Act I, Scene I: The Start of Something New
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘wait, what? I just had the most romantic night of my life with Max Hunter??? (derogatory).”
— Nancy
“When she walked in the room, i thought ‘wow she’s literally so hot awhooga’ and looking back I really should have cast her as Sally Bowles”
— Max
Nancy’s Version
Max and I met on February 9th, 2019, when I entered a room on the third floor of Shaffer Hall, extremely confident and prepared to land the role of Sally Bowles in my college theater group’s spring musical, Cabaret. He sat at a desk wearing some old ratty t-shirt he’d had since he was 15 and horrendous black and white checkered Vans, all with his signature smug look. I was the very last to audition so I had already been prepped on what to expect: “He gives off asshole vibes,” “He didn’t really look at me at all,” “He only really said ‘hey” at the beginning and ‘thanks so much’ at the end.”
So of course when he took the time to strike up a conversation with me, where I was from, my theater history, how I looked like Sierra Boggess because of my red hair (still don’t really see it…?) I thought I had one of my dream roles in the bag. Not to mention I had one of the best callbacks of my life - but that’s not really relevant to this particular story.
Fast forward 2 days later. “Hi Nancy, we’d like to offer you the role of Texas. Do you accept?” LIVID.
I spent the next 2 months of rehearsal shooting death glares and snarky comments his way and left rehearsal each night crying to my mother about how much I hated him. Welp.
During the run, our musical director Matt asked if I was staying in Baltimore over the summer and if I had any interest in auditioning for a local production of Newsies that he was also music directing. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the two of them had apparently had somewhat extensive conversations about me during Cabaret, so Matt spent the entire summer attempting to play matchmaker, bringing Max up in conversation whenever he could.
It’s important to call out here, Max and I weren’t very close at this point. We had exchanged a few DMs back and forth, mostly just about Newsies, but we weren’t like regularly talking or interacting. So when he told me he had bought tickets to one of the shows and then proceeded to drive 5 hours and stay the night on a mutual connect’s couch, all while sending me texts about how excited he was to see me and go out after the show, some flags started going up.
That night, the three of us went out, again not thinking much of it, until Matt very much not subtly stands up only about 40 minutes into the night, says he’s tired and is going home. But Max and I had just ordered another round of drinks so there we are, sitting in Frederick, Maryland until around 2:30 or 3am, just talking. And when we parted for the night, I left thinking, “should we have just kissed... like what was that?” I only found out later, he was thinking the same thing.
A few weeks go by and some of my friends and I decided to go out in NYC so we had some tall boys on the train in and ended up at a bar that solely served a million different kinds of shots. After a number, I remembered that Max had told me to hit him up if I was ever out drinking in NYC so what does my dumbass do but text him and tell him to meet us out. 45-minutes later, I get a text. “Hey, sorry just got out of the Transformers movie. Where am I meeting you?”
Long story short, we end up at the Copacabana. After sneaking our way past the bouncers asking for a $25 cover charge, my two friends were like, “we’re tired and there’s a train home in 15 minutes let’s go.” But I wasn’t ready to leave. 20-minutes later, we had our first kiss up on the third floor of the Copacabana in the hallway by the bathrooms. How romantic.
But the ridiculous thing is, it really was! The whole rest of the night, from dancing in the Copa, to walking hand in hand through an empty Times Square, sitting at one of the red metal tables talking for hours, the stroll all the way back to the train station and the kiss goodbye, all I could think was “wait, what? I just had the most romantic night of my life with Max Hunter??” (derogatory).
Skipping ahead through months of mixed signal messaging all day every day from Mr. I’m Single and Don’t Want a Relationship, gets us to March of 2020. Once the world shut down, the two of us spent our days together through texts that turned into late night movies, that turned into daily facetimes, that turned into some super top-secret hiking dates (sorry, Hunters!).
We spent that summer spending as much time together as possible, met each other’s friends, families, and started integrating each other into our lives.
Then, on October 29th, 2020, I get the dreaded text. “Can we talk later?”
Over the course of over 2-hours via facetime, we broke up. This mans CRIED THE WHOLE TIME, and later told me he had to drink a 6-pack just to be able to get on the call. “This will never go anywhere. I don’t see a future for us. We’ll never be more than just this.” HA JOKES ON HIM SINCE THIS IS OUR STORY ON OUR WEDDING WEBSITE.
But my scheming had only just begun. I convinced him, (although it didn’t take much convincing, he didn’t really want to break up in the first place he was just being dumb), to allow me to come say goodbye to the dog and have one final weekend together.
A week after that, I’m back in NYC celebrating the 2020 election results with the same 2 friends from the Copa night. So me, playing up my buzz, sent the text “hey since we’re friends now let’s just get drinks it’ll be fun, come celebrate!” Guess who rolled up once again.
After an hour sitting across the table, really bringing that original Cabaret death glare energy into the conversation, he broke. “That was the worst mistake of my life. I won’t ever do that again. Please can we just go home.”
3 weeks later on November 20th, 2020, we went on our first “official” date to a restaurant on the Upper West Side, Tasca. Sitting at a table right when you walk in the front door, he says “So, do you think you should be my girlfriend?” I told him, “No.”
We’ve gone to Tasca every year on our anniversary for dinner, where this past year, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. This time, I said, “Yes.”
Max’s Version
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