This year will be our 10-year wedding anniversary and as cliché as it goes, I can’t believe how quickly time as flown by. I know I sound like a character from the cheesiest rom-com, but I still get excited to see Curtis when he walks in the door. When he calls or texts me just because, it makes my day. He’s my best friend and biggest advocate. That’s not to say we don’t have our moments (or weeks) but all in all, we’re all in.

I thought I would take this Valentine’s Day to share our love story, the good, the bad, and the past 13 years. Curtis likes to tell people that the first time he met me he thought I was a total B. I always feel the need to defend myself because I was brand new to a coffee job, never having made coffee, and I was stressed out! He does admit that after that initial meeting, I was much nicer. In 2007, I started working at a coffee stand a block away from his job at UPS. I’d see him almost every shift as he’d pull up in his silver, Toyota Corolla with a Buckeye nut garland strung around his rearview mirror. Over the course of the next year, we got to know each other strictly on customer and barista relations. Well, strict might be too strict a word because we did have many lingering conversations as he sat waiting to drive into work on slower afternoons. We were both in relationships, and both being the loyal partners that we are, didn’t cross the line. I still remember the day he walked up to the coffee stand to say goodbye. He was leaving for Iraq that summer and this was his final visit. Rather than getting his usual iced mocha, he got a fruit smoothie to cool off with after playing golf. I can even picture that I was wearing a jean skirt, black Tory Burch flats, and a black and white striped tank top. Funny that I can recall these things when the intentions of our relationship were completely pure of heart. Maybe my gut knew what the future held. I said my goodbye to him in almost a question because as a 20-year-old college student, I wasn’t sure if I would still be where I was or gone, completely unsure if I would see him again.

Summer passed by, as well as the long-term relationship I had been in with my first ever, serious boyfriend. Fall came and went, and we rolled into winter. I was sad, lonely, and still living at home while I went to school. The new year rolled around and Curtis had popped up in my Facebook feed. He had joined Facebook months prior and had asked to be friends. I mean you aren’t official until it’s on Facebook, right? (After we started dating, he admitted that he only joined Facebook to keep up on me.) And funnily enough, I remember telling him all about it while making him a coffee one day, explaining the ins and outs. That’s probably the one and only time I have ever been more adept in something technology related than Curtis. Anyway, he had messaged me that he was going to be home for leave for a couple of weeks. When I messaged him back, he had already returned to Iraq after having just spent two weeks in town. I missed him by a few days. We chatted on Facebook messenger for a bit that night and every so often throughout the course of the next 7 months. Very, few and far between. I had mini relationships during that time so my correspondence would go in accordance with my relationship statuses. He would send me messages and I may or may not reply because of that loyalty I mentioned. Course now I know who I should have been loyal to. We were back to fall, a week after my birthday, and Curtis popped into my head.  I went to our latest chat on Facebook to see he had left his phone number back in August and told me he would be home again.

During his time away, he had gone through a divorce with his first wife, Jack’s mother. This had been planned before he left for overseas, and being the gentleman that he is, he didn’t share this information with me because he didn’t want to talk about such life situations with only a barista/Facebook friend. Getting married as teenagers had not worked for them, but they remained friendly.

I responded to that message with the news that I worked at a different coffee stand and that my shift was the very next day. Well, what do you know, he showed up that next day, in now a silver SUV and wearing a pink tie. I couldn’t believe I was seeing him again in real life and I think he felt the same way. I had darker hair, his hair was lighter than I visualized, and we chatted for some time before the next car pulled up and he was off to work – to a job that didn’t require a (pink) tie. This job was way on the other side of town, in the opposite direction of where he lived and came from. I must have made good coffee. Right as he pulled away, I went back to our message thread on Facebook to find his phone number and I texted him that we should go out for drinks – I had plans with my sister-in-law and friends that weekend.  From Curtis’ perspective, he opened that message and fist pumped. He was in. And boy were we both in for it.

A few days passed and we had planned to meet up at the most hipster dive bar in downtown Oly. The kind of place you have to linger at the bar for 20 minutes for the too-cool bartender to notice you all while your friend lingers to find an open booth. I still love to listen to Curtis’ rendition of how this night started. His wingman had bailed on him, and he was scrambling to find someone else to fill the bro code shoes. I was already at the bar with a group of people when he came alone and saw us all sitting at a table. His version goes that I was the one talking, sitting at the head of this table and he didn’t want to be THAT guy to walk up and interrupt. He opted to use a last lifeline and phone a friend. When that didn’t make him a millionaire, he went the bathroom and decided once outside he’d send me a text that he wasn’t going to be able to make it. However, when he walked out of the bathroom who else would be standing there in this rom-com than the one and only, me. I yelled his name and gave him a big hug. Would it surprise you if I said that I still remember what we both wore that night? Sort of a common theme with me. He wore a black, North Face fleece and I wore a black tank and laced up heels. You know, early twenties bar hopping attire. We went to other bars that night, he put his hand on my knee, and we hit up Taco Bell before our DD that night drove him home. After he got out of the car, I said to my SIL that I should have kissed him. Almost two years to the day after first meeting, we spent our first time together without a car or building, in between us.  

We took the next night off from one another and I tried to go against my nature by playing hard to get for the next weeks. That didn’t last, and we were together nonstop from every moment after. I don’t remember exactly when we first said I love you, but it did not take long. Curtis was living with Jack and a roommate in a house close to downtown and I lived with my parents. I don’t know why, but it’s kind of embarrassing to admit that it didn’t take much time before we moved into an apartment together, my cat Charlie and all. From then on Curtis, Jack and I were The Three Musketeers. I won’t tint your glasses by saying it was all easy. He still needed time to heal, from his past and from war. I needed time to grow up and we both had to learn to trust again.

After several moves, coffee jobs, pets, and his proposal two years later, the three of us were living back in Olympia, officially a family, Facebook official and all. Almost a decade has passed, and I can honestly say the years have become better and better. Our past has made us stronger with each new stage, and while I can’t say exactly what it is that makes us tick, we have figured out how to remain best friends and raise our other besties all while trying to out love the other. “Tik-Tok goes the clock” as Kesha says and as sure true that saying goes – our nights may look a bit different than they did when we started dating. (And when this song was playing in the clubs we danced in.)  We do, however, still wake up “in the morning feelin’ like P Diddy” about our love story and this life we have built.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Xoxo, Meegan