Is this about to get weird?

(First, I gotta say, how excited I am to write this down.  

It's a story that I've been asked to tell a lot lately, and it's one that I'll never tire of telling.  

Our officiant has asked us to each write "our story" of how we came to be in love.  

We're writing them separately, no collaboration. 
Not sure yet what he's doing with 'em, but can't wait to see.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As they say, no good story ever started with someone eating a salad...

Nate and I work together.  He was, in fact, my boss for the first couple of years at the Red Cross.  Though, truth be told, he mostly just stayed out of my way and gave advice when asked for it (looking back, that was probably my first missed clue).  We always got along well and quickly developed a friendship that extended beyond 5 o'clock, mostly to happy hours and bitching about work.

Early on, I dated Nate's BFF for about 8 months.  We kept it on the DL (he's a Red Cross volunteer and "worked" for me).  The three of us hung out together fairly often and so we eventually broke the news to Nate when it got tricksier to cover our tracks.  Mitch is a good guy, but we both knew better than to date each other and eventually it fizzled and died on the vine.  But, since Nate and I were co-workers, happy hour cohorts, & friends - I got to keep him in the break up.

Two summers ago Nathan's dad got really sick, fatally ill as it turned out.  I had long exercised a habit of sitting in Nate's office with my feet propped up on his desk, talking work/weekend/whatever.  Those light and airy catch up sessions took on a heavy tone in the months leading up to his dad's death.  He talked mostly about him mom needing a break from being the caretaker, but also about his sisters and about his relationship with his father.  He talked about the delicate dance he and his dad had developed over the years, keeping their distance and not being terribly demonstrative.  I remember experiencing unexpected waves of love for Nathan during this time.  I was worried that he was going through something scary and sad and powerful all by himself.  Not by himself romantically, but by himself in the way that dudes sometimes do - without really leaning on anyone close to him.  I corned him (with my feet planted squarely on his desk) one day and asked, well, demanded really, to know who his "Person" was.  Did he have someone, a friend or family member, that he relied on for when shit got real?  Having lost my parents a few years earlier, I knew how incredibly important it was to have a Person, someone with whom you could be small and scared.  I remember saying "I don't need to be your Person, but I need to know that you have one so I can stop worrying so damn much about you.".  He assured me that Rich, Mitch, Jonathan and others were there for whatever he needed.  That didn't stop me from dragging the emotion out of him on a regular basis that summer.  And it didn't stop those waves of love from crashing over me whenever I thought of sweet, unassuming Nathan dealing with the very real fact that his father was dying right in front of him.  I'll never forget being at that hot August funeral and seeing nothing and no one else but Nathan, standing quiet & strong, with one arm around his mom and the other holding his nephew's hand...

But - still just friends.  Not even an inkling of liking-him liking-him.  Even with all those emotions chasing around, it never occurred to me to look his way.  And so I kept trying to fix him up with friends of mine, kept teasing him towards girls he'd mentioned over happy hour beers, kept enjoying my sweet friend as just that, just friends.

Although - there was one casual mention of him to Joanna somewhere in this time frame that prompted her to ask if we were making out.  I was appalled!  What?!  Me & Nathan?!  Guh-ross Joanna.  Gross.

Fast forward to February/March 2012.  I'm still not 100% sure of what caused the tide to change.  But I do know that Nathan was *constantly* (read with exasperation and rolled eyes) asking to get together.  He'd be planning our next happy hour 3 minutes into the current one, started extending drinks to dinner, and was forever wanting to meet up for this or that - the pace had definitely accelerated. Combine that with being away together for a drunken work conference (nothing happened, we avoided this particular cliche, for now), and having given up beer for Lent (and therefore sipping whiskey instead), and you've got a quickly developing recipe for starting to see Nate in a whole knew way.

We'd moved our visits to my lanai (a glorified balcony overlooking a seedy alley off Colfax - you can see why I'd dressed up its name), and we were at my place more often than not, and yet still - just hanging out. Until the night of the Funstigators and the Easter eggs.  Yep, the eggs did it. So did his knee touching mine under the table as the Funstigators put together colorful plastic eggs to hide around the building at work.  So did wandering the building in the dark hiding those eggs - still though, nothing, he didn't make a move.  But the tension was there, and it was thick, and wicked fun, and we didn't want it to end.  So he joined me on the lanai for an extra sip.  It was a little too cold in early April to sit outside for long, and so there we were on the couch (my tiny, tiny, NYC studio apartment couch - so small and great for sitting, right, next, to, each, other).   I couldn't take the tip-toeing any longer and so I said...

"Hey Nate, is this about to get weird?"

That gave him an opening.  He spilled out the sweetest speech about how much he was thinking about me, about how he'd started to really like me, and about how everything had changed in the way he saw me lately.  He also kept saying "But we can talk about it later," - trying to get out of the runaway confession that he was in the middle of.  It was adorable, and brave, and I responded in kind by saying, in true After School Special style...

"That's a terrible idea.  We're such good friends!  If we change that and screw it up, I'd never forgive us."

Crash.  Come on back down to earth you two.  This ain't gonna happen.

So we danced around the awkwardness for a few minutes, he got suddenly tired, and made tracks to head home.  We said totally normal goodbyes on the lanai and went in for a totally normal goodbye hug.  And then we were kissing - jury's still out on who kissed who, but there we were.  It was brief, it was amazing, and then I sent him home (and he'll tell you, he skipped and grinned all they way down the stairs, to his car, and the whole way home). 

That was a Thursday night, the Thursday before Easter, 2012.  On Friday I proceeded to hide from him at work.  He wanted to grab coffee and to process the night's events.  I wanted to crawl in a hole and not have to be awkward around each other.  I still maintained that crossing that threshold was bad mojo.  I loved having my good friend around and I had never considered him as an inch more than that.  In fact, as I've said before, that up until then I would've sworn he was clean-shaven & had brown eyes - I'd never even really looked at the man!  

Saturday morning he stopped by the lanai on his way home from a side job and we re-hashed the "let's just be friends" speech over coffee & under sunshine.  We joked about it and laughed it off and agreed that was the best course of action.  Done and done.

And then... remember that I'd given up beer for Lent?  It was the Saturday before Easter, I could break Lent at sunset (thanks for the tip George!), and I had the bestest bomber of Ain't No Chicken Beer at the ready (long story on the name, suffice it to say it's delish and too good to enjoy alone).  So, against my better judgement, and clearly wanting to spend just a bit more time torturing us in this awkward post-kiss, let's just be friends tango, I invited Nate over to share the beer on the lanai.   I don't remember exactly how we tossed the whole let's just be friends line out the window, but he spent the night (totally g-rated) and the rest is history.  We've been together, in love, and laughing about it all ever since.

And then these things happen:

• Joanna gets to say she told me so.
• Since Nate & I keep it on the DL at work for a long time, Mitch eventually gets the same "um, dude, I'm dating Cari" speech that he gave Nate a few years before.  Hilarity ensues.
• I notice that Nathan has amazing blue eyes (not brown after all) and the kindest heart of anyone I've ever met.
• He jokingly calls me Mrs. Roberts one day and we realize that this is it, it's for real, and we never want it to end...