My name is Sam Vitez, I’m from the southwest of England, from a little village called East Budleigh.

About 6 years ago I bought a 1982 Nissan Datsun 280ZX T-top. She was originally grey-green and I painted her yellow, and I shared this car with my best friend Jerome and we called her Nancy. She was gorgeous.

And my ex girlfriend that I was with, my partner, she would drive it and I could always tell when she was driving Nancy because I would get in Nancy and she just wasn’t happy, you know? I was like, “It’s alright, it’s fine.”

And it sounds really daft but she just, you just had to drive her really, it’s just how it was and when you did, she just went so good. So my ex, this is one night when our relationship was kind of falling apart at the time, she calls me up at 4 in the morning and I had to be at work at 6 — I was a mechanic — and she said that I had to come and fix Nancy. She had let this girl that she had blatantly had a huge crush on, some artist that she worked with, drive the car, who didn’t even know how to drive a stick shift, on fucking Hollywood Boulevard. It was so frustrating and shitty and made me feel extra kind of stupid and angry that I had to go over and fix my own car that she had just given to some other girl to drive, just to kind of impress her.

So the best friend that I had bought the car with, he had moved to Montreal and then was in New York, and so soon afterwards I went to go visit him. And we were drinking at this bar, Ten Below I think it was called, and we were drawing on napkins, we were like, “We’ve got to get matching tattoos, what can we get?”

And we were going through all these different things, because we lived together for a while in Los Angeles, and we were like, “Nancy. Let’s just get Nancy.”

So we went outside — I used to smoke back then — went outside for a cigarette. And we ran into this chick who was cool and fun, just smoking, having drinks and getting a bit tipsy, and then go back inside, so she introduces us to her friend. Her friend’s name is Lucy.

She just turns to me and she’s kind of drunk and just not interested in meeting anyone, she’s like, “Hi, my name’s Lucy.”

And I’m like, “Oh my God, she’s from Yorkshire. She’s from the north and I’m from the south.”

So I was like, “Oh, God, and the accent is really nice.” I was like, “Oh, you’re from England.”

And she’s like, “Yeah, I’m from England” because when you’re English everyone is like, “Oh, where are you from?”

And she was kind of too drunk to notice my accent so she didn’t even care. So after a few drinks, we had maybe another one, another round, and she said, well they were both like, “Well we’re going to go now, because we’re going to get matching tattoos.”

We were like, “Whoa, what? We were going to go get matching tattoos today as well. Let’s just all go together.”

So we all just hung out, drank some more, went and found this place on St. Marks or something, went upstairs, choosing what we wanted, the fonts and stuff. But it was such a good night, and we went and got food and we were probably out till 6 in the morning, just all of us, from probably about 2 till 6, 2 in the afternoon till 6 in the morning, just all four of us hanging out, two sets of best friends, it was really sweet, with our little tattoos.

We were downstairs in this underground basement thing, which I feel was right underneath the tattoo place. Lucy went over to the bar and then I went up next to her and I just started, I guess, hitting on her quite intensely. She was straight so she’d never been with a girl before. And I was like, “I really want to take you home” is what I said, maybe some other stuff that I’m not going to repeat. And she was like, “No, I’m straight, I don’t even like girls.”

And I was like, “Okay, worth a shot.”

So we went and had food and I went to the loo and then came out and she was like, “Right. You’re coming home with me.”

And I was like, “Whoa! Really?” And then I was like, “Well, is this the right thing? I’ve never been disloyal to my partner, who is back in L.A.” and I kind of made my mind up in the cab and was like, “That’s it then. That’s…I can’t be with this woman anymore.”

I made the decision to leave her in the cab, really, on the way back to Lucy’s house.

It was really hard for me leaving my partner and my life and everything, not really knowing where I was going and I definitely went through some bad parts. And Lucy and I would see each other probably about once a month, maybe twice every, three times every two months. And we would break up, we would get back together, we’d break up, get back together, you know, become exclusive, then open it up again and then we had decided to just end it this once, this one time and I would, when we weren’t talking, we weren’t talking for about 6 months and it was so soul destroying, I just wanted to put her into every scenario, in every adventure I was going on, I wanted to imagine she was there with me.

After 6 months apart, I realized it just wasn’t worth it and I wanted to do everything in my power to make it work for us. And so I got her a ring, made the decision to move to New York and eventually spent the summer here and wanted to go for along, so yeah, I moved to New York to be with her. And then in January I proposed to her when we were in Mexico. And then so we got engaged and it was, yeah, I don’t know, it’s just been amazing. And every minute I’m with her, I just need more minutes with her.

You just want the entirety of someone and with her I just want all of her, more of her, all the time. And I think being married to her would just be such a peaceful bliss.