I walked into my first college class without any masks in the fall of 2021. Little did I know one of those faces was my future husband! Soon, I met the guy sitting behind me, a talkative blonde from Hinton. So, the "Hinton kid" remained in my periphery for two years. He was sweet but seemed pretty silly, a little annoying, and not serious about his faith. He talked all through Ash Wednesday mass!

I returned from a co-op at Collins Aerospace in the spring of 2023, and the Hinton kid sat next to me in Every. Single. Class. we had together. Oh, boy. I needed to shut this down if he had a crush on me. But weeks went by, and he didn't make a move. Then, as I was eating my lunch by myself during my one break between classes, he sat next to me, totally uninvited, and started talking to me. I realized he was not silly but serious, kind, thoughtful, and fun.

We kept having deep conversations and talked for hours after class while working on homework. Slowly but surely, I became more attracted to him, but he hadn't asked me out, so I assumed he wasn't interested. Then, we spent ALL day together on a Tuesday. I decided that the next day, I was going to tell him, "Either you ask me out, or we need to set some boundaries." We had lunch the next day during our break between classes, and as we were walking to our last class of the day,

Gabe turned to me and said, "Erin Cleary, would you give me the honor of going out with me?"

I said, "Yes, Gabe Clark, I'd love to go out with you."