Looking back at me through the rearview mirror, driving us around in his blue 1988 Toyota Corolla station wagon, I returned the gaze, mutual attraction, a smile, awkwardly glancing away and then back again. I knew I liked Chad from the start. Of course he was already involved with somebody else and time and circumstance would push us together through mutual friends, always somewhere in each others periphery, having grown up only blocks away from each other but attending different schools. It had always felt that we were always close to having a closer bond, but life had other plans for both of us, and pulled us away again.

Separate journeys, separate challenges, accomplishments and losses.

When I blew back into town in 2020 with help from the great Facebook and a dear mutual friend; the one and only Yadira, we reconnected at a crossroads for both of us. It was too soon for optics but it was right on time.

We started talking together on the phone, making video calls on Instagram and once we did talk again with each other, we have talked every day since.

From our first date in the mountains, where I tried to eat edamame whole, thinking I knew what I was doing, cool as could be, I then chose this night to tell Chad I always had a crush on him and I always regretting never telling him. He decided to kiss me. A year later I proposed on the same mountains and we built a little home, a way of being; and here we are now getting married, hopefully with you there.

-John