I have mentioned how spiritual I am and my great belief in the thing called fate, haven't I?

Fate, it's real.

It happens.

Good or bad...it's meant to be.

After everything in my life, I truly have come to believe that.

Fate will give us a person, a situation, joy and despair...then it's up to us to choose what we do with what we have been given.

Meeting Rick, has truly taught me that.

On the night that we met, I very nearly pulled out of going, but then something inside of me just urged me to go; coupled with the fact that I didn't want to let my friend down who was actually leaving her job as the cook at school—I eventually decided to go.

Rick has even said that he wasn't going to go to the pub either, but then changed his mind and decided to go for a couple of drinks before last orders was called. It was like the stars had aligned or something, fate was setting everything up for us to finally bump into one another...and bump we literally did!

My friend and the rest of her group, had already dragged me from one small country pub to another. I wasn't drinking, because I was driving, and I had began to feel like I'd had enough. "Let's go to The Mechanics for one last drink!" My friend had eagerly announced.

So that is what we did, we went to The Mechanics pub. With tired feet, I just followed the group through the crowded little drinking hole. Squeezing myself through the rammed pub, it was then that I collided into someone. "Oops, sorry." My apology had quickly rolled off my tongue, without really paying attention to whom I had just collided with.

"That's okay." Said a cheery voice.

My eyes trailed up to that cheery voice, only to be met by a handsome, cheery smile. Now this is when the ZING moment happened. While I was squeezing myself through the pub goers one way, the guy with the lovely smile was squeezing himself through the other way, but something was still zinging between us.

I'd never felt anything like that before.

It was a real feeling of warm electricity.

Warm and exciting electricity.

I caught up with the group, ordered drinks, then managed to find a free table somewhere. As soon as I sat down, so did the cheery guy who I'd not long shared a zing moment with. "Hi, what's your name?" He asked with a cheekiness brightly lighting up his green eyes.

"Mary Rose." I happily told him, quietly flattered by his presence. "What's your name?"

"I'm Rick, you're not from around here, are you?" His smile just kept growing, while his eyes just seemed so brightly intrigued by me.

"She's with me!" My friend half-drunkenly announced. "Mary Rose, this is Rick...he's lovely." Already, my friend had approved of our brief, yet kind of smitten, exchanging of words.

It was while my friend was talking, that we both kept smiling at one another. I can't explain it, but I felt like I already knew this guy.

His warm eyes.

Warm smile.

Even warmer personality, they somehow felt familiar.

Over the next half an hour, Rick cheekily bombarded me with questions, wanting to know where I lived, where I worked and my age. Coming from anyone else, it may have come across as a bit full-on and creepy, but I could tell that Rick was just a cheeky chap. It sparkled in his green eyes and shone from his smile. By the time the last order bell had rang out, we had discovered that he played youth football with a lot of the lads that I knew from school. Maybe that is why he feels so familiar to me? Was what I had so fleetingly thought, but somehow, it felt far more than that.

As I was about to leave, Rick had sweetly rushed up to me. His cheeky smile was no longer gracing his lips, he now seemed almost nervous. "I'm going to be honest with you, Mary Rose, I've had a few drinks tonight, so I've had the confidence to talk to you. Can we please swap numbers, and if I don't have the balls to call you, will you please call me?"

Slightly stunned, I don't think I had ever been asked for my number in such an honest and endearing way. Liking his honesty, I wanted to be just as honest. "Before we swap numbers, I'd just like to tell you that I have a little boy...just thought you should know."

With no hesitation, no faltering on his part, Rick then smiled that wide and lovely smile of his. "And?" He jovially asked. "Should it bother me that you have a little boy?"

Shrugging gently, I returned his wide smile with my own. "You'll be surprised how many it does bother." I freely admitted. With Rick, everything felt different, so I didn't want to screw anything up. I wanted all of my cards laid openly on the table.

Grabbing a pen and a bit of paper from off the barman, Rick then wrote his number down before ripping a piece off and handing me the pen. "Well, it doesn't bother me. You can write your number down and then on our date, you can tell me all about your little boy."

That night, I did write down my telephone number.

That night, I wrote in my diary that I thought I had met The One.

