It all started with a look. On a warm summer’s evening in 2017, the cast of Waco Civic Theatre’s Hairspray were having their first music workshop. As Joey sat with the baritones, in walked one Lexie Rains. Joey was instantly smitten. Over the course of the week’s rehearsals, Joey would constantly steal glances from across the room to try and determine her eye color, his best guess being “beautiful”. Despite their mutual attraction, the two never interacted at rehearsals until one chance night when a mutual friend organized an after-run trip to Schlotzky’s Sandwich Shop, to which both Lexie and Joey were invited. There, the two finally exchanged words, and Joey, a nightly (if perhaps unwilling) host to several other thespians in their production, invited Lexie over to his apartment (coincidentally, in the same complex as Lexie’s) to join them in merriment. The two got to know each other better (Joey being careful not to overplay his hand by only telling Lexie she was a “9/10”, Lexie being relieved that Joey was in fact not in high school and actually seven months older than her). The rest of the summer involved pool parties, fire pits, snapchats, and text messages until finally, the two went on their first official, serious, non-casual date: a fancy dinner, a tour of the Hooper Schafer Arts Building, and listening to showtunes in the car.

When you’ve been dating for six years, a week long trip to the Cayman Islands can really only mean one thing. For Lexie and Joey, it was no different - and they both knew it. When they got off that plane, it was abundantly clear what that trip was going to entail, and that suited the both of them just fine. So, why not get it out of the way early and enjoy the rest of the trip? So it was, on the second day of their vacation… that Joey found himself woefully underprepared. As it turns out, it was quite difficult organizing a gorgeous proposal from overseas, and even harder to enact what little plans he had foolhardily cooked up using tourism websites and brochure descriptions (both famously quite reliable and truthful). The beautiful ocean-facing balcony of their beach villa… in reality faced some bushes and a line of air-conditioning units. The island’s gorgeous botanical gardens… boiled under the beating tropical sun. The long dock on a private beach, overlooking the pastel setting sun… was regularly occupied by three local anglers, a Bluetooth speaker, and a cooler of Caybrew. Golden Hour and Sunset… were in fact two different things that occurred at two different times and looked two different ways. Man had planned, and the Universe had laughed, yet Man persisted. Determined to give Lexie a memory she could treasure, Joey raced all over town to make sure that what he could control was perfect. Lexie meanwhile, not at all oblivious to the source of her long-term boyfriend’s anxieties, did her make-up, curled her hair, and donned a beautiful green dress (she had a pretty good hunch they’d be taking a few pictures that evening). Finally, when the preparations were complete, Joey went back into the villa and asked Lexie if she could take a walk with him. The two were crying before they even made it out the door. To a piano version of Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams (Come True)”, Joey led Lexie down a trail of rose petals. They followed the trail, past the island’s wild chicken’s and scurrying curly-tailed lizards, to a quiet corner of the private beach, upon which were some beach towels, an ice bucket cooling a bottle of the island’s finest champagne, and a vase of yellow Texas Roses. There, Joey pulled out a speech he had written weeks before, reading it through tears to ensure that not a single thing was left unsaid. At the end, he got down on one knee and asked Lexie if she would make him the happiest fella in the world. Her answer was pretty swell.