You and Me

“You and Me”, the title of mine and my husband’s song.

I’m about to tell you what I think is one of the greatest love stories of all time. On the real, if they made a movie based on how we met and fell in love, it would be a hit. Fourteen years ago (holy crap), summer of 2005, I was about to go on a mission trip to Brazil when a member of our team dropped out last minute, and his place was taken by this guy I sorta knew named Efraim. While on this trip, we became friends and also found out we were going to the same tiny private college and had 3 classes together (talk about meant to be).

Anyway, first semester we were best friends, together all the time. There were lots of notes back and forth during class, lunches in the cafeteria, weekly movie nights and late nights writing papers together. A lot of people didn’t understand how we were just friends, and to be fair, I see it now, but we really were just best friends.

Second semester is when things started to change. Efraim says I tell a twisted version of the story, but my “version” is purely factual. January 19th, he shows up at my dorm and starts acting “strange”. Let me back up a second. I’m not a very touchy person; so, the whole time we were friends, we never even really hugged. The most contact we had was a special handshake. So, this night, January 19th, we were trying to read for class the next morning, and he kept staring at me. Then, before he left, he hugged me, twice. As soon as he left the dorm, my roommate turned around and asked, “What was that?” My response, “I don’t know, Kate. He’ll be fine tomorrow.” How very wrong I was. The next two weeks were full of “love taps” during class, having me listen to “love” songs he had just discovered, playing with my hair and even holding my hand on the drop of fear at the fair. Let’s also mention the moment he begged the fair worker to let us go one more round on the ferris wheel. These are just a few of the things he did.

While all of this is happening, I am totally clueless. I mean, I noticed he was acting strange, but I did not know why. We had a mutual friend who worked on campus, and she was the one who mentioned the idea of him “looking at me differently”, and she encouraged me to flirt back. In an attempt to do so, I told him his hair looked cool the next time I saw him. Our friend was not pleased with my attempt, stating that that was something she would say to him. I made a couple more attempts to flirt, but I was not very successful at it.

Finally, after two weeks of not knowing what was going on, his mother confronted me. We were at his sister’s bridal shower when his mother asked to talk to me before I left. My husband actually hates this part of the story, because he gets a little embarrassed by it (sorry Hunny), but I am so grateful for it. As I go to leave, his mother walks outside with me and tells me that he IS looking at me differently and encourages me to just be patient with him. With this new knowledge, I went back to my dorm and did a lot of thinking. I was nervous because if this didn’t work out, I could potentially lose my best friend. I also knew that he was someone I couldn’t see not having in my life. He was out of town that weekend with the youth group; so, it gave me a couple of days to think.

A couple days later, I was sitting outside of my dorm reading, and he met me there to go write a paper. He sat directly in front of me at the picnic table, and I started the conversation. I told him that we couldn’t be friends like this forever. We had had this conversation before because I knew that once one of us met someone, our relationship would have to change. He looked down for what seemed like forever then said, “You know I like you right?” I said yes. Then he said, “You’re what I want. Am I what you want?” Obviously I said yes. The date was January 30th, 2006. We’ve been together since, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So many things have changed in the last 13 years; there’s been a lot of life, most of it great, some of it not so great. No matter what, this man is my partner and best friend, and I love him more than ever.

Happy (almost) Anniversary, Hunny! This first post is for you!