I didn't know Johnny very well, but I had seen him around campus and at many of the events I attended. Sometime around my sophomore or junior year I realized I hadn't seen him around in awhile.
But suddenly, one day, as I was crossing the field that separated my house from campus, I spotted him coming down the self same sidewalk I was heading for.
"Hi Emily!"
"Hey Johnny!"
And that was our relationship up until spring of my junior year.
My by-then-ex-boyfriend was turning 22 and a group of our friends was throwing him a palindrome birthday party at one of the houses on campus and both Johnny and I were invited. Some wonderful person who purchased the appetizers for this party had gotten both mild and hot salsa. No one, and I mean NO ONE, was touching the hot salsa unless it was to move it out of the way of the mild salsa. Now personally, I love spicy stuff, so every now and again I would stop at the food table and snag some. One of those pit stops found me shoulder to shoulder with Johnny, who to my surprise was also dipping into the hot salsa! We had a conversation as we stood there stuffing our faces about how much we both like spicy stuff and that we should go to Buffalo Wild Wings together sometime (with a group, of course, as I had a boyfriend at the time) and right then and there a friendship was born.
The years went by and Johnny and I remained BDubs buddies, even after graduation had passed, and I moved to Connecticut, and then moved back, and we never saw each other but we kept in touch.
Then one day Johnny updated his status on that social network we all call Facebook, which by this time had undergone many changes since the day I joined all those many moons ago. It said "Who wants to go see Iron Man 2 with me?" (or something like that...). Some other girl said she'd go, but my comment read "Pick Me! Pick Me!"
Later that day I got a phone call from Johnny asking me if I wanted to meet up with him at a mall roughly halfway between our two towns to see Iron Man. Seeing as how he and I had been saying for years that we needed to get together soon of course I said yes.
Fast forward a year and a half.
Johnny and I had a marvelous time at that movie. A month later we got together again a couple of times and decided to take the plunge and try dating. Four months later we were engaged. And eleven months after that we were married.
And now, after one entire month of marriage, even if we drive each other crazy sometimes and are still getting to understand each other's quirks, we're still madly in love and in it for the long haul. And compared to some people, one month is a long time! ;-)
And they lived happily ever after.
The Beginning.