Like he had honestly warned me, Rick never did have the balls to call me. Four times it took for me to eventually be able to talk to him. On the fourth try, I very nearly didn't. At the time, I was thinking that maybe I was being fobbed off by his brother on the three previous occasions that I had called, and in my mind, I had told myself that if on the fourth time, that if Rick wasn't there...that I wouldn't try to call him ever again.

But that thing called fate, she stepped in.

She had plans for us.

On that fourth occasion, Rick was indeed there, and we ended up talking until the very early hours. We did that for over a month, talking until we were just too tired to talk anymore.

"I think it's about time that we actually had our first date." Rick teasingly told me one night over the phone.

Talking to him on the phone, night after night, was such a nice way to get to know one another, that I didn't hesitate in wanting that first date with Rick. "I agree." I excitedly told him.

A week later, we had that date. We went to a steakhouse. Over the phone, Rick was far more relaxed than he ever was in person. On that first date, he was incredibly nervous. Although we talked, it wasn't as relaxed as it always had been over the phone.

At one point, Rick said he was going to the toilet. I waited, waited some more, and a whole lot more after that. About half an hour had passed, when I eventually went to find out where he was. What I did find, had me doubting all that I had been wonderfully feeling for Rick. He was stood talking to a friend, whilst casually sinking money into a fruit machine. I wasn't happy, let me tell you. I had been sat at the table all alone, while he had clearly got distracted and then forgot all about me.

"Thanks for just leaving me sat by myself at the table, Rick...real kind of you." I was fuming, my sarcastic-drenched words to him, let him know just how fuming I was.

Looking genuinely sorry, Rick couldn't apologise enough. "Shit, I'm so sorry. I went to the toilet, then saw my friend at the bar, then I thought I'd just have a quick go on the fruit machine." One apologetic excuse rolled weakly into another. "Can I get you another drink?"

"No thanks, I think I'd just like to go home." All my expectations for myself and Rick, laid in tatters inside of me. Even though he apologised during the entire drive back, I truly didn't think I was going to see Rick again.

He wasn't perfect.

He wasn't who I thought he was.

I was disappointed that night, but when Rick rang me a couple of days later, something was telling me to give him another chance.

He did get that second chance, and we ended up having a great time.

The more I got to know Rick, the more I began to realise that he was different to other guys. With a few drinks inside of him, he was that cheeky, over confident fella, but stone cold sober, he was shy and much less self-assured. He could be sweet and attentive, then also be distracted and less mindful of my presence.

And yet, that something kept telling me to stick things out with him.

Then one night, that inner #teamrick, had its work truly cut out.

We had arranged to meet at The Mechanics one night. We had only been seeing each other for a few weeks, and I was still unsure whether I was wanting to go 'all in' with Rick. When I had eventually arrived at the pub, it was pretty clear he was a little drunk.

"Here she is, here's my new girlfriend, Mary Rose. Isn't she lovely?" He had enthusiastically welcomed me to sit down beside him. "This is Tim and Helen." He introduced me to the couple that he was sat with.

I'm a sociable soul, so I began talking to the friendly Tim and Helen. We had chatted about general stuff mainly—work, weather, where we lived—that kind of thing.

Myself and Helen were later just talking amongst ourselves, while Tim and Rick were doing the same. I don't know why or how the topic even came up, but breast size soon slipped into the conversation. "My ex, Jane...she had a nice pair of boobs...perfect handfuls, they were." Rick drunkenly piped up with.

If I wasn't so stunned, I may have even laughed. For there was Rick, holding both of his hands up, mimicking how his ex had the perfect palmful. "Yeah, they were perfect for my hands."

Being rather blessed with breasts, mine were clearly bigger than his ex girlfriends, something that both Tim and Helen's eyes couldn't help but notice. "Maybe it's not the time to be talking about your ex, huh mate?" Tim politely had tried to veer Rick away from all talk of boobs and his ex.

But Rick, he wasn't listening. "Not that yours aren't nice, Mary Rose...but yeah, Jane...she really had the perfect pair." Again, he mimicked squeezing them both with his crudely cupped hands.

