It’s finally happening!

Hurricane Sandy raced up the East Coast toward New York City. At the same time a romance was swirling! We met in Brooklyn, NY, October 28, 2012. Chris was on tour with Ryan Cabrera, a teen heartthrob a lot of you early 2000 teenie boppers will remember, and I was following along one of my friends. But my eyes were on another dreamboat, the one in the jean vest and the fashion mullet. I am notoriously bad at flirting, but I tried my hand at my version of it while we chain smoked cigarettes between rooftop bars and taxi cabs.

I didn’t propose to him in some elaborate way, the type of way that played over and over again in my head like a corny romance movie. I planned it to be a little more romantic, captured on camera outside the place we had our first full conversation, the conversation about what a pipe dream love is and how it’s not real, in between puffs of chain smoked cigarettes. The place nestled in the lower streets of Brooklyn, the part of New York that is more brick than skyscraper. But we took a trip to NYC a couple months ago, six and a half years after our “love isn’t real” conversation, kept the ring in my pocket the whole time. I had every intention of getting down on one knee, grabbing his hand, asking if he’d marry me, filming it, anticipated the clapping of onlookers walking by, but the weather had other plans. It was a freezer burning negative ten degrees. So we took a train to somewhere we’ve never been before, somewhere so close to Manhattan we probably were still in it. It was a vegan Chinese food restaurant. How different we are now, we’ve grown healthy together, we don’t smoke cigarettes or eat meat. I put the ring on the table and said “maybe it’s time we.. make this thing official?” I could barely get the words out, I was trying to play it cool but my eyes were welling with tears... and so were his. It’s funny how things tend to work out.. it didn’t go as planned but it went exactly the way it should have. I am just that type of person, the type of person to put a ring on a table and pretend to be nonchalant. And he’s just the type of person that knows better and says “yes”.-Jenny