Before Sara and I even came into the picture, both of our grandpas had lake houses right on Lake Wisconsin that were one house apart from each other. They were good friends and would always play Gin Rummy together at each others house. My grandpa, Charlie Merkle, would enjoy a Brandy Manhattan on the rocks and Sara's grandpa, John Ingrassia, would have his Gin Martini with 2 Olives as they'd sit on the pier and watch the sunset and chat about life in the moment as old people like to do. Rest in Peace to both of them. Flash forward many many years to July 4th weekend in 2006, Sara and I met at those very same lake houses on the floating green raft that Grandpa Charlie built when we were both 10 years old. My sister, Maddy and I used to play a game when we were younger where, right before we would go to dinner, we would take an inflatable tube out to our green platform raft with all our dry clothes on and try not to fall in or get wet before dinner. One evening when we were playing our "game" before dinner, Sara, her older brother Zac, and his friend happened to be on their pier watching us paddle out to the platform. As soon as we got there and I hopped off, my sister thought it would be funny to leave me stranded on there with all my dry clothes on while she paddles the tube back to our pier. So naturally, I cause a scene and start jumping up and down, doing hand stands, and freaking out trying to get her to come back and get me. Meanwhile, Sara, Zac and his friend are watching from their pier wondering who the hell is the spaz on the raft going nuts. Eventually, Maddy came back and picked me up and we for some reason paddled right to their pier to introduce ourselves (as if I haven't done enough to embarrass myself yet). But, as the Belidas are, they were accepting, non-judgmental (at least to our faces) and happy to meet us, and we ended up hanging with them all weekend. The following years we would go to Wisconsin for our annual 4th of July trip every year and every year Sara's family would be up at the lake at the same time. As we got older, we all started to hang out more and Maddy and Sara became friends, Sara and I became friends, our parents started hanging out more, until eventually our annual Wisconsin trips revolved around seeing the Belidas that weekend. Once we got to high school, I would always bring my friend Bobby and she would bring her two friends Zoe and Kelly and we would all hang out, go on the pontoon, and steal booze from our parents whenever we possibly could. Every year I would text Sara months before the trip and make sure her and her friends were coming to the lake that year and we would make sure we would be going on the same weekend. Sara and I became very good friends during that time throughout high school and college. We would text each other sporadically throughout the year, I would drunk call her and leave her drunk voice messages in college (She still has them you should ask her about it), and we would just stay in contact until we got to finally see each other 4th of July weekend at the lake. And during those summers after college I would even go up to the lake twice for the 4th of July and the first weekend in August for their annual Belida weekend at the lake. Then finally, in the Summer of 2020 during Covid, we saw each other twice, once for the 4th and once in early August for Belida weekend. But the last day when I was about to leave I had a pit in my stomach knowing that I'm going back to Annapolis on the east coast and she's going back to LA on the west coast and I wouldn't see her again for another year and I felt like I couldn't be away from her again for that long and I had to do something about it... That's when I realized I fell in love with the girl next door...