Vegas Diaries, Chapter 2: A Little Context
Cabo, LA, and the Door That First Cracked Open
Hi, friends! Excited to bring you Chapter 2 of my Vegas Diaries! :)
ICYMI, you can catch up on Chapter 1 here 👇
Chapter 2 —
To fully understand the magnitude of my Vegas journey, you’ll need a little context about how it all came to be…
Before Vegas became the neon-lit character it is in my story, there was Cabo—a place I thought would be just a blip on the radar—but it ended up being the crack in a door I didn’t even realize existed.
It was spring, my senior year of college. I was almost twenty one, with a sense of invincibility that only comes when you’re still untouched by the weight of real consequences. My best friend and I booked a last-minute trip to Cabo, powered by boredom and just enough cash to get us there. We had no plans, no expectations, just a vague sense that there was something out there beyond the confines of our sleepy college town, something that demanded exploration.
If you’re unfamiliar with Cabo, let me tell you. Cabo is a place where Mexican men in gigantic sombreros come to your table once every 10 minutes and literally dump tequila down your throat—straight outta the bottle. Cabo was sunburns that stung, tequila shots that we swore we’d regret but never really did, and men who were at least ten years too old, but too intriguing not to entertain. The kind of trip that feels like a montage from a movie—a haze of beach sunsets and half-empty glasses, the soundtrack an endless loop of bad reggaeton and our laughter over nothing in particular.
And there, in the midst of it, was Julian.
He didn’t fit the narrative. While his friends were stumbling through the kind of performances you’d expect—shots off stranger's stomachs, slurred pick-up lines—he was just... there. Detached. Tucked away at a table with a laptop, dressed too well for the sand, as if he’d somehow walked into the wrong scene. His disinterest pulled at me. It was magnetic in the strangest way, like a puzzle that didn't want to be solved. I found myself watching him more than I probably should have.
Yet, despite my efforts, never looked up. Not once. I’d like to think I made enough of an effort for it to count as a missed connection. But maybe that’s the thing about stories that come back around—you don’t realize they’ve even begun the first time. We left Cabo without exchanging names, without anything more than a curiosity that settled somewhere in the back of my mind.
But not before I met his best friend Colton. Colton was one of those guys who made vacation easy. He was the perfect level of charismatic, a little goofy, and, unlike Julian, not tethered to a laptop. He was the guy who could hold a conversation, buy you a drink, and make you laugh without trying too hard. We spent hours just talking—nothing profound, just the kind of banter that comes naturally when you’re sun-drunk and half-sober. Colton was good at making it all feel fun. Easy.
I went back home after Cabo—back to classes, to the small town where everyone knew everyone, to a life that, for a while, made me forget about Julian completely. But Colton and I kept in touch through social media. A comment here, a like there—the usual digital dance of keeping someone in orbit without pulling them too close. Nothing more than a casual connection, a friendship kept alive by virtual circumstance.
Fast forward two years. Vegas. I was twenty-three, with a group of friends from LA. This was not the Vegas I would come to know later on, but it was a start. A whirlwind weekend, loud and reckless, full of bad decisions and laughter that echoed through casino floors. The kind of trip that felt like a movie you wouldn’t remember in full, only in flashes.
Erin, one of the girls with us, was fully leaning into the chaos of it all—a cocktail of molly and coke, mixed with whatever other poor choices had led us here. By the time Sunday rolled around, she was too fucked up to drive back to LA, and, in her brilliance, decided it would be easier to steal my wallet than ask me to stay another night. No wallet meant no ID, no cash, no keys to the car in valet. I was stranded, with nothing but the Strip's neon taunting me.
Hours passed trying to reason with the valet—explaining my situation to a guy who looked like he wished he’d called in sick that day. Nothing. I was getting nowhere, my phone was about to die, and Vegas was losing whatever charm it had. That’s when I remembered Colton lived in Vegas. My last Hail Mary.
