pieces clicked into place.

It was Curly.

My boss.

The chef I was so afraid of.

The man I’d avoided looking in the eye since the moment we’d met, which was how I had no idea that I was openly flirting with him before my shift, then acting like a scared rabbit the minute I clocked in, and somehow completely missing that the hot guy I was flirting with and the chef I was terrified of were the same person.

I’d like to say that I handled the resulting situation with grace. I would really love that.

Unfortunately for me, what actually happened was that I ran back into the kitchen early that day. He followed me, and I tried to pretend that the past 15 minutes hadn’t happened. To his credit, Curly handled it far better than I did. He was chuckling to himself, but mostly just going about the day like it was any other day in the kitchen, and not as though his coworker was begging the floor to open up and swallow her whole.

I accidentally stabbed him

A large group of people walked in the door, because of course they did, and began rapidly placing orders. I wound up standing next to Curly when I realized that the line we were working from was out of shredded cheese, so I grabbed a bag from the fridge and began trying to slice the thing open.

I was still shaking due to my humiliation from earlier and couldn’t seem to hold the knife steady enough to get a good slice in the plastic. Curly saw me struggling and realized that I was likely about to hurt someone and reached over to me, saying “here, let me help —”

And that was the moment the knife went into his hand.

If I thought I wanted the floor to swallow me before, at this point, I was ready to disappear. Except that Curly started laughing again and told me to ask for his name sooner next time.

That was the turning point for our relationship.

We got married

I must have been a better flirt than I thought because despite not recognizing that the man I’d been flirting with was the same man I’d been hiding from, and then stabbing him in the hand after that grand reveal on December 19th, 2015, that grouchy hippie took my hand in front of our friends, family, and a toddler with his daddy’s eyes and my smile, and promised to love me forever.

We’ve been happy together since that fateful day when I accidentally stabbed him on the line. We’ve added two more kids, adopted pets, buried pets, moved houses, and navigated all that life has managed to throw at us together.

I haven’t stabbed him again, and Curly has yet to yell at me.