“CHRISTY!”, cried Geoff as a quiet, though seemingly confident girl strode over, immediately belonging to the group.

Since I was new, he introduced her to me . . . enthusiastically! She was “Christy Maynard” from the 5th floor, and apparently everyone on the 4th floor was friends with her. It was odd. She barely stood out except for the purple corduroys she was wearing. But Geoff was acting like the party just started as Christy pulled up.

“Hey.”

“. . . Hi! I’m Joe.”

Hmm.

The conversation just moved along and now she was a part of it. Despite the bruhaha at her arrival, everything went on as it did before she was there.

I often wonder why she seemed so unremarkable given everything there is to her, but I’m guessing it had something to do with the fact that both of us were married. I wasn’t looking deeply. Don’t get me wrong; I saw a pretty face. It was always smiling. She was friendly. But beyond the plutonic, there was no reason to consider her. We were married to others.

I blame friendship, though. Ya see, while we were completely new to each other, our interests just always had us ending up in the same place. Even our bosses had us working together regularly. It was only natural that we’d become friends.

We always had something to talk about. We were always happy to see each other. I didn’t know why conversation was so plentiful and easy between us, but it always was.

Part of it could have just been that we just understood each other. Literally.

A guy in my department asked me one day if I would come to a meeting he was attending with her. I agreed and asked him why he wanted me there and he paused a moment before looking me in the eye saying:

“You speak Christy...”

To this day, I laugh at that. I remember it as one of those moments where I realized how close we might be. Not physically close, but close like siblings or best friends that grew up on the same street and hung out after school before their parents came home.

We were friends. That’s all we could be, so that’s what we were. Until we were more.

Looking back, it’s almost conspiratorial how the universe directed us... If you watched the whole series from the beginning, anyone witnessing our laughter . . . our familiarity . . . our effortless calm around one another . . . might have guessed where we’d end up even though it should have never happened.

But it did.

We played pinball and Bocce.

We set up Stay Puft at work on Halloween.

We listened to music from Disney movies.

We hung from hooks to scare people at the Haunted Mill events.

We were each other’s party partner so we always had someone to talk to.

She held my head up as my family fell apart, picking up and holding together every piece of me.

We bought a dragon and lots of incense.

We went to Indian Brook.

We chopped wood and made fires.

She loved my dogs so we bought some more.

We considered and decided against camping several times.

She made us delicious food.

Sending reels and videos on our phones is our love language.

We raised our boys ready to be men.

We kiss each other good night three times every night. If not, we start over.

I trust her to build and modify whatever she wants in our home because it's always nicer.

She let me mount a huge ugly monitor to our living room wall so we could be together while we relax doing our own things.

Maybe we just had the things the other needed in order to find a person interesting and that’s why we zigged to each other when we would have otherwise zagged. Maybe it was because despite our busy or serious side, what stood out to us were the souls of a couple of bumbling kids reaching out to each other in passing, just barely able to reach each other before spiraling away.

Whatever it was, we’re together now, and we invite you to celebrate us giving this cosmic accident permanence.