Elisa had an 11th hour wardrobe snafu and wore promotional sweatpants from McDonald's. (It's a long story.) One hour in, a rat sauntered up the back of their park bench. This was not what the promotional subway ads for Hinge™ had promised!

The weather, the clothes, the vermin, the nerves — and yet. A clue? A feeling? Maybe: a shared certainty, gut-level, that the person on the other side of the bench is a good person. A weirdo, perhaps, but a good person.

So much would happen next — butterflies, flirty texts, the first time Peter cooked dinner for Elisa (what a grown up! she thought), vacations and adventures and sunsets in Santorini, a million we-can't-believe-this-is-our-life!-nights in New York City, a million boring Tuesdays on the couch doing whatever, the collision of friends and families and religions and musical taste (eek!), the way Peter adopted Elisa's Elisa-isms and she adopted the Nationals (!) — and it was all sort of annoyingly blissful, if we do say so ourselves.

How deeply we fell. How happy we are! How we've learned what it all comes down to: Who is on your park bench?