Earlier than I met Tony, I had written off the concept of falling in love in Los Angeles. Relationship on this metropolis felt like an exhausting sport I didn’t need to play anymore — one filled with superficial encounters and folks extra inquisitive about networking than connecting. It all the time felt like everybody was chasing somebody simply barely extra spectacular than the final. Or slightly, somebody with extra followers.

I used to be making an attempt to complete legislation faculty and hold my head above water. Romance? That felt like a luxurious for somebody with extra free time, extra vitality or much less on their plate.

Tony was the final particular person I ever anticipated to fall for.

We met whereas working at Amoeba Music, the enduring Hollywood file retailer that seems like a dusty cathedral for audiophiles and growing older punks — or not less than the previous location did. On the new retailer on Hollywood Boulevard, I used to be there for a job, not a love story. Tony had simply returned to the shop, freshly sober, needing what he referred to as a “get well” job. He’d labored at Amoeba Music on and off for 15 years whereas touring along with his band — his life seemingly a chaotic swirl of sound checks, dive bars and reinvention.

He was rather a lot older than I used to be and outgoing, wild, beloved by everybody. I’m reserved, shy, centered. It felt like we had been from totally different planets.

However slowly one thing shifted.

Between shelving information and clocking in for shifts, we began to speak. Then joke. Then giggle. I noticed that beneath his boisterous floor was the kindest, most caring man I had ever met. We related over our mutual love of flicks and the way we each felt extra alive within the smooth hush of a darkish theater than wherever else on the earth.

We’d spend our nights off catching double options on the New Beverly, taking in moody indies on the Vista or planning our weekends round midnight screenings on the Alamo Drafthouse. Our first “non-date” date was a midnight displaying of “Kill Bill” on the New Bev. Sitting beside him in that tiny, red-velvet theater, watching Uma Thurman’s character slice her approach via betrayal and heartbreak with a katana, I felt one thing sudden stir in me. It was violent and stylized onscreen, however beneath all of it was a lady reclaiming her energy — and possibly that’s what I felt too. It felt like the start of one thing.

Tony and I didn’t all the time like the identical movies. He liked huge, daring films like “Aliens,” and I leaned extra towards grounded dramas, the sort of emotionally messy tales Paul Thomas Anderson tells. However we each liked the expertise of going to the films and speaking about them afterward, breaking them down scene by scene over late-night espresso or fries at Swingers.

The second I noticed my emotions had been greater than pleasant got here somewhat later. Tony was alleged to see Iggy Pop on the Hollywood Palladium one night time. However earlier that day, he casually requested me, “If my plans fall through, would you want to hang out?”

I mentioned positive, not considering a lot of it. In response to him, when he instructed me that he couldn’t get a last-minute ticket, I mentioned, “Good.”

It was a quiet, telling phrase. Good. As a result of I wished to see him. As a result of I appreciated him.

We ended up at Lily’s Bar on the Adler a Hollywood Hills Resort — simply up the road from Amoeba. It’s the spot the place so many little moments between us had collected. The bar was darkish, intimate, tucked into Hollywood in a approach that just about seems like a secret. We talked for hours. Sooner or later, I instructed him I had emotions for him. We kissed.

I couldn’t imagine that kiss occurred. He was all the pieces I wasn’t — daring, unpredictable, magnetic in a approach that made individuals orbit round him. Falling for somebody like him felt like stepping off a ledge with out understanding what was under. I used to be afraid of what it would imply. What if we had been too totally different? What if I misplaced myself in his potential chaos or he acquired tired of my quiet corners? Regardless of each warning bell in my head, I couldn’t deny what was pulling me towards him. And after we lastly kissed, it wasn’t only a kiss. It was a give up to the concept love doesn’t all the time present up wanting as you imagined.

I want I may say I walked away that night time feeling sure and safe, however I didn’t. I used to be terrified. I used to be nonetheless in legislation faculty, nonetheless looking for my place in a metropolis that usually felt prefer it was chewing me up. I felt like a child. How may I be prepared for one thing severe with somebody a lot older and so seemingly totally different?

However right here’s the factor: He didn’t have all of it discovered both.

We had been two individuals from totally different worlds who occurred to crash into one another in the identical nook of Hollywood. We had no street map. Simply this unusual, lovely factor rising between us and a mutual willingness to see the place it would lead.

Two years later, we’re nonetheless figuring it out. Collectively.

We stay in Hollywood, not removed from the place all of it started. We’ll stroll previous Amoeba typically and do not forget that model of ourselves: me, burned out and bracing for extra disappointment; him, making an attempt to heal and rebuild. We’ll go the Adler, and I smile on the considered that first kiss and the woman who virtually talked herself out of taking an opportunity on one thing actual. Or we’ll drive previous the New Bev, try what’s taking part in and surprise if it’s price staying up till 2 a.m. once more.

I by no means thought love would appear to be this: a man who’s been all over the place, is aware of everybody and has tales tucked into each bar and theater in L.A.; and me, somebody who has largely stored her head down, making an attempt to simply get via all of it. However someway, we discovered a rhythm. A quiet, regular beat beneath the noise of this metropolis.

Love didn’t arrive in Los Angeles the best way I anticipated it to. However it arrived anyway.