The Day We First Met and All Those Damn Red Flags

9-10 months ago...

For the first time in a long time, I felt empowered and free. I wasn't looking at my phone every couple of hours or so to see if he had called or texted to apologize, actually I wasn't thinking about him at all.

I smiled at my reflection as I got dressed to meet a new client. The man I was meeting was a CEO of a magazine and was interested in hiring me as a consultant or editor. I had spoken to him a few times over the past couple of weeks so we decided to meet up at a local coffee shop to go over the specifics of my contract.

I had never seen a picture of him so I was unsure of what to expect and I couldn't have been more...shocked when I first laid eyes on him. He was medium height (well taller than me...but then again everyone's taller than me), he had beautiful eyes and was incredibly attractive. However, there was one problem, he had the longest beard on his face, it just looked...out of place. Any thoughts of being even remotely attracted to him went out the window.

As I walked closer to the table I realized there was someone else sitting there...a girl...a young girl who couldn't have been any older than 20. She had a tiger print shirt on...some pants that just didn't...match...at all...and weave that she looked she had done..herself. For some weird reason the girl looked me up and down, but didn't say much of anything. I smiled, introduced myself (he introduced her as his "stylist"), silently wondering what I had gotten myself into.

As we progressed with our meeting, it occurred to me that while he had great vision, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing. I was excited to help him out (red flag. red flag. red flag.)

We parted ways after a couple of hours...I shook hands with the young lady....and got ready to shake his as well...but he reached out and gave me a hug instead.

I liked that.