Takia Canty, 40, is aware that lesbians have a reputation for moving quickly into relationships. She hadn’t dated her then-girlfriend Nastassja Canty, 38, a full month before she was certain that Nastassja would be her wife. To many onlookers, their relationship appeared to be moving at lightning speed, but for the Canty’s, the whirlwind romance that led them down the aisle in an intimate Las Vegas ceremony in June—after being introduced by a mutual acquaintance in 2004—and then losing contact for 17 years, felt like fate.

“It was an underlying attraction between us that we never played on,” said Takia, who tells The Reckoning that both women were in relationships when they initially met but waited until those relationships ended before they explored their mutual attraction.

“And then I kind of slid in her DM, maybe three or four years later. But I was tipsy,” Takia jokingly recalls.

The DM from Takia to Nastassja (pronounced N ah - S t ah - S ee - ah) was short. She simply wrote: “Missing you.”