Zachary and I met on the day of the Astros World Series parade, November 3, 2017- but we actually weren’t at the parade; we were at school. The district had made school optional, and all of our friends were going to the parade. We begged our moms to let us skip, but they still made us go to class. Since there were barely any students at school that day, our teachers let us make the most of our time. In English class, Zachary and I slipped into the hall and started throwing paper airplanes to pass the time. Months of chatting later, we made our relationship official just over eight years ago, on February 11, 2018. When we headed off to two different colleges, neither of us thought twice about staying together long distance. We spent four years in two different cities, taking turns traveling every few weeks to visit one another. Zachary would visit me at A&M, and I would visit UT. When college came to a close, Zachary was given a job offer with the option to choose between Houston and Austin. We both decided Austin, TX was where we wanted to begin our post-grad years, so I moved to Austin. We ended up living on the same street, just a few houses down from each other. These last two years have been such a joy- closing our chapter of long distance and watching our dream of a future together slowly turn into our everyday reality.