Middle school and high school went by and the name Joel Leicy rarely came up around me. I knew he was obviously there, but we never had class together, our friend groups never mixed, and we never passed each other in the hall. At least not that I remember. That guy that passed me on the final turn was almost completely out of my head.

As junior year and the beginning of senior year came and went, I started to hear more about this guy. Not in a good way, though. I was on the school soccer team, and each day at the beginning of practice, a bunch of the girls in my class chatted about which guys they were into, who they talked with that day, and who they thought had an interest in them. If you don’t know me, just know, I was not one of those girls. I dated through high school, but I didn’t need to gossip about everything or talk about all the hot, popular guys. So each day, I would just listen over and over again and hope practice started!

If you couldn’t guess, Joel Leicy was one of those guys talked about often. He was the good-looking football and track star who had all of the ladies talking. When one got the chance to put suntan lotion on his back before practice, girls sounded like they had just won a million dollars! I actually started to really not like this Joel Leicy guy. I thought he was conceded and thought he could get any girl in the school. Well, little did I know, come final semester of our senior year, I would see who he really was.

We finally had our first class together that semester. Actually, we had three! In all of our high school years, we had none together…and now we had three! It was as if it was meant-to-be. But in the beginning, I was definitely not jumping for joy about it. As the semester went on, we would say hi or have small conversations together (our desks were close – his last name was L, and mine was M). Then in history class, we got put together for a class project.

It was almost a week where each day in class we had to work together on our presentation. We finally actually had longer conversations together, and I started to see that he may not be exactly who I painted him as.

After the presentation was finished (which we nailed), we continued to talk each day in all of our classes. We would try to stand beside each other when we could in our building construction class. And said more than just hi in the halls. But it never went outside of school. Neither of us thought anything more than that, so that’s where it stayed.

It wasn’t until graduation parties that we finally spent time together outside of school. We realized, as we kept seeing each other at all of them, that we did have similar friend groups but just never got together at the same time. We probably went to 6-10 different grad parties together. And we hung out together almost the entire time. Some I even was lucky enough to have him pick me up to go! That’s a big deal in high school. Still, we were just friends, but we both kind of noticed (and our friends did, too) that the flirting started becoming more obvious. It wasn’t until one of our last grad parties that I wanted to know his thoughts.

So sitting beside one of my close friends around a fire, I asked her to ask Joel’s best friend if he mentioned anything about me? If he had any interest? You may be able to guess…he said he did but was just nervous to say anything. So I asked her to get his number for me.

That night, after we all went home, I got up the nerve to send him a text:

“Hey, it’s Heather. Did you have a good time at the party tonight?” Let’s just say, we didn’t go to sleep till 2 AM that night.

From there on, we were inseparable. Always hanging outside of school together each afternoon. Going to parties together. And constantly texting. Even at senior awards nights, we sat together. And both our parents started to get very curious about who each of us were! On graduation night, we both decided to tell our parents that we liked each other. I told mine when we were headed home that night, and my mom’s comment was, “We already had a feeling. It wasn’t too hard to guess.” Hahaha…Well, I guess we didn’t hide that too well. With our days wide open now, we filled them with ice cream dates, getting together with friends, and just doing everything outdoors imaginable!

We were still not officially dating. Joel hadn’t asked, and I was starting to get curious if he ever would. One day, we decided to walk around a local park together and stopped to sit at one of the gazebos. The conversation came up, and guess how Joel asked me??

He said: “So, what are we?”

Yep. That was his romantic way of asking if I wanted to be his girlfriend! I guess it worked, since we are still together now, but I definitely didn’t think that would be the way I would be asked by my future husband.

He had finally asked me out, but there was one little (well, major!) hiccup in the plan…

Stay tuned for Part 3 to find out what threw our relationship for a loop right from the start. You probably won’t see this coming!

XOXO ~ Heather Marie