We met in the summer before my sophomore and Mitch's freshman year of high school. He was joining marching band, and the week before band camp we met in an ice-breaker group where I decided I was going to go after him. At band camp and over the next month, I weaseled my way into passing interactions where I could sit one or two rows behind him at gatherings or help him choose the right size hat at uniform fittings (I signed up as a volunteer specifically to accomplish this task). Outside of these formative interactions, we did not actually talk. On September 7th, my friends Emily and Rebecca backed me up as I planned to make my move. I wrote and rewrote the same four words-- "Text me sometime! - Jamie"-- on a piece of notebook paper that I folded neatly and left on his unattended drum during a break at the football game that night. We waited in the stands as the band regrouped and he found the note, looking up and waving at me as I blushed and giggled with my friends. He tells me he didn't want to seem too eager, so he waited a full 24 hours to send me a text and kick things off. Our first date was two weeks later, where we made s'mores around a campfire and Mitch showed me a cabin he had built that summer in his backyard. We spent the next three years seeing each other at band and on most weekends. We got to know each others' friends and family. I left notes (written during class) in Mitch's locker, many of which were the lyrics to the most recent love song I'd heard. After getting in trouble with our parents for texting too much, we started talking on the phone every night before bed instead. We went to 2 homecomings, a Sadie Hawkins, and 3 proms. I graduated high school in 2015 and went to Miami for college. We had to learn to live two hours apart, and the nightly phone calls were the glue that kept us together. I walked laps around my residence hall at night while I told Mitch every thought I had had since we'd last spoken. When he graduated high school the next year and went to Cincinnati, he started doing the same thing. We drove to see each other on weekends to meet our friends and tour our haunts. In our college summers, we were both back in Dublin with our families, and we'd spend time in Mitch's backyard creek or watching my sister Sydney at her swim meets with my mom. After college graduation in 2019, choosing separate graduate schools (me in Toledo for med school and Mitch in Columbus for his master's) was hard, but we had faith that we could pursue our careers and tough out another two years long-distance. Virtual school during the pandemic meant we could spend more time together sooner, but when Mitch finished his master's, he joined me in Toledo where he found his first job. Reunited at last, our lives flourished when we adopted Pepper and could spend every evening on walks and every weekend at our favorite restaurant, Basil. I matched into pediatric residency in Cleveland after medical school, where we’ve been for two years now. In 2022, at the end of our 10-year anniversary date, Mitch asked me to marry him in the cabin at his parents’ house where we had our first date. The walls were lined with notes I’d written him and photos of us. He surprised me again the next night with a party full of family and friends. We’re planning a wedding that we hope will feel the same as that night, celebrating the loving life we have built together with the friends and family we built it with. All this as we promise to each other for the millionth time that we’ll be together forever.