The sweetest love story starts with the sweetest boy moving across the country into my western mountain neighborhood in second grade. My earliest memory of him involves worms being thrown at me on the playground one rainy day. To tell you the truth though, I think he was just standing by another child who was doing the throwing. Memories are tricky like that. Guilty by association, nonetheless.

Fast forward ten years and hundreds of encounters later; first as acquaintances, then Sophomore lab partners, and then best friends. This boy is still the sweetest, but now I know that he is also hilarious, smart, creative, patient, loyal, honest, and kind. He is giving me a necklace for my eighteenth birthday. He is telling me he loves me and is going to miss me. Always the Southern gentleman, he helps me load up my car and waves me away from my childhood home and town, a bittersweet milestone for sure.

As a busy, energetic, involved college student in a new sea of acquaintances, then friends, and even love interests, impossibly, the sweetest boy is fading. Distance is tricky like that. He attends his classes, and I attend mine. He has his overseas adventures, and I have mine.

Years later we reconnected. The sweetest boy knows this is his chance. I am so glad he took it and I said yes. After all, it has been 14 years now since the worm throwing scandal.

Fast forward sixteen years more, twelve addresses, eight countries, five states, three beautiful children, many adventures, a few cries, but countless laughs later and I am so thankful that I fell in love with my best friend, the sweetest boy.