I just want you to know I have a major crush on you.

{Kyle and I before Homecoming our sophomore year}

Friday night was varsity football night. It's like that in every town, I guess. I had gone to so many football games before but this one would be different. This would be the night that Kyle finally paid attention to me and maybe we'd talk and maybe, just maybe he'd ask me out. That was September 20th.

See, I had a crush on him from the second I saw him. He lived across the street from my best friend and they were good friends. She said she'd talk to him about me. Days, weeks, months, years, it felt like, went by and he still didn't know who I was. She'd tell him things like, "Megan? The little blonde in your first period class? She sits in front of Candee and beside Alexa?" No dice. I was sure he had no interest in me. Or maybe he already had a girlfriend...but she would have told me about that, right?

That football game. After a lot of the back and forth, he said-she said, that ninth graders do, I found myself standing in a circle with a few of my friends, Kyle, and some of his friends. (It's like Grease at this point. Minus the singing.) He finally said, "Do you wanna go out?" I said, "Sure." The circle shuffled so that we were standing beside each other. One of my friends insisted that we hold hands. I remember this vividly because she told us we weren't holding hands right and shifted our hands so that our fingers were interlaced. We still laugh about that.

Fast forward five months. It's February of our freshman year of high school, a week or so after Valentine's Day (I still remember that we saw How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days with my good friend Rachael and her boyfriend, Josh.) He had told me that he loved me a week or so before that. I wasn't sure if I loved him but I figured it didn't matter because I was sure he didn't really love me. I mean, we were 14.

So I broke up with him.

I did it in a horrible way. I had my best friend tell him that I didn't want to go out with him anymore. That was it. He was heartbroken. I felt guilty every single day because my friends could look at him and tell that he was genuinely upset.

The school year ended and we went our separate ways for the summer.

Except for that pool party. We saw each other at my best friend's pool party. We were cordial but it was awkward...that sort of "I'm a tenth grader and my ex-girlfriend is here at this pool party and there are at least two other happy couples here and oh my gawd, I've gotta get out of here, hey let's go jump on my trampoline" awkward.

A few nights later, we IMed. On AOL and everything. Just stupid conversation. The kind of conversation that you don't care how stupid it is, you just like talking to the person.

Another few days later, I left for church camp. That whole time, I prayed for God to give me a sign that we'd be together again. Do you want to know what that sign was?

It was a teensy splat on the windshield of our bus in the shape of a heart. I stared and stared at that thing. I knew that was it.

The school year started and we talked. We worked in a group in our anatomy class with our friend Taylor (gosh, I miss him.)

On August 20th, he asked me out again. We were standing outside the 20s hall at school. By fifth period, everyone knew. It was like at the end of Grease where Frenchy says, "Aw! The gang's back together again!" (Or not. Sort of. It was sort of like that.)

I never really felt like we were apart. The summer we were broken up, I never stopped thinking about him. I don't know what that summer was like for him because he's never talked about it. When referring to him and that summer, I like to call it his "lost summer."

I find it incredible that the fact that the first time we started dating is the day of our anniversary. (Of course, not our real anniversary...that's July 11. If you want to know that story, I'll type it up.) I didn't really get to pick our wedding date, it was sort of "ok, he's going to get done at Tyndall on this date (hopefully) so let's schedule the wedding for the closest possible Saturday." That just happened to be September 20th.

Those little things are signs.

Today is our six year dating anniversary and we're one year out from our one year wedding anniversary (literally, the anniversary of our wedding because we've been married over a year.)

I also like to think of September 20th the best day of my life because the wedding planning finally ended and I could step back from the edge that I was on. But that's a different story...