The summer before junior year, I was sixteen and about to start at a new school. All-girls high school didn’t have traditional “homecoming” week, and I wasn’t sure how involved I should get. Thankfully, a twitter message from a sweet boy I have known through my basketball circle asking if I would wear his football jersey settled some of the new kid nerves. I met Keith in the hallway after school, sheepishly said hello and took his jersey. This was the start of the most important relationship of my life.

Keith and I were fast friends and stayed close throughout the two years I attended O’Hara – though we ran in completely different circles, we always found each other.

After graduation, we parted ways but always checked in. Keith visited Oneonta, a trip he doesn’t love to revisit because of the speeding ticket he got in a tiny town in Upstate NY. We saw each other a few times back home in those four years, Keith, consistently a gentleman, keeping the feelings I had for him alive that developed back in high school.

I moved back to Buffalo in 2018, and a date with Keith was one of the first things I was looking forward to. It was then, at 22, that I started to really consider what going from friends to more would mean. The thought of ruining a consistently great relationship in the trainwreck that is your early 20’s was pretty terrifying. Keith would tell you – he always knew that as soon as we went there, that would be it for him, so he was being equally as careful. He knew before I did that we were meant to end up together.

One year later after a number of almosts and maybes, Keith showed up to my job with (Paula’s, important) donuts and flowers and took me out for my birthday. After eight years, we finally found our right timing.

We didn’t fall into fast love – we built a foundation of deep love that carries us anywhere we go. My happily ever after is the boy with the football jersey who grew into the amazing man that my son gets to call his dad. Very soon, I will call him my husband.