The year is 2020. Mikayla was in the final stretch of her military enlistment, serving on the front lines of COVID. A true hero, though she’ll never say it (and definitely isn't the one writing our love story). Mitchell was working as a highway engineer, navigating the wild world of teleworking and virtual meetings. With the Greater Boston Area essentially a ghost town, we flocked to the dating apps like most single twenty-somethings searching for social interaction (or at the very least, someone to text who wasn’t a coworker or roommate). After swiping right and some flirty banter, we were eager to meet. Naturally, before meeting a complete stranger in real life, Mikayla did the responsible thing: ran a full background check via her roommates. As fate would have it, they actually knew him! They went to the same college and had a handful of mutual friends. So of course, they gave her the full scoop and he passed with flying colors. With the official roommate seal of approval, we threw caution (and maybe a few CDC guidelines) to the wind and decided to meet in person. Yes, we technically broke the rules of social distancing... but when you’ve got chemistry, curiosity, and months of quarantine-induced cabin fever, it’s hard to resist seeing where a spark might lead. And the rest is history! We met in a year that was devastating and chaotic for so many. But in the middle of all that uncertainty, something good found us. Now, we get to look back on that year not just as a difficult time, but as the beginning of something really special. Turns out, when the world was falling apart, we somehow found exactly the right person. Not bad for two people who met during lockdown and thought it might just be a quarantine fling. Spoiler alert: it’s forever.