How We Met.

I've had some requests to tell how Mr. Darcy and I met. Get ready, it's kind of a long story....

At the time, I was working part time in the Business office at Southwestern Christian University and Greg was coming to SCU to play football. Yes, I know, how cliche, we were forbidden. Well, not exactly because I actually didn't like Greg when I first saw him. I remember (he doesn't) getting out of my car one day, and he walked by with a few of his friends. I smiled really big (because that's the kind of dork I am, smile at total strangers) and Greg just stared at me with this totally rude look on his face. I decided then and there I hated his guts.

We would occasionally run into each other on campus and he would never look me in the eye and if he did, he never smiled or talked back to me when I would say hi. Greg says this is because I was so stunning and intimidating and he was really shy. (How can you not fall for a guy that calls you "stunning"?) My roommate Beccah was Greg's English Professor (just another spoonful of cliche), and so I would hear about him from time to time, how nice he was and how she really liked him, blah blah blah. Lies, I was sure.

Beccah hosted a Halloween party for a girl's sorority that she was the faculty supervisor for. The girls wanted to make it open to anyone, and through the original host house falling through, the party ended up at our apartment. I ended up talking to Greg and a few of the other British guys that night, and I decided that he wasn't actually all the bad.

Cue another spoonful of cliche. Beccah told me one night that Greg had had a rough day that day and he had told her a bit about it. His grandmother was doing poorly, he'd gotten in trouble in football practice, etc etc. Just a pooey kind of day. I felt bad for the poor guy so I facebook messaged him (told you.) just to say that poo days suck, and I hope your week gets better. We ended up texting back and forth for WEEKS.

Flash to the Homecoming game at SCU. I have not one recollection of the game, besides that Greg ended up sitting next to my dad, who always goes to SCU basketball games. Afterwards a bunch of people went to IHOP (the staple for all College kids) and Greg and I sat by each other. Through a series of events (I shoved our chairs together. Subtle, I know.) we ended up holding hands under the table. What can I say, we were destined to be cliche together

After Homecoming I started thinking more about how I felt about Greg and I decided to tell him we just couldn't be anything. I had gotten out of a crappy relationship not too long before and I just wasn't sure if I was ready to start anything else. There was also the small detail about me being a part time employee and him being a student, and that might have possibly been against the rules. So I spoke with Greg about it and he basically said nu uh, not a chance, but I'll wait till you're ready. He's a stubborn one.

Now to the climactic change in this story. Greg was at practice one day and he started having trouble breathing. Real trouble. Lot's of pain trouble. They rushed him to the hospital and discovered that his left lung had collapsed. At this point, I was working nights at a salon and I was finishing up a color. Greg texts me and says, "um don't worry, but I'm at the hospital. I think I'm going into surgery. Can't talk."

Ya I was cool as a cucumber. Not.

I started freaking out and tried to call him, which he couldn't answer because they were strapping him to a bed at that point. I finally got a text saying that his lung had spontaneously collapsed, he was going into surgery, but he'd text me later, don't freak out it'll be ok.

I called Beccah and a few of Greg's friends from the soccer team and we headed up to the hospital to see him after his surgery was over. (Also at this point Greg's friend Alex started puking in my apartment parking lot, so Beccah stayed there to help him and we all went next door to the hospital). By the time we got there he was all stitched back up, but still very drugged and laying in the surgery room.

(Don't read this if you are faint of heart.)

To fix a spontaneously collapsed lung, the patient has to be awake. So Greg was super drugged up, and can remember all of it. He says it didn't hurt but he could still feel everything, and he got really scared when they started coming at him with a huge scalpel. They slice into your side, stab a chest tube in you, suck out all the juices and allow your lung to reflate. Your slice is then stiched from the inside, so the outside still looks like you have been hacked up with a hatchet.

(Pick up here if you are faint of heart.)

 It was all I could do to keep myself from bawling. I hadn't realized until then how worried I was, or how much I cared for this guy. A near death experience will do that to a gal. Of course, the first thing Greg says he wants when we got there was Taco Bell. To be exact, "a million flatbreads and five thousand quesadillas. And a Mountain Dew!".Well alright then.

Greg stayed in the hospital for a few days after that (during which we had our first kiss!) and now has a huge gaping scar on his left side to show for it. We started quietly dating on Thanksgiving and made it "facebook official" the day SCU ended their Spring Semester, so the whole "student, staff member relationship" issue never was...an issue. I ended up leaving SCU in the fall for my current job, as did Greg to play soccer at OC. He will actually be returning to SCU this Spring to play again for the Eagles, which I am totally OK with because I'm not there! and it's close enough that we can go to lunch together :) YIPEE!!

So there ya go. Stories like this are always fun to read, and fun to tell, but they really only scratch the surface. You can never really explain precisely how a relationship starts. Why you are suddenly attracted to someone, why the stupid things they say crack you up, and the sweet things they do make your heart swell. A relationship isn't started in an instant, in one situation. It's a slow knitting of hearts, an invisible pull that brings two people together over time and texts and laughs and tears, over Taco Bell and Skype, English Breakfast tea and a hospital bed.