This is a continuation of Tuesday’s story, just so you know.

The company I interviewed with called me several days after the interview to tell me that they’re working on an offer for me that’s within my range. I made the mistake of telling them a range and in doing so I knew “within my range” meant that it was the low-end of my range. Knowing how the interview went I decided to bring up the fact that I’m broke now and asked if they can throw some relocation money onto that since I had no money to my name and my parents weren’t in a position to help out. David told me the max he can give me to relocate is 3-grand and I jumped on that, thinking 3-grand was going to last me months and I’d still have money to spare.

I told Robin the news and she was a mix of excited and worrisome – I wasn’t lining up any interviews because I liked what this company was doing and I liked the money they were talking. We pretty much both knew that if this was to go down I’d take it.

A couple of days later David called to tell me they sent out their offer letter, contingent on a drug test, and whereas it was the lowest value in my range (with a 3K relocation allocation) my lowest value was most people’s high value.

Again, Robin was excited but she wanted to celebrate by smoking some dope so, you know, there might have been some subconscious attempt to sabotage a brother.

I went and took my drug test – all good, I stopped doing drugs some time ago. The offer letter came in, without the relocation check, and I signed it up and sent it back in FedEx style. Called my parents, told my friends, at this point they all thought I was working for NASA and I was too embarrassed to correct them. My future employer sent me some stuff to read over so I can hit the ground running on May 30th, only a week after graduating, and my first project was indeed for NASA, doing some wind-tunnel acoustic analysis so I didn’t feel as bad about living that particular lie.

I called my company to see when I would be getting my check. Once again, not understanding the concept of “broke-ass mother fucker”, they told me that they’ll reimburse me once I give them receipts. There was no fucking way that was going to work out since I’d be literally living on the streets so I told them I’d have to pull-back on my acceptance if I don’t get some of that money up front. Robin was a bit of a rebel rouser on this one, what type of company wouldn’t send you money upfront – shit like that – she didn’t want me to go.

I didn’t want to go, really, but I wasn’t getting shit in Boston and I didn’t have the luxury of waiting around. Life was pushing me towards DC and away from Robin whether I liked it or not.

The company sent me 75% of the check as an advance which I used to get airfare out there and set-up with a pack-storage-ship type of company. The deal was set, I was going to DC.

Despite the problems we were having, however, and the fact that I had this blank check on my life and the opportunity to start a whole new life in a brand new city, I didn’t want to leave Robin.

So I invited her to come with me. At least for the summer, so we can feel out the whole “living together” thing. Parlay it into a long-distance type of thing; I was making enough money to see her once or twice a month. And then, when she finishes college, if we’re still doing well she can come down and live with me for good.

It says something about our relationship that she said “yes”, almost without hesitation. About 8 months together, no engagement or talks of marriage, agreeing to move with me to DC – no money to our names, only one friend out there (my boy Max from the neighborhood), further from her family than she’s ever lived and staying by me while I got on my feet.

We both knew it was going to be hard and lonely, at least for the first few months, and she took a huge chance on me by agreeing to go.

I took a huge change by inviting her. It was sort of the culmination of my new philosophy – I didn’t need to leave it open, I didn’t need to go out there and make this glorious life by myself, start completely from scratch and wait for the romance to come to me.

I brought the romance – despite how small of a romance it might have been.