James: “The first time I met Abby was at a YoungLife Halloween party my sophomore year at HPU. She was dressed as a Mexican gangster with fake tattoo sleeves. I thought she was pretty darn cute, but due to the fact she was in high school and I was a YoungLife leader, I knew our love would be forbidden. So, I pretended like she didn’t exist.” “Fast forward a year and a half later, Abby is now a freshman at UNCG and I am a junior. I had not forgotten that fateful night at the Halloween party. After doing some light Facebook/Instagram stalking, I decided I wanted to ask Abby on a date. I asked my friend Craig, who was also friends with Abby, for advice. As fate would have it, he informed me that her birthday was coming up the next day.” Abby: “On my 19th birthday, I got a Facebook message from James Farrell. I always thought he was a cutie and I knew immediately this was more than a B-day wish. After about 7 days of messaging like middle-schoolers on Facebook, James asked me on a date. I said yes.” “James picked me up in his silver Lexus in the Yum Yum parking lot at UNCG. He was such a gentleman and opened my door for me which I was really impressed by. I thought the first date went well.” “We decided to go on a second date which is where things went wrong. Basically, I asked if he had any scar stories and that’s all you need to know. I felt like we didn’t have much to talk about and it was painfully awkward. It was a bit of a bummer.” “Later the next day on a walk to Bojangles, I prayed to God that James would call things off because I felt nervous. Who called me about 20 minutes later? James did. He was so kind and gracious and said he just wanted to be my friend. I was really thankful for how he handled it but I was also sad because, of course, rejection never feels good. We agreed that we would see each other around and with that, we went on with our lives.” James went off to an internship at Adidas that summer and Abby nobly went off to serve Los niños in Nicaragua. Fast forward 8 months and Abby and James go on a Younglife leader weekend in the mountains of NC. James: “Leading up to the weekend, I was nervous. I always wondered why it didn’t work out and I was getting excited and nervous to see Abby. I had come to the conclusion that I still had a crush on her. I told my good friends Speed and Clayton about my crush on our way to the retreat. This was a choice I would soon regret…” Abby: “I thought James was being kind of turd-ish and not talking much to me and being very serious. Someone who was very vocal, however, was his friend Speed. I sat down on the couch next to Speed, who I just met, and he asked me if I loved James. Right after that, James and I got called up “randomly” for a one-on-one icebreaker game where we had to clench a dime between our buttcheeks and drop it into a bucket. I won, of course. I realized later that this was not random at all, and the organizer of the game, Clayton, was playing matchmaker”. We left the weekend and I didn’t hear from James anymore. I figured that was the end of our romance. BUT THEN— a hurricane came into town. I’m talking about a literal hurricane. Like, my cousins and aunts moved in with us for the week because it was torrentially raining. But this hurricane brought in more than just 70 mph winds…it brought in LOVE… Abby- “I was in a pink robe cleaning my room when, all of the sudden, James Farrell’s name popped up on my phone. I worried it might be a butt dial but instead it was James asking me on a date...AGAIN.” "He picked me up for our second first date with a hand full of flowers. He also got to meet my roommates...aka my parents. We pulled up to a familiar parking lot and I realized we were going to one of my favorite places — the local fair. The rest was history." God bless horchata, demolition derbies, and Texas Pete.