From Bridget’s POV:

The first semester of college wasn’t quite as smooth of a transition as I hoped it’d be. Going from high school where I was surrounded by friends and living with my family to moving to a new place and starting from scratch on the friend front was hard. A few months into first semester, I opened up to a new friend from my dorm, Abby, and shared how I was struggling. Lucky for me, she had plans that night to hang out with some of her friends at Durfee Hall, the all boys dorm on campus, and invited me along. A couple hours later, Nic walked down the road to pick Abby and I up to hang out with a bunch of other guys in his dorm room.

About a month later after returning from winter break where Nic and I started texting, I began to pick up hints that he liked me. Unlucky for him, I fought hard to remain just friends…and what a great friend he was. For several months, we continued to hang out and we ended up planning a spring break trip to Illinois with the friend group. We stayed at Nic’s family’s house and during one of the nights we were there, Nic and I found ourselves talking until the wee hours of the morning on the back porch after all of the others went to bed. That was when I knew I couldn’t fight the “just friends” thing much longer. Meeting his family and spending time just the two of us won me over. Six years later, and freshman year Bridget would be shocked and overjoyed that she gets to marry the “sweet boy”, as her family called him, from Durfee Hall.

From Nic's POV:

I met Bridget about midway through our first semester of freshman year at Hope. We have a mutual friend Abby who let me know that she’d be bringing her friend along to hang out with us one night. Without thinking much else about it, I walked over to their dorm to pick the two of them up. Turns out Bridget had been struggling with making connections early on at Hope and Abby had the amazing idea of bringing her to the all guys dorm across the street. As weird and insane as my friends are, Bridget fit in right away. We had such a fun night of hanging out, listening to music, and playing games. At the end of the night, I walked them back to their dorm across the street and said goodnight. Little did I know that night would change my life forever.

That initial hangout sparked a great friendship between Bridget and our group of friends. This turned into frequent hangouts, game sessions, and just lots of fun. The more time I spent with Bridget, the more I liked her. She was kind, funny, and obviously very pretty. As the year went on and my feelings continued to develop for her, I took a leap and let her know my feelings. Unfortunately, I was shot down… Obviously our story didn’t end there though! I was friendzoned, but not all hope was lost in my heart yet! We continued to be great friends, and I kept chipping away and eventually was able to convince her to go on a first date. Although it wasn’t the best date in the world, I had officially made it out of the friendzone. The year went on and we finished our first year at Hope. Over that summer, Bridget and I made trips to each other’s houses, hers in Michigan and mine in Illinois. We made it official on May 17th and we haven’t looked back since!