With frozen expressions, both Tim and Helen didn't respond to Rick, thinking that it might shut him up faster, but when drunk, Rick didn't seem to have a filter or an OFF button. "Yup, they really were perfect." He embarrassingly went on.

Embarrassed, humiliated and angry as hell, I'd had enough. Rick was now a dick. A drunk dick. With all of that burning like an inferno inside of me, I figured it was time to quit while I was ahead, and before the lid to my temper exploded and would cause some serious verbal damage. "On that note, I'll see you around, Rick." Smiling at both Tim and Helen, I removed myself from where we all were sat, thus removing myself from the cringeworthy conversation.

Rick had tried to talk to me while he followed me out to the car, but I was done that night. Then the next day, Rick came and spoke to me. He admitted he was wrong, that he would never do anything like that again.

For all the doubts I had.

For all the times that I questioned why I should even listen to Rick, I did still listen to him.

Something, kept on telling me to give him time.

So against my better judgement, and with a guard up with all of my emotions...I gave Rick more time.

That's when fate truly stepped in. If we were to ultimately be together, she was going to have to do something drastic to make that 'being together' happen.

After just over a month of being casually together, blighted by doubts and uncertainties, Rick breaks his leg whilst being on a bouncy castle with his friends at the pub. It was a spiral fracture in his tibia, that ended up needing surgery.

I was with Rick when the ambulance arrived.

I then stayed with him at A&E.

I visited him in hospital after his surgery.

I even picked him up from the hospital once he could leave.

Breaking his leg, is what we both now believe kept us together.

Rick came and stayed with me and my son, so we could look after him while he recovered. It was during that time, that we grew closer. It was during that time, that Rick grew closer with my son. All the doubts and the uncertainties, they simply vanished.

Within six months, Rick asked me and my seven year old son whether we would like to move in with him. We both said yes.

Not long after that, I was pregnant. Things got serious real quick, but everyone was happy for us. Especially my gramp. He thought that Rick was a great and hard working man, he held much respect for him. I think that my dear gramp was also happy for another man to step in and take care of me, because he knew that he was getting older. "You'll be happier living with Rick, at least then, both your mum and Jamie won't find it so easy to get to you." Was what my gramp had so protectively told me.

He was right.

I would be moving to a village that was right at the top of a very big hill, not within easy walking distance for my junkie mum and a place that Jamie would never know about.

On the day that I did eventually move out of my house, I didn't look back. I knew that my future was with Rick, I knew that my son's future was also with Rick. That something, had always told me that. Fate, I think she was always trying to tell me that.

Funnily enough, after not being in touch for almost two years, guess who showed up at my old house, the day after I had moved out?

That's right, Jamie.

After always being unreliable, unpredictable and untrustworthy; I had decided that until my son was old enough to make up his own mind about his father, that he wouldn't see him.

I never left a forwarding address for Jamie.

And I never regretted that decision.

Myself and my son had a new home to go to.

A new life to live.

When I met Rick, I somehow knew that I had met my future husband. He is often teased about our crappy few dates. Teased even more about his ex Jane and her very perfect boobs. Yes, we laugh a lot about all of it. But we don't laugh about our coming together, about us both choosing to fall in love with one another—that is something that we are both incredibly grateful for.

So yes, I kissed a lot of frogs before I found my prince. And even my prince kept me on my toes on quite a few occasions. But when you know, you know. Even during the times when Rick was being a dick, I still knew that my future was to be with him.

I never felt like that with the guy who chose to just speak to my breasts all night long on our first and only date. I also never felt like that with a guy who had a thick, green bogey just sitting inside of his nose during our first and only date. Nope, those guys never got a second chance...yet Rick did.

Over the years, I have learned to listen to that something inside of me. I think it's my spiritual soul, quietly guiding me to where I need to be. With the help of fate and that spirituality, I continue to let them guide me. For they have given me my husband, more beautiful children, a clearer understanding of my past and a better insight to my future self.

Sometimes, you have to listen to the voices inside.

Sometimes, you have to take that chance.

Gramp always supported every decision I made, even the wrong ones. I only wish he had been around to see more of the happiness that I finally had found with Rick, and to see more of the woman that I became because of the very wonderful him.