Let’s call him Anthony because that’s a nice name.

I first saw Anthony in a coffee shop right around the corner from my place. He caught my attention immediately. He looked like an Abercrombie model, with dark tan skin, long wavy blonde hair, and green eyes. He gave off a surfer-like vibe.

I was never boy-crazy and could count on two fingers the number of guys I was ever interested in. My head being turned by a handsome man for more than a second was not a thing. But there was something about Anthony that I felt drawn to, and I couldn’t stop looking at him. Every time I looked up, our eyes met but we both left the shop that day having said nothing to each other.

I saw him there again and the same thing happened. Eyes. In a crowded room, meeting. Over and over again. This time, I was with my roommate, and after some coffee and conversation, she and I left the packed coffee shop together. Just before I walked out, I turned to steal one last glance at him, and there he was…in a sea of head tops and distracted faces…flashing all of those amazingly bright teeth in his amazingly brilliant smile. At me. It was a sign.

My roommate, privy to my crush, notified me the next time she was at the cafe: “Your man is here.” So, like a good little stalker, I showed up as fast as I could and set myself up to “work,” facing him, shy and brave as I was.

My roommate left.

The stalkee approached………

“Hi, I’m Anthony. I thought it was about time to introduce myself.” His voice was really deep, and it was shaking as he spoke…he seemed nervous. And serious. His name was more formal than I had imagined. I thought he’d be a Trevor or a Drew or something. I suddenly felt finicky. Maybe my intuition had been off about him. Things seemed so rigid between us. Maybe this guy wasn’t for me. But he did get my attention, and I did get his, and that had never happened to me before. I couldn’t ignore it.

Anthony told me that he was in the middle of studying for his boards (being a med student), and that in a month or so, he would be free and would love to take me out.

I was amused and impressed by his discipline. I said yes.

We didn’t wait quite that long to go out. We saw each other at the coffee shop and talked, and friended each other on facebook. Things felt more comfortable. And then one evening, when I was hungry because I hadn’t eaten all day, he swept me off to Whataburger, which he liked to joke about from then on…how our first date was at Whataburger…”setting the bar low.”

You know what? We had the best time there. He was funny and charming, creative and witty. He responded to the things that I was saying instead of only listening to himself talk, to which I had grown accustomed on dates. It was more fun and easy and synergetic than any date I’d been on before. We filled out a comment card together. I was smitten.

Anthony said “I love you” soon after that…a week or two later. He told me that he had been in two serious relationships (one of them having ended recently). Ironically, right before meeting me, he had decided to be single for the rest of his life…that being in a serious relationship was just too complicated and draining…not worth it. He said that I was low-maintenance and that he appreciated that I didn’t play games. It was true, and I felt proud of that.

We were both 27 when we met but he was a few months younger, and he always liked to joke about being with an “old woman.” When people would ask how we met, he told them that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, that I was so distracted I was reading my book upside down. Which was untrue and annoying…and also somehow endearing. He loved to watch my eyes roll when he said that, and I loved that he loved something that I did.

I was pleased that Anthony had changed his mind about love. Not only did I feel that our budding relationship was very special, but I believed with everything I had that love didn’t have to be hard, and that even if it was, love was always worth it. I really looked forward to showing him that because I got the impression that for him love had been unsafe and so it was easier not to get too attached. There was a supernatural element to the way that we met. Both of us acknowledged it. It was magical; it was fate; it was kismet; it was God merging our paths.

————–

The months after meeting each other were difficult, and just…strange. Anthony left for his first medical rotation across the country, hours and hours away. After a couple of months, he came home to visit. After a couple more, I went to visit him. And so on and so forth, through multiple rotations. In a nutshell, we only had a few weeks to get to know each other before he left home and the two of us, being totally serious about our relationship, launched ourselves into a long-distance one. That was made all the more challenging, I suppose, by the fact that neither of us were phone talkers, so…we were going off of some vaguely-defined commitment to a future together. There were some hiccups and concerns all along the way, but we kept to our plan, despite not having hashed out any of the details. Somehow, we managed to get engaged the same year, and we were married one year after that.

Anthony arrived home from school one day before our (gigantic) Christmastime wedding.

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