When you’ve been friends for nearly 20 years, it’s hard to remember where you had your first date, first kiss, or when the first “I love you” was said. Our love story is simply a story about friendship and friends becoming best friends and then becoming life partners. As with every story, there’s at least two versions. We agree on the basics, we met at WSHS and became really close friends during senior year. Alex remembers that they had a gym class together freshman year. Jamal, a little hazier on the details, remembers her as part of the crew. We both remember a significant escalation of our friendship the summer of 2005 before leaving for college. After high school, although we were miles apart (Alex in Nashville at Vanderbilt and Jamal in Tucson at the University of Arizona), we stayed very close. Our friends often joked about our frequent phone calls over the years. Those phone calls would turn into visits, which would often be memorable - like the time Jamal visited Nashville the same weekend the Willises happened to be in town and tried to unnecessarily and unsuccessfully sneak out of Alex’s dorm room. Or the time Alex came to Tucson and in true Jamal form, his roommate, Nashuan, kindly cooked for them the whole weekend. Over the years, we made sure to stay in contact with each other no matter where life took us. So, where our story diverges is how we grew to be more than friends. Jamal claims he was in the friend zone for 10 years despite his efforts. Alex maintains that is an exaggeration but acknowledges she was pretty opposed to long-distance relationships, so it was never really on her radar. Nonetheless, when we both found ourselves back home in Memphis in 2013, it became apparent that we were more than friends and we began a new phase of our relationship that eventually lead Jamal to propose last fall. Our life together in Memphis has brought us so many more memories, more love, and more joy. And 10.10.20 was a day we will forever cherish.