One beautiful, sunny day in Virginia Beach, Ariana Pybus of the famed “Nautical Pybuses” (Pybii, in scientific terms) ventured to a local eatery with her close friend Kai, to partake in anglicized and co-opted Hawaiian food. As fortune would have it, another friend of Kai, Blake Copple, prodigal son to the Copple Clan of Idaho, about whom the hit series “Yellow Stone” is loosely based, happened to forget how to make cheese and crackers that day and decided to procure sustenance from the same restaurant.

While Ariana and Kai imbibed the poly-asian fusion cuisine and prattled about latest Navy Times article featuring a fired submarine Commander, in strode Blake, brimming with confidence and a piercing focus on his mission to satiate his growling tummy. He was, after all, a hungry little Sea, Air, and Land Commando.

Upon scanning the room for threats, Blake spotted his good friend Kai and her shapely interlocutor and, with deftness befitting of his tactical prowess, flexed his mission from capture/kill of sugar-coated pseudo-donuts to tactical interrogation of Kai’s lunch date.

After cursory hello’s and small talk, Blake attempted his best conversational moves on the comely Ms. Pybus, which consisted mostly of him making humble brags about expertise in esoteric interests such as cats, astro-physics, and home-built, 3-axis flight simulators that take up entire guest rooms in one’s apartment.

Though intrigued by the Blake’s clear command-presence, Ariana was not to be out-nerded, and deftly parried Blake’s advances with keen conversational swordplay. Namely by asserting her cat could beat up Blake’s cat, astro-physics was something she did as a hobby and it really wasn’t all that cool, and, channeling her inherited motherly instincts, waxing bucolic on the merits of keeping a guest room open for, wait for it… guests.

Well, that settled it. Blake was in love. But, the apple bottom of his eye, Ariana, was playing somewhat coy. Blake knew he needed something. A grand act of romance or heroism to show his worth as a lifetime partner and provider… shockingly, the 3-axis, homebuilt flight simulator had not done the trick.

Blake’s dare-to-be-great moment finally appeared and, ever the opportunist, he pounced on it like he pounced on those malasadas at Aloha Snacks when first they met.

One day at the beach, while the pair of math-crossed lovers were attempting to impersonate a reasonable facsimile of people learning to surf, they heard a desperate cry for help among the crash of the waves. An adolescent boy was drowning in the impact zone!

Ariana was first on scene, but her David Hasselhof impression was even less convincing than her surfer impression and was providing the drowning boy little more than a laughable memory to carry with him to the afterlife.

Blake, realizing he wasn’t even paddling the board right side up, made the wise decision to ditch the board and leverage his talents as a collegiate swimmer. Suddenly disencumbered from the ungainly board, Blake cut through the waves like a neoprene coated torpedo and was alongside the flailing teen in an instant.

Blake, now helped by Ariana who, after realizing how embarrassed her Navy Seal Admiral father would be of her performance thus far, had remembered how to swim, and the two dragged the young man to shore, valiantly braving the cold, crashing, waves, and stoically leaving their friend Matt to gather up the borrowed boards they had let drift down the beach.

As Blake carried his charge up to dry sand, his eyes met Ariana’s and he realized she was still on the fence about him. He needed to seal (get it?) the deal. So, he plopped the erstwhile drowner on the sand and before the kid could say “thank you”, proceeded to administer a textbook example of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the very surprised teen.

Some call him a hero. I think that’s accurate. And so does Ariana. From that day forward, Ariana and Blake were fully, madly, and heroically in love. A love born of the gauntlet of applied and theoretical physics; forged in the crucible of shared late night, coffee-powered JPME courses they took voluntarily; buoyed by bravery and selflessness; and sealed in the shared financial burden of a fiscally dubious and perpetually under-construction adventure van.

Our world is truly a better place because of their love.