It was July, 2021. The summer of COVID-19, Delta variant. But also, as Kevin and I were about to find out: the summer of love. My friend, Emily, invited me to come up to her dad's lake house in Elkhorn, WI for the day and I quickly accepted. Who doesn't love drinking seltzers on a pontoon boat at 10am on a scorching hot day? Emily told me on the way up that also joining us were her dad's newish girlfriend and two of her sons. I barely registered the information as I was too busy daydreaming about the sunshine and getting out of dodge for 24 hours. When we arrived, I climbed onto the boat and was handed a beverage but there was only one seat available - next to one of her sons...Kaleb. Karl? It was Kevin. We started chatting and I quickly found out that Kevin liked to cook. Like, really liked to cook. He had recently tried making beef wellington for the first time, but alas, it didn't turn out the best because there was a gap between the puff pastry and the meat - actually, that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say, my interest was piqued. Later that day, I made sure he was invited with a group of us to hang out at a nearby restaurant where on the way we talked about Star Wars and which of the series were our favorites. Apparently, that was the moment Kevin's own interest was piqued because it turns out there just aren't that many chicks into Star Wars. Who knew? After a dinner of numerous bratwursts, potato salad, and many more seltzers amongst the large group, Kevin proceeded to start washing all the dinner dishes. BY HIMSELF. WITHOUT BEING ASKED. I believe I might have actually swooned at that point. But I did my best to play it cool until we all headed out in the moonlight for one last boat ride. We blasted Celine Dion's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" and sang at the top of our lungs with no one nailing the lyrics or notes better than Kevin. That night we shared our first kiss on the water and exchanged numbers the next day. And that was the start of a beautiful and very unexpected romance.