Before I even get into this post I want to say congrats to Molly. So excited for you and Michael!

At this time last year I had just started my senior year of college. My girlfriends came over for monthly dinners, we went out to the bars on Friday nights, we watched Grey’s Anatomy together over “Jike Brew” (Crystal Light and vodka…ugh). I’d sneak over to my best friend Briz’s room after classes to make her walk with me, or we’d drive to the outlets to go shopping. Life was good, really good.

Of course I had to mess all of that up.

See, in our group of friends there was a guy that Briz had liked for years. This guy, Country, didn’t actually go to our college, but he lived nearby and his cousin was one of our friends. He was sort of adopted in early in freshman year and had been a presence at everything we did over the next three. He and Briz had been back and forth with their relationship. And by relationship I mean that Briz was in love with him and he hardly cared. She tried to get his attention in the wrong ways, by kissing his friends or getting drunk and throwing herself at him.

Country and I had always been friends, went drinking together, jumped off his dock in our underwear at midnight in bitter cold April. For Halloween I decided to go as him, borrowing this giant onesie hunting suit and hat and drinking way too much. We sat at the local bar that night drinking together, all of our friends obliterated and doing shots. He was playing with his phone, my phone went off. This wasn’t strange, he had a habit of texting me when we were in the same room. I looked at it, “I really want to date you.” I started laughing, but his face stayed straight. I texted back that he was funny, but instantly got another message. “I’m not kidding, I want to be with you.” I kept laughing because he was the kind of guy to joke about all of this. Unfortunately he was serious. I got up and left the bar immediately.

I got a call three hours later from Country’s cousin. They were drunk, had walked to the local McDonald’s to get drive thru, then realized that they couldn’t walk through the drive thru. I drove over to get them, they ate at my apartment before Country crashed on my guest bed and the cousin and friend spent the rest of the night trying to convince me to date him.

To make the story shorter, Country and I ended up dating. I went to talk to Briz about it first, to ask her for permission really. She laid with her head on my lap and I combed my fingers through her hair and she told me it was OK. But a hour later she was in her room crying, screaming.

Country and I didn’t end up working out for our own reasons, but Briz and I never worked it out. My relationship with that group deteriorated in February and I haven’t spoken to the majority of them since then.

Until two nights ago. I had found a bunch of CDs in my car that Briz had made for me, and of course tortured myself listening to them. It made me sentimental, but it also made me realize how much I missed the girl. I got home, saw her online, and decided to message her. I told her that I missed her, and then there was a long pause. And then she answered back that she had been thinking about how she missed me too, how she had been wanting to talk to me. We spent the next three hours catching up, apologizing, and telling each other how much we missed each other.