Aiden and I had no intention of meeting one another at the beginning of our junior year of high school. He had just moved to Lawrenceburg from Columbia and was new at LCHS. At the time, I was only concerned with my own world and how to keep people out of it. Then, I was elected to represent the school in the homecoming court. To make it short, I was panicking. I didn't know anyone I would feel comfortable with having as my escort. I even became so desperate I asked the school SRO officer since he was a family friend. All of the other girls in the court already had their escort, but I didn't. I then asked our high school choir and band teacher to escort me--as a joke at first--but when he said "Excuse me?" I bursted into tears. My friend Asia actually has the video. He sat me down and asked me to spill everything, so I did. He pulled up all of his class rosters to find me the perfect candidate, and that's when he landed on Aiden. He asked me if I knew him, but I didn't. He told me that Aiden was new at school, had a little sister he was really good to, and that he'd be a great option. So I buckled down to ask a boy I didn't even know to escort me to the school homecoming ceremony. The next day, in my first period class, my AP English teacher was calling out roll to take attendance. And then she said his name. He had been in my first block class the whole first semester and I had no clue. Sadly, he wasn't there that day. The next day, he was. And at the end of class, I called out to him and said, "I need to talk to you in third block," which was the next class we had together (that I also didn't know about until my choir teacher had told me). He said "okay," confused, and when I saw him in that next class, it came out like word vomit. Useless rambling of saying "you don't have to," "don't do it out of pity," "I know we don't know each other," but he cut right through it and said "Yeah, I'll do it." We exchanged numbers, and then I was called out of class to go to my great grandmother's funeral. Come to find out, he was absent the day before to put his sweet family dog, Ginger, to rest. We started texting to get to know one another and so I could give him logistics for the homecoming activities, but it soon became more. He was funny, he was interesting, and he was so very sweet. Suddenly, I didn't want to keep this random boy at a distance or even barricaded out of my life. Those walls I had built came crumbling down, and all he had to do was be himself. We spent a long month dancing around one another, then inevitably subtly hinted that we liked one another. It wasn't until a week after that, when he was walking me to Spanish class, that he asked me to be his girlfriend in the middle of the kind of casual conversation we'd had a million times before. That sealed our lives together. Part of me believes the losses we experienced shortly before and after meeting were, in a strange and beautiful way, a rebirth for something lasting and true: us. We have already built a forever together. This marriage will simply be the name we give it. Aiden and I cannot wait to celebrate with you and include you in a day that already feels like home to us.