It all started in a high school nutrition line. I was a junior, and Kyle was a sophomore. One morning, a friend asked me to stand in line with her before class. I almost said no, but eventually gave in, and somehow, out of all the lines we could have chosen that morning, we ended up in his. At first, I wasn’t paying much attention. I was probably staring at my phone like every other high schooler at 9 a.m. But at one point, I looked up and saw him for the first time, and to this day, I still don’t know how else to explain it other than the world completely stopped for a second. As dramatic as it sounds, I remember instantly feeling drawn to him. Before he even knew I existed, I already knew there was something different about him. It felt like one of those moments movies exaggerate until it suddenly happens to you. The bell rang, and my friend and I started walking toward our lockers. The entire time, I kept glancing back just to make sure I could still see him. I had this strange feeling that if I looked away for too long, I might never see him again. Then I noticed he was walking the same direction as us, and I immediately started panicking a little. Instead of going to my own locker, I followed my friend to hers so I could secretly figure out where he was headed. Somehow, his locker ended up being only two lockers away from mine. Even better, his class was right next to mine too. At that point, it felt a little too coincidental not to mean something. I told my friend I needed to know who he was, and since they had gone to school together before, she gave me his Instagram. I made a deal with myself that if I followed him and he followed me back, I would message him first. At sixteen, that felt terrifying. I genuinely didn’t think he would follow me back, but he did. We started talking, although in the beginning I was convinced he wasn’t interested. He had a habit of disappearing mid-conversation, only to text me again the next day like nothing happened (turns out he just had soccer practice). Eventually, after a few days of awkward teenage overthinking and mixed signals, our conversations faded out for a little while. Then, on my birthday, he texted me “Happy Birthday.” It caught me completely off guard because during those first conversations, we had only talked about little things like favorite colors, music, and birthdays. I never thought he had actually remembered mine, but he did. Somehow, that simple message changed everything. After that, we started spending lunch together at school, which slowly turned into after-school Jamba Juice runs, trips to Disneyland, and late-night movie marathons. Somewhere between all the long conversations, laughing until we couldn’t breathe, and finding every excuse possible to spend another hour together, we stopped feeling like two high school kids with a crush and started feeling like home to each other. What began as one random morning in a nutrition line became the kind of love story I used to daydream about without ever really believing would happen to me, and on May 23rd 2017, we made it official. Years later, after growing up side by side through every version of ourselves, we’re still choosing each other every single day, and now we finally get to spend forever together too.