Our Story, Part 2

Before we move on, let me give a few quick examples of the connection that I have always had with Brian, on more than a friend level:

1) One night during high school, I was just watching TV and there was a clip of someone biking down a mountain. I immediately had a thought pop into my head, and I wondered if Brian was OK. I brushed it off as just being obsessed with him, and moved on. The next day, Brian was not at school. I waited until lunch that day and then almost begged my choir teacher to call his house and ask if he was OK. My teacher called and found out that Brian had been in an accident the night before and couldn't come to school. I freaked out. (My teacher made the comment then that we were so meant to be together.) What happened was that Brian had been riding his bike to work, and a car hit him and he flipped over his bike and landed on his shoulder and then the bike caught his leg and flipped him up standing again. His shoulder still pops from this injury.

2) Another night, during the summer after high school, I was hanging out with my sister and talking about Brian, of course, and I was thinking that I really wanted to talk to him, and I heard a knock at the door. It was late and when I mentioned it to my sister, she said I was just imagining it and being obsessive. A few minutes later, I told her I was going to check if the doors were locked and I went downstairs and looked out the window and saw Brian getting in his car to drive away. I really had felt him there. (He had just broken up with his girlfriend and needed someone to talk to.)

3) This connection goes both ways. While Brian was on his mission, I had a few hard days missing him a lot, and I was trying not to bombard him with letters and distracting him. One day I had fought with a good friend and was feeling particularly lonely, and I got home from class and checked my email, and he had sent me an email. It wasn't the right day, and he usually didn't send me one, but all it said was that he was thinking of me and wanted to say hi. It was perfect.

4) And finally, the last big example I have is the summer when we were dating, and I was in California with my family for a reunion, and he was in Utah, thousands of miles away. One of the afternoons, my family was taking a break from Disneyland and I had done some laundry, so I was folding while my sister was sleeping. It was about 3:00 and I had the thought to call Brian, but then I realized he was probably at work. Not even 10 minutes later, his cousin called me to say there were at the First Aid station because Brian had crashed on his bike. I had forgotten that he was taking the day off to go biking, and then he crashed just as I was thinking about him. He now has 2 scars on his chin because of that crash.

OK, moving on with the story:

I moved to Logan to attend USU and Brian stayed in Sandy and attended the U of U. We wrote a couple letters back and forth, but we were both busy, and I was having a little too much fun at college. When I moved home for the summer though, a couple weeks later, Brian called me to let me know he'd gotten his mission call to Maracaibo, Venezuela. (I had already sent off a missionary to Venezuela so I was really worried they would become companions, but they didn't.) I started hanging out with him again after that and found out that he had broken up with his girlfriend of over 2 years, and things were totally back to normal.

We spent every day together that summer, but were weren't "dating." We never held hands, or said they were dates, but we did spend a lot of time together. He was leaving on a mission, and I had already said I wasn't going to wait for any missionary, (though honestly, if he had asked, I would've done it). We took trips up to Logan to visit my friends a couple times, we went to baseball games, and movies, and the park, and just spent all the time we could together. It was an amazing summer, and I loved every minute. We got closer than ever, and if either one of us wasn't such a wuss, we probably would've said a few more things out loud. That may or may not have saved some heartache, but it's in the past.

The morning before Brian was set apart we went to the temple and did baptisms together. Brian invited me to see him be set apart, and before everyone got there, he gave me one last hug and I almost started crying right then. (He has always given the best hugs, everyone says so, but I know that he gives his best hugs to me.) That night was very emotional and I cried almost as much as his mom. His parents even let us have a minute alone together after everyone left, and we could have had one more hug, but we were good and he just shook my hand, but held it a little long, I admit.

I was the last one to leave that night, and I cried the whole drive home late into the night. Though I knew for a long time that I wanted to be with Brian, it was that summer that I finally realized how much I loved him.