Let's get married!

A little over 3 years ago, I met Nick for the first time ever. Let me set the scene: Nick and I were 2 out of the 4 students from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville attending an all-SEC Student Government conference. We had to drive to the conference in a University mini-van from Knoxville to Lexington, Kentucky- so the mini-van is where I'll start. I was sitting in the very back seat when Nick climbed into the seat in front of me. We sort of introduced ourselves like you would when you meet someone new but don't really need to have a conversation about it. Very casual. Little did we know! Soon after the drive began, I asked Nick for his pillow. He handed me the pillow, and I thought I might have overstepped based on the look I got. I was tired and hungry so I didn't really care. I proceeded to make myself at home with his pillow and opened the jar of peanut butter I had been eating all week. As I started to scoop out the peanut butter, it was clear that everyone could smell it. I don't really remember, but Nick probably said something like, "iS tHaT PeANuT ButTeR???". We got to the hotel and basically hung out with just each other the whole trip because we were with the busy student body president and vice president. Nick was so much fun and so easy to talk to, which I really admired. Spontaneous trips to Walgreens, talking about whatever, and watching movies, all made us fast friends. I thought it was great and I thought Nick was cool and all, but I was all caught up in my own things until a few months after we met. Long story short-- Nick ghosted me until we hung out at the library every night till 4 am. Then we decided to go ahead and get married. Turns out, he is still fun, easy to talk to, and so much more than I could have imagined. He has since shared so much more than his pillow! 😂

It was the summer before my Junior year of college. I got asked to go to a conference at the University of Kentucky for student government last minute, and I was not sure if I would be able to make it. By the grace of God, my manager in my internship told me I was free to take that Friday off. I drove to Knoxville and began loading things into the van. The three other people on the trip, Abigail Brumfield, Haley Paige, and Ovi Kabir, were all people I had known for years. The 4th person on the trip I hadn’t met before. Plot twist—it was my future wife. We all loaded up into the van to leave, and there was this girl in the back seat with her shoes already off eating organic peanut butter out of a jar with her finger. I thought this was a little weird, but she was cute so I gave it a pass. Then, an hour into the drive, she asked me for my pillow. What kind of stranger asks another stranger to use their pillow? Without a response ready, I handed it over. Once we got to Kentucky, we all got more familiar. The girl with the peanut butter? Only eating that way because she was doing the Whole 30 diet. However, that didn’t change when the diet stopped, but I digressJ. As the only two people in the group under the age of 21, we got left behind when everyone else went out at night to the bars by campus. This turned into running to Walgreens to get hotel snacks and watching many, many horror movies, followed by Mamma Mia to help release some of the accumulated fear. We got to know each other through hanging out so much over the course of the weekend. I texted two of my closest friends during this, Sarah Rosenthal and Emily Stadnick, that I had met the most amazing girl. Someone who was funny, down to earth, very smart, and super driven...

I told them “I already have feelings bad”. Upon learning that she had just gotten out of a relationship, Sarah responded to a picture of us with a cropped photo of my face captioned, “The face of a boy in deep shit”. She was right, I was. I decided to let things play out slowly. A few months later, we started talking about going to see a horror movie that just came out. Not sure if it was a date, we both went. She wouldn’t let me pay, making it pretty clear it was not a date. We went to Cookout after, and following some awkward conversations, I was sure I had scared her off. This was confirmed when she didn’t talk to me for a month. Annelise claims I ghosted her, but it was definitely the other way around. Don’t let her tell you those lies! Finally, exams rolled around, and we began to study together. It wasn’t particularly productive studying, and my grades reflected that, but in hindsight, things turned out alright. We would hang out in the library talking until 3 AM. When Christmas break rolled around, Annelise came to visit me at 1 AM on Christmas Eve (or Christmas morning, if you want to get into technicalities) to celebrate my birthday. We decided to go on a ‘not-a-date’ date ice skating and eating tacos in Nashville in the following days. It’s called a ‘not-a-date’ date because she made it extremely, abundantly clear that this was not a date. We both agree now, it was a date. In the following weeks, we (she) decided that our relationship shouldn’t continue. That lasted all of 3 days before we decided to give ‘officially’ dating a try. It seems to have worked, but the jury comes back on October 10. Until then, I’m happy where I am with my best friend.