It is pretty funny looking back three and a half years, wondering how to write our story when the story itself feels inevitable now. There were so many nuances that led up to Justin & me falling in love, none of them apparent to the writer in the room (me) as they were happening.

When I moved back from Chicago four and a half years ago Claire made sure that I had a landing pad of acquaintances to hang around with. Justin and I were the siblings on the exterior of the group, invited because we shared an apartment or a house with the real “group of friends” and over time that commonality drew us together.

Fast forward six months after my move back and I’m being forced to a New Year’s party Claire wasn’t even going to be at. “Kyle will make sure you have fun”. This the dreaded line that has caused hundreds of hangovers for people around the world. I walked into Jen and Justin’s apartment (not the first time we met, but really the first time we paid attention to each other), and immediately decided to crack a joke at Justin’s expense...what’s the joke you ask?

Meredith: “Hey Justin, your girlfriend not want to hang out with you tonight?”

Justin: “We broke up.”

Crickets.

Needless to say I was irresistible from that point on…hardly. That evening, our first kiss at midnight, was nothing more than hilarious and no matter how hard he tried, Justin couldn’t get rid of me. Our friendship developed over the next few months as we got more and more excited about Jen & Kyle’s wedding and our group of friends continued inviting the now single siblings out to have fun.

I did something I was completely not ready for in March…I bought a house. Not a new house or a house that needed only a few minor updates. I bought a 100 year old fixer upper. And I’m not handy. After excessively celebrating Catherine’s 21st birthday for 2 days in May, I finally moved in Memorial Day weekend and that is when this actual story begins.

Drink in excess for a few days and then move across town the following morning at 9am. If you’re like me by late afternoon you pretty much want to pass out for the next month. Well, that was my plan after a dinner of mac and cheese, only my stove wouldn’t light. My parents were concerned there could be gas leaking into the house, and the options given were either Dad drives 45 minutes back to Lakewood to save me or I call Justin. To this day no one can answer why he involved Justin. Why he didn’t just tell me to order a pizza and we’ll look at it in the morning. But those were my two options.

For a guy who still barely knew me, he didn’t hesitate to drop all of his plans on a Saturday night and come over to take my stove top apart piece by piece, clean it meticulously, and get all 4 burners working again. Oddly enough, after that fun task, he pretty much refused to leave. What do you do when you’re laying contact paper in your kitchen cabinets while an almost stranger cleans; you talk, and you talk, and you talk. By the end of the night we were a bit drunk, I had two pictures hung (crookedly…thanks beer), but the house itself wasn’t falling down anymore and the boxes that got unpacked kept the conversation going.

In our small group of friends 3 of the 6 of us have a birthday within a 5 day period. Catherine was just the start that weekend. The following day, as we peddle biked around Ohio City to celebrate Kyle, the only person I was talking to (when Chris wasn’t yelling at me to peddle faster…or just peddle) was Justin. And the snowball had started accumulating. That summer was the best I’ve ever had. The Cavs won the NBA Championship, I got a new best friend, and I fell in love with him. We capped it all off by celebrating the 1st of many Sandy Baller weddings in September.

Fast forward almost three years, and in front of a new stove (that old one only lasted another 6 months), Justin got down on one knee, in the old fixer-upper we now shared, and asked me to marry him.

It is happy coincidence that the second Sandy Baller wedding is taking place Memorial Day weekend 2020, four amazing years after that fateful night when everything started to break.