Cafe Gecko & The Sour Cream Chicken Nachos Recommended By the Last Woman Who Will Ever Break My Heart

20 years ago - to the month - I met a woman and immediately had a crush on her. But she had a boyfriend. C'est la vie. 

Many months later she was single and I learned that she, too, immediately had a crush on me when we met. But by this point I was not single. 

We did this dance for the next four years until we were both single. But, alas, it could not work, as she had just gotten her MBA and was about to move to the other side of the country. 

We would email occasionally but not see each other again for 8 years. Meaning 12 years - to the month - since we had first met. 

We immediately began the relationship we had been denied all of those years earlier and it was fantastic. Most relationships start well of course but this was the best of my life, by far, and I believe it would still be going on to this day. 

Except. 

After we had been together for one month she discovered she was pregnant. 

Two months pregnant. 

With her ex-boyfriend's child. 

I cannot describe the devastation at the time but as they say comedy = tragedy + time and I look at it now with a laugh. A slight laugh. 

(It had been breakup sex and she revealed that she had gotten shitfaced just to be able to do it, as she had much earlier checked out of the relationship, though this confession did not make me feel better.) 

We tried to make it work after the baby was born but it was not possible. A year later she moved to the Rocky Mountains and a year later so did I and we tried again, but it just wasn't meant to be. 

What a failure. 

Anyway, I bring her up now because there was a food she said she missed more than anything while living in Southern California: the sour cream chicken nachos at Cafe Gecko in the suburbs of Dallas. 

Twice I made a version for her and she said both were great, but not as great as Gecko's. I made a point that if I ever visited Dallas, I would seek them out. 

I did. 

They were spectacular.  

Every bit as good as she had described them. Better than my attempts at making them. 

I will never forget her and I will never forget these.