Finding Him, Finding Me

So, what exactly are you supposed to do when you pack up your entire life, jump on a plane to Australia for some guy, and then, only four months in, get unceremoniously dumped? If you're anything like me, you basically assume you've just been handed a crash course in how real life is absolutely nothing like Neighbours, and—let's be honest here—you're definitely not Kylie. I stuck it out longer than any self-respecting gay man probably would have, mostly because I just wasn't ready to deal with the inevitable chorus of "I told you so" from everyone back home. Eventually, I hauled myself back to London—this was back in 1992, I was twenty-two, completely skint, and pretending like this whole mess was part of some brilliantly thought-out plan. Truth is, I was in desperate need of a plan—or at least something that could pass as one. What I actually stumbled into was a job at The Pennyfarthing—this gay pub where people are always chatting, laughing, and, somehow, everyone seems to know exactly who's been snogging whom. That's where I ended up, surrounded again by my found family and friends—the sort of people who don't bother with judgments, just roll their eyes at your drama, fill up your glass, and, in their own way, somehow make everything a bit less awful. And then William showed up. Insanely handsome. Scottish, to make matters more unfair. A nurse, which—let's be real—already sounds promising. He had this easy calm about him that made me seriously question whether I'd actually met a real adult, finally. Which, naturally, meant my complete disaster of a self was either the worst fit for him imaginable, or—if I let myself hope—maybe exactly the sort of chaos he didn't realize he needed. We started talking, joking around, and before I really registered it, he was the one I watched for every time the door creaked open. Cue the panic, the obsessive overthinking, and a string of decisions that, looking back, might've been a bit questionable. So, this is the story of how I met him—and maybe, just a little, how I started to find myself in the process. How I learned that the best people—and the best kinds of love—sometimes just sneak up on you, right when you're completely falling apart. Book One of the Finding Him trilogy—because, as it turns out, finding love was only the beginning.