I flew home from Utah for Christmas. Along with the holidays, I was in town to be a Groom's-Lady for my friend Josh Payne, who was celebrating his marriage to Sara Tait on New Years Day of 2015. To get the celebrations started right, the wedding party along with a few select friends met on New Year's Eve for drinks, dinner, and to watch the ball drop in Knoxville's Market Square. Fortunately for me, Luke was one of the select friends invited to the party. After an evening of easy flowing conversation between us, I found myself looking for him to be in attendance during Josh's wedding the next day. Once the wedding concluded, we moved to Market Square to continue hanging out together. Eventually, the group dwindled down to just Luke and me. We talked and he gave me a ride home at the end of the evening saying, "Maybe I'll come out to see the Jazz play in Salt Lake City." After that, I got on a plane and went back to Utah, knowing that I had left more than just family and friends behind this time.

When I moved back to Knoxville from Dallas, I started hanging out with a friend from high school and some new friends he had made (all of these folks are wedding guests, but names have been withheld to protect the guilty. You know who you are). A name kept coming up in their conversations, as far as I could tell, they kept calling this person "Odd." Soon, I learned they meant "Aud," but someone was quick to point out that she was also "very odd, too." Mainly what I could glean about her is that she talked through movies (turns out this is false, you can't trust everything you hear). Fast forward to Josh and Sara’s wedding, which you know about because you’re a good little wedding guest who read Audra’s story first. I walked into Casual Pint downtown and I saw not “Odd,” but “Audra.” And I knew right away that any “oddness” she had would fit perfectly with mine. When Audra asked someone to go to the store for her, I went too. I made sure I sat next to Audra for dinner at Stock and Barrel. I bought her a glass of Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel (and maybe some other drinks too). And you can guess who I made sure I was standing next to at midnight. Together, by pretending to look for a dropped item, we found a moment of peace at “knee-level” in the crush of Market Square on New Year’s Eve. I wanted to kiss her, and she wanted me to kiss her, but she’ll tell you now that I made the right move by holding off. The next day, we spent the whole wedding together, and then we spent dinner afterwards together, and then it was just the 2 of us left at the Casual Pint, the same place we’d met the night before. We vaguely watched Ohio State beat Alabama as we talked the night away (so double victory there, how many Vol fans can say they met the love of their life AND got to watch Nick Saban lose in the same 24 hours?) The next day, she went back to Utah. I found myself falling for a woman who lived 1800 miles away on the other end of a phone line. And she worked nights. We went on a couple of dates (ask me about my guaranteed “get a girl to buy a plane ticket” story) over the next 8 months. Eventually, she took a job in Hopkinsville, KY (a mere 234 miles, we’ll take it), and had the crazy scheme to spend the relocation money on a driving tour of the American West, rather than a plane ticket. She told me all she needed was someone to do it with, and a friend had already turned her down (she lied, I was her first choice). So I guess she has a “guaranteed way to get a boy on a plane” too. I could go on for hours, but Zola has a 4,000 character limit for these stories. So I’ll just say that you learn a lot about a person on a 10-day road trip, especially when it’s your third date! You learn even more driving 438 miles round-trip every other weekend for two years. What I learned on that trip, and what I reinforced on all the others, is that this person is my person, has always been my person, and will always be my person, forever. And I’m very excited to share our Forever Day with all of you.