“Who is this guy in the baby blue button-down shirt and grey pants?” I thought as I turned around to look behind me at 7:30 a.m. in the breakfast taco line. We had to be there for yet another all-day Saturday Teach for America training in a random high school cafeteria. Some eyewitness accounts say I cut the line *ahem, Abhinav* but I don’t think that I did. And if I did, I was a year ahead of him in our corps and he should respect his elders… Everyone looked sleep deprived and grumpy, but he was joking and making people laugh. His energy was magnetic; his big, white smile drew me in. He looks cute, I thought. My friends and I were going to go dancing and get drinks later that night, so I invited him along because I wanted to learn more about him. Several weeks later, I asked him out on our first official date at a Thai place (even though I don’t like Thai food… he was relieved to learn that I love Indian food). He picked me up in a baby blue Toyota and he told me all about his favorite books, including Candide by Voltaire. He rubbed it in that even though I was the English major and teacher, he had read more books than me (still debatable). Around Christmas he got me a pair of giraffe socks for running that I’ve held on to all these years. He drove over an hour to come visit me at my place in Harlingen, TX for several visits.

When I moved to Austin, we went our separate ways, but we kept in touch. It was November when he called me up. “Guess what? I got into medical school.” I am not an arts and crafts person, but I got to work making him a special card with his “first white coat", which he kept on his wall all through medical school. He called me up during his first year to talk about the tribulations of medical school – studying all the nasty forms of malaria – how the days were long and the weeks were short (like him). I kept wondering about him.

When I decided to apply to Texas Tech El Paso, in the essay on why I wanted to attend there I wrote a line about how my friend, Abhinav Mishra, went there. When I was accepted, we re-connected. I made him a dinner of asparagus and salmon and the rest was history.

To anyone out there reading this, let our story inspire you that someone can, in fact, be “un-friend-zoned.” I realized that I wanted my best friend to be my life partner, and with that leap I was risking losing him for good if things didn’t work out. Well, lucky for us, they did. I told him we were officially dating on February 9th, 2021. I told him we were getting married on November 27th, 2022. Coincidentally, we will be getting officially married one year later, November 27th, 2023, also the 70th anniversary of his grandparents’ marriage. We will be getting married again on May 26th, 2023. Notice a pattern? I did, in fact, let him choose when to propose though!