It was a cold, mid-December night when I sent the text. Outside, snow fell sideways and inside, the house did a fair imitation of a boat, creaking with the wind. I was drunk on two glasses of wine and lonely. Dark at 4:30, pre-holidays, going on eight-years-alone, and giving-up-on-a-dream kind of lonely.

The phone number I swore had been erased more than a year ago was still stored in my text outbox, attached to one remaining text that had somehow escaped deletion. But it mattered not. Every time I crossed the Continental Divide and began the descent into Summit County, his phone number flashed neon bright in my mind. One night, it floated uninvited into my dreams. Each time, I shoved it aside with annoyance, unwilling to give in to a persistent subconscious.

With fingers unskilled in the art of texting, I typed slowly: “I heard the ODI closed. Thought of you.”

When I hesitated to turn the words into communication, I allowed this thought to wash over logic: You never get anywhere in life without taking chances. It was the same thought that started me on all the most wonderful adventures of my life.

I hit “send” and watched the tiny sealed envelope float over planet earth.

Frankly, I love this part about texting, and fiercely admire whoever came up with it. The message, floating backward and away, the envelope all but waving goodbye, sucked by an unseen force over the earth’s horizon, into the great beyond. “I’m gone! Too late! You can see me, but you can’t catch me now!”

And then comes the worst part: Waiting. Dealing with the logic that’s popped back up to the surface, spluttering and pissed off.

The ODI, a mountain cowboy bar more formally known as the Old Dillon Inn, was where we had met in May 2006. When I was drunk and celebratory and he was cute and sitting beside me. On the ODI’s crooked, wooden, front steps, we launched into a three-month relationship more about body than mind that left me emotionally tangled, disappointed with him, angry with myself. I broke it off clean and walked away proud. I left him, as I learned more than a year later, shocked to the core.

Left, too, an earring in his apartment. I knew he would think this was deliberate, which made the loss of one of my favorite pieces of jewelry that much more distressing. At home, I threw the mate in the trash. Thoughts of Roger likewise went out the window. He was the stuff of good stories, an episode in my life.

Until December, when I ached to be held by someone familiar.

Twenty anxious minutes passed before the phone issued a cheery bling, the signal of a text message floating down from space into my inbox: “hi, jane.”

And three minutes later: “I still have your earring.”

Today, there is a man’s toothbrush in my bathroom. A Valentine of a nontraditional sort who held me last night through a snowstorm not unlike the one of the December night on which I sent that first, cautious text.

This time, we have an agreement, rules put in place by me that he follows with little question, about time, place and courtesy. The time between visits is his and mine; our lives are separate, communication is minimal, questions about the hours apart few. The time we have is the opposite. It is ours alone.

Much of it is spent in the kitchen, creating the slightly exotic fare my son doesn't yet appreciate and that I never cook for myself. We slice pepper, chop cilantro, cut chicken and watch pasta boil while he talks, easily and without hesitation, and I, for the most part listen. Talking seems to fulfill a need in him, just as his masculine presence fulfills a need in me.

This time around, he lets me see the doubts and insecurities behind the lyrical accent, confident grin and cocky posturing that in 2006 initially dazzled and later annoyed me. This time around, we’ve become friends.

I am at peace with this man and this relationship. My emotions are not on a shelf, in his hands, or at war with one another. The calm I feel is a happy surprise.

This is not a relationship I could have handled, or even conceived, 10 years ago. Or even in May 2006. Years of experience, heartbreak, solitude, independence and maturity bring me here, to a strange, new, and for-this-moment-comfortable world. Where the focus is not on a misty future, but the moment, and the man is not potentially my long-awaited knight, but a person. And where a toothbrush is not a symbol of a serious relationship, standing alongside mine in the toothbrush holder, but the practical possession of a frequent guest, neatly wrapped in a plastic bag and tucked in a bathroom drawer between visits.