Colin stepped up the bar, there was a new girl working there. He ordered his typical cocktail, a peppermint schnapps and Sprite. The girl winced and twisted her face but started the process. Colin couldn't help but blink through his examination of the bar girl. She had an autumnal sweater on that was a sort of sunset orange, a maybe pink hue, it was difficult to tell in this light. Her hair had a similar color and her skin tone was also rather like a ginger person's, probably freckled. She shoved his drink across to him saying that it was $4. Colin nodded and grabbed for his cash. He handed it over and the girl made eye contact. Feeling energetic Colin told her he liked her entire color palate. She smiled, a kind of smirk, tossed her hair, and went back to work. She must have got this kind of thing every day.

^This is definitely not how I remember meeting Colin... I was on my first ever film job "Reagan" in 2020 after moving back home to Oklahoma after living in Austin, TX for 3 years. This was deep in the thick of the Covid outbreak and so everyone on set was required to wear masks. I was in the costume shop measuring and organizing clothing and I kept seeing this tall man with nice arms coming in and out of the shop talking to our boss about military uniforms and world war 2. I recall thinking he was very smart. very well spoken and obviously someone important to the production. One night after a long day of fitting background actors in their costumes for upcoming scenes, I was given the task of finding someone named Colin and returning a tie tack to him. The tie tack was for Dennis Quaid's character who portrayed Ronald Reagan so I took this task to heart. I was so new to films I didn't even realize I should've used my walkie talkie and it would've been way easier for me. So off I went on a wild goose chase through our many sets in the masonic temple of Guthrie - asking people as I passed "have you seen Colin? I have something to give to him" and they would say.... he's in the oval office set and so on and so on. I finally locate him and he's talking to a bunch of crew members, I tap him on the shoulder and i said "are you Colin? I have this for you" he turns around and looks me up and down with beautiful blue eyes and retrieves the tie tack from me and says thank you, obviously having no idea who I was - but maybe he left wondering who the new girl on set was. (He says these days that he thought I had the most beautiful eyelashes he had ever seen). I thought he was the big man on campus - he was the propmaster after all!

We added each other on social media and it turns out that we both went to school in Stillwater and had mutual friends from the bar scene. the Stonewall. Colin would make his way to my background fitting dungeon full of period clothing and would help us with the military badges and rank because of his history buff knowledge. We bonded over things like Ralph Waldo Emerson and we made each other giggle with our banter. I recall him telling me he didn't think I talked as much as I did and I told him I purely was too busy making the actors look fabulous to chat. We began talking on the phone when the production shut down for a covid outbreak. No one my age actually CALLS people! I was taken aback when he phoned me up - he told me about a podcast he had with his best friend Joshua and I told him I liked the sound of his voice. Shortly after that we began talking on the phone for days on end, for hours at a time. I felt like i was in middle school all over again, giddy. After the quarantine was over, I drove to Guthrie and we had our first date at a sushi restaurant that is tragically now a Burger King. About two weeks later, we had a soft reveal at a costume department wrap party. I knew he was special and possibly the one after a date that we had when Colin wanted to go through my closet and asked me to tell him about certain pieces that I had collected over the years - we listened to music, played dress up with my fun jackets, danced the night away and the rest was history.