With 1% battery left, I dialed him. The words came out in a rush, like a prayer thrown to the wind: “I’m at the Cosmo valet, my phone’s dying, I have no way out. Please help.” And then the line went dead.
I expected nothing. A shrug from the universe. Instead, eight minutes later, Colton pulled up, all smiles and “hop in,” like I wasn’t a complete mess. Like he had been waiting for this call all along. I had never been more excited to see a half-stranger in my life. It wasn’t some grand moment—it was just him, helping me when I had no one else to call.
The valet, now my de facto therapist, explained the ordeal to Colton. And as if on cue, there’s Erin rolling down the escalator, barefoot in a man’s oversized button-down shirt with wedges on her feet, looking like she had wandered off the set of a misfired indie film. She came at me immediately, throwing accusations that made no sense, trying to gaslight me in front of the crowd of strangers waiting for their cars. I could feel it escalating into something ugly, something primal, when Colton grabbed my arm and pulled me away. We gathered my stuff from valet and moved it into Colton’s car—and off we went.
Leaving Erin behind felt like shedding skin I no longer needed. It was just Colton and me now. He drove me back to his place, let me crash on his couch, and even found some clothes I could change into. There was no tension, no awkwardness. It was oddly wholesome, like a weird reboot of “Pretty Woman” but without the romance. Just kindness in a city that rarely offers it.
The next morning, Colton drove me to the airport, rented me a car with his name on the line, and sent me back to LA. He didn’t ask for anything in return, didn’t make a big deal about it. He was just there. And for a moment, that felt like enough.
Another year later, back in Vegas for New Year's Eve. This time, the setting was different. I had Colton with me—my rescuer, my friend. He invited me to a dinner hosted by someone from his friend group. A fancy steakhouse, all upscale and nothing I was really dressed for, but I didn’t care. It was the kind of night that felt like it was borrowed from someone else’s life.
We show up to the dinner, and there, at the head of the table, was Julian.
I remember that moment so clearly because my heart felt like it jumped out of my body. The way time seemed to slow, like something out of a movie, the kind where everything else blurs, and it’s just you and the person you’re meant to see. He was hosting the dinner, apparently. He was the guy who, two years ago, didn’t even look up. And now, he was right there, smiling, confident, with a girlfriend on his arm—a reminder of all the distance between then and now.
We didn’t talk that night. I spent most of dinner avoiding eye contact, sitting next to Colton and making small talk with his friends at our end of the table. But the air felt different. Like something was about to happen. And maybe it wasn’t that night, maybe it wasn’t even in the coming months, but I knew this wasn’t the last time Julian and I would cross paths. It was like the universe was slowly threading us together, one strange coincidence at a time.
After dinner, a few of us ended up backstage at Hakkasan in the DJ booth with Steve Aoki, champagne spraying into the crowd. Colton was beside me, laughing, while I felt myself drawn back into the familiarity of the unknown. It was thrilling and disorienting all at once.
I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, all of this—the random trip to Cabo, the chaos of that Vegas weekend, the last-minute dinner invitation—had been leading to something. That maybe Julian, Colton, this city—they were all pieces of a puzzle I was too close to see but was desperately trying to put together.
Vegas has a way of taking the disconnected fragments of your life and giving them meaning, even if it’s just for a night. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it tricks you into seeing meaning in moments that are just coincidence. I still don’t know. All I knew then was that Julian was there, Colton was still by my side, and this city was beginning to look less like a vacation and more like the start of something I hadn’t yet named—a life, maybe.
This was just the beginning—a story that would take a decade to unravel, one that always seemed to circle back to the same people, the same places the same neon city. A story that would push me out of what I thought I knew about myself and into something entirely different.
The first crack in the door had been Cabo. And now, that door was wide open—and Vegas was waiting for me to walk through.
Stay tuned for Chapter 3—coming soon :)
More please...
Great writing, btw!