When the Lights Went Out

I had never been one for blind dates. Call it cynicism or the aftertaste of too many disappointing Hinge swipes, but when Barbara, a friend from work, offered to set me up with her fiancé's friend, Jung, I had my doubts. She swore up and down that he was funny, smart, and didn’t have a criminal record — the bar these days, right? Against my better judgment, I agreed to meet him on Friday night at a new art gallery that had just opened downtown.

Friday rolled around, and I found myself stressing over what to wear. After all, meeting someone new is like auditioning for a role where the script is unwritten. I opted for something "casually sophisticated," a look that said, "I’m artsy but approachable," which really meant throwing on a black turtleneck and my favorite pair of ankle boots.

I arrived at the gallery ten minutes early. The place was buzzing with the kind of people who use words like “juxtaposition” unironically. I was starting to feel like maybe this was a bad idea when I spotted Jung. He was tall, with that just-messy-enough hair that either means you don’t care or you care way too much. He waved, and I felt a flutter of relief; at least he wasn’t a catfish.

"Hey, you're early," he said, smiling. His voice was warm, confident — but there was something just a touch nervous in the way he shifted from foot to foot.

"Or maybe you're late," I teased back. We laughed, and just like that, the ice was broken.

We wandered through the gallery together, stopping to critique the abstract paintings. I’m no art expert, but I had enough of an opinion to fake it. Jung, however, seemed to know what he was talking about, tossing around terms like “negative space” and “chromatic tension.” At one point, I raised an eyebrow.

“You really know your art, huh?” I asked.

He hesitated, then gave me a sheepish grin. “Honestly? I have no idea what I’m saying half the time. I just… read a few articles before coming here. I wanted to impress you.”

I laughed, genuinely surprised. “So you’re just winging it?”

“Pretty much,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just hoped you wouldn’t notice.”

“Well, you’re doing a pretty good job. I almost bought it,” I said with a smile. It was oddly reassuring to know he wasn’t as put together as he seemed.

Just as we were starting to relax, the lights flickered. “Uh, is that part of the exhibit?” I joked, but it wasn’t. Suddenly, the room plunged into darkness. There were a few gasps, a shattering sound somewhere in the back, and the unmistakable hum of confused voices. The emergency lights flickered on, casting the gallery in a weird, haunted-house glow.

A voice crackled over the intercom, “We’re experiencing a temporary power outage. Please stay calm.”

Jung leaned closer. “What is this, an escape room?” he muttered. I laughed, but his eyes darted around nervously.

“Hey, it’s fine,” I said, noticing the tension in his shoulders. “We’re not trapped. Worst case, we’re stuck here for a bit.”

He nodded, but I could see his jaw clenching. “I just... I’m not great with, like, chaotic situations,” he confessed under his breath. “I start to panic.”

I reached out and squeezed his arm. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll make it through this. Besides,” I added with a grin, “on the bright side, we won’t have to pretend to understand any more abstract art.”

The tension in his face melted a bit, and he chuckled. But just as we were getting comfortable, there was a loud crash. A pipe had burst somewhere in the building, and within seconds, water began to pool on the floor.

“Okay, now it’s officially a disaster,” I said.

“Maybe we should leave?” Jung suggested, his voice tight. But the gallery staff had other ideas. They started ushering people toward a back exit, insisting it was safer to stay inside while they tried to shut off the water.

So there we were, on what was supposed to be a charming first date, standing ankle-deep in water, surrounded by strangers, and with no clear way out. I had half a mind to call Barbara and yell at her for setting me up with such a mess of an evening.

But then, Jung did something unexpected. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a miniature bottle of bourbon, and handed it to me with a grin. “Emergency rations,” he said with a wink, though his hands were still shaking slightly.

I took the bottle, grateful for the distraction. “So, how often does this ‘emergency ration’ trick come in handy?”

“More often than I’d like to admit,” he confessed, taking a swig himself. “It’s kind of my coping mechanism. I’m great at pretending to have it together, but... yeah.”

As we sipped, the bourbon warming our throats, we found ourselves talking more openly. The shared absurdity of the situation made it easier to be honest. I told him about my fears of never finding a job that felt meaningful, and he confessed he was considering moving across the country because he was tired of pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

Eventually, the staff managed to get the power back on, and we were finally allowed to leave. We stepped out into the chilly night, and I realized that I wasn’t ready for the evening to end just yet.

“Do you want to grab a coffee or something?” I asked, half-expecting him to say no after the debacle we’d just been through.

But he grinned, that same warm smile that had made me relax at the start of the night. “Coffee sounds great. But let’s make it somewhere with dry floors, yeah?”

We ended up at a tiny café around the corner, the kind with fairy lights strung up around the windows and mismatched chairs. Over steaming mugs of coffee, we laughed about how our date had taken the most unexpected of turns and how, in a weird way, it had been kind of perfect.

“I have to admit,” Jung said, stirring his coffee, “I was trying way too hard to impress you at the start. I don’t usually carry bourbon, by the way.”

“Well, it worked,” I said. “But just so you know, our second date better involve zero natural disasters.”

He laughed, the tension from earlier completely gone. “Deal.”

As I walked home that night, I couldn’t help but marvel at how things had turned out. What had started as a forced setup and an accidental flood had somehow become one of the most genuine connections I’d had in a long time. Maybe it was the bourbon, or maybe it was just that when things go so spectacularly wrong, you don’t have much of a choice but to drop the pretense.

Jung and I went on a second date the following week. No disasters, no mishaps — just good conversation and a shared bottle of wine. It wasn’t perfect, but I was starting to realize that maybe perfect wasn’t the point. Sometimes, it’s the unexpected twists that make for the best stories.