If you ever ask either of us “when did we first meet each other", we'll both give you the same answer "In the SVA library during our senior year, just weeks before covid shut everything down”. Which was the day we both noticed each other for the very 1st time. Because we had technically met back in 2016 as freshmen, but I can't say we had ever spoken, I knew he existed, like I remember a day when he and I were part of a small group hanging out in the gazebo, but I can't say the same for him. It was February 17, 2020, we had just had the Roller Skating Banquet the previous day and I was in the library during 2nd period telling our mutual friend Amber all about it. When Gabe walks in to see Amber. Now typically me being shy, I would have stopped talking when someone I'm not close with walks up to us. But I had seen who came in and I figured "it's just Gabe, he's chill, and honestly probably wouldn't know what I was talking about anyways" so I continued telling Amber the story. Now since most people see me as shy there is one thing most people don't know about me, and that is that I love to talk and I talk very very fast. So I was full speed talking with Amber who was quietly listening and knitting during my rant. About 2 or 3 minutes after Gabe joined us my eyes happened to glance over at him. And at that very moment he was just staring at me with this look of fascination and amazement in his eyes. It was like he was mesmerized. That's when the spark hit both of us. I can't describe it, but there was just this feeling between us at that very moment that couldn't be explained. I fully look at him and squint my eyes "what?" He was like "it's just...you were talking...and talking so fast...and I just couldn't keep up with you...yet Ambers over here knitting and understanding every word you were saying" I smile at him and thought "he's different, most people when they hear me talk for the 1st time typically say "you can talk?!" like I'm mute or something". Now he had come to the library to hangout for a bit, but was supposed to also go to the dorm and do laundry during that period. But I had continued talking, and he for some strange reason could not pull himself away. It was just too intriguing to listen to me talk. At one point it was getting close to the end of the period so we asked him "aren't you supposed to be doing laundry?" he's like "I am..but I don't wanna go, I wanna stay here and listen, but I know I need to go though" we tell him "you should go do laundry" he's like "I know, but I wanna stay…okay...fine…I'll go do laundry” He pauses for a moment and then says “Are you gonna be here later?" He looked at me with such sparks in his eyes. I tell him I should be around later, and he's like "okay I'm gonna go do laundry, ill be back later to listen some more" He then struggles to leave, but eventually makes it out of the library. I look at Amber "that was strange". We didn't know it back then, but that was just the beginning of our story. Shortly after that I asked Gabe to be my partner for our religion class marriage project. Which ended up being rather fun to do together. We enjoyed talking for hours over the phone while we worked on it. And we even had a funny moment during a group video call where he fake proposed to me. What's crazy is that we never would have thought that 5 years later we'd be getting married for real. A year after we graduated high school we both ended up at SAU, the College neither of us were supposed to originally go to. There we both would hang out with the same mutual friends all the time. We hit it off rather quickly, and one day he asked me out on a date, a few weeks later we ended up at a little waterfall in Alabama where he asked me to be his girlfriend. Which was definitely a sneak peek of when he'd pop the big question in the future. Because almost 4 years later on May 3rd, 2025 we ended up at Swallow Falls State Park in front of a beautiful waterfall, and we left engaged that day.

https://youtube.com/shorts/uCLIWXrw_nU