a good pair of shoes {part 2}

I’m not gonna lie, y’all. I’m feeling a little Dear Diary, with this one. It took some coaxing to push the publish button. It’s so funny to look back after years of building a marriage, and remember the days when things were just beginning. Read: when I had absolutely no idea what a true relationship was about.

But I guess you could say that this is me, documenting our story, before it became this:

via – this post is an old one… I think its 2004 now.

{Don’t blink. Now we have an almost seventeen year old. What.}

NOTE: Read part 1, here if you didn’t catch it, you’ll want to read it first. I’ve put off writing this one, because this is like the sequel and how do you follow up the fact that you literally won your future husband, dressed up as a girl, at a party? The best is yet to come, so stay with me?

We were like star crossed lovers in a head on collision, if you believe in that sort of thing.

And we were so dazed from the impact, we didn’t even realize it yet.

Cue the pause button: Two things to know about me: 1. I was a shallow freshman circa 1999. Some of my actions fifteen years ago are a bit embarrassing. So remember: 1. Shallow. 2. Teenager. 3. I regret nothing because of points 1 & 2. Also? I am not a cheesy person. I shun the cheese. Unless I’m eating it. But all good love stories have them, and this one is my exception. It’s pretty great, if I do say so with my completely biased self.

If I have not cheese, it’s just a pointless story. Brace yourselves.

Christmas break progressed, as did the new year. I headed home and then back to school again, slightly thwarted by average grades {okay fine some were probably below average} and the fact that my roommate {friend from high school} relocated. If you recall our first installment, I was a mad decorating machine, suckas. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy dried roses hanging in a window set to the background ballads of Jewel and Alanis highlighted with pointillism Jesus?

Her loss.

So armed with my newfound freedom on two different levels, {sans boyfriend and roomie} I spent about an hour feeling sorry for myself and then decided to embrace the collegiate experience, wholly. New year new me. 

I went on a random road trip with people I barely knew. Duh.

And we stayed in a cabin with about thirty other people, in the mountains of Georgia.

This sounds like the beginning of a bad 80’s horror flick.

But it wasn’t. And he was there.

I hadn’t paid attention on that David Bowie night (since I was a bit more focused on being completely mortified) so I didn’t realize it was him… yet. And he didn’t look quite the same. That day, he was the polar opposite. For starters, he wasn’t donning a blonde wig and heels. And secondly, he was skinning a cat.

We were out on a nature hike, and he didn’t actually murder a cat. If you’re southern, it goes hand in hand with mudding and other redneck things… like chopping deer heads off and eating them. I don’t know all the ins and outs of being an actual redneck, because while I embrace my Mississippian roots I still to this day do not understand the camo culture. I’m all, don’t smash the caterpillar! But back to 1999: He was wearing camo, and with his best friend, they were climbing pine trees. Like monkeys. It was weird. And amazing. So I just assumed that he murdered deer for fun on the weekends.

“Who are those barbaric rednecks?” my teenage self with no filter asked my newfound accomplices. I thought I was funny.

In my defense, I kind of was.

I guess if you can look back at our relationship, this was the comment that started a war. The statement that to this day, he happily tells our children.

Because he heard me. And I oop. 

Truth be told, if I’d known at that very moment that I was saying this to the father of my children, I may have reeled it in a little. You’d think at the very least, I could come up with a better line. I may have intervened with my DeLorean riding self, walked right up to him and planted one on those lips. Cue If You Were Here a-la Sixteen Candles.

Hawtness.

But instead, this was awkward Ashley and she chose the offensive combo of adjective and noun. I’m pretty sure I was wearing yellow plaid and knee socks, because I basically stepped out of Clueless with my label maker and slapped it on his forehead. He was not amused by this blonde freshman with a smart mouth. He was ringlet donning, broad shouldered senior, Jamin Mills. (Hear him roar.) And from that moment, it was on.

See: subtle side comments to friend with guttural male laughter while I try to decipher what he’s saying from a distance.

We were dismissive of each other the entire trip, and then I cut out early. I know. Facepalm moment. In retrospect, I had to keep it mysterious. Or something. One does not simply meet the love of their life and appreciate them in that moment. Instead, they stumble through awkward events riddled with weakly flung insults and then pretend it never happened. And so far, our encounters were drenched with them.

Life is like a book with tattered old pages in black and white, mixed in with the unexpected glossy spots that you can remember all too clearly. It’s not all a hollywood movie, but if this is me letting you watch a dusty VHS of my life, here’s the part where I fast forward a little, to the juicy parts.

I remember seeing him on and off throughout the year. He was like this permanent background fixture almost every week. In between college fun, various dating stints and then swearing off dating completely. Between classes and get togethers with friends. I’m pretty sure we were judgy of each other from a distance.

Okay fine. I was judgy. He was dismissive. Later, he told me he was thinking other things. I think it’s also important that we note he also was a bit of a… how do I say this nicely? ‘Player’. Do whippersnappers these days still use that phrase? To this day, he says it was a bit unfair, but I’m totally vindicated in my assumptions. I wanted no part of it, so I decided to lay low with well-planned appearances and seemingly clever, sarcastic statements. I had my people and he had his, and my people basically thought he was pompous because he broke up with them. We were like West Side Story except without the awesome music and switch blades. Just pure, unadulterated assumptions.

And suddenly it was spring.

My friends and I {see gang} were at a park. Sitting in the corner of a field, “studying for finals” watching a game of flag football, when it happened. Like some guerrilla banshee in an ambush, there were balloons. Filled with water. All aimed at me. I had no return attack, just a shock and awe response. When I cleared the water from my face to view my attacker, he was trotting off with a smirk, and I’d handed him my priceless reaction on a silver platter. I’m also fairly certain he was a valuable accomplice in Saran wrapping my entire car on more than one occasion. 

But karma delivered a swift return: his new (to him) pathfinder, a graduation gift, was taken mudding with some friends one fateful spring night. It really was a tragedy, but to me, he was only furthering my barbaric redneck theory when he sank and totaled said new (to him) pathfinder in a puddle.

I secretly reveled in the sheer glee that was this pompous senior and his shiny new toy.

I was kind of awful.

To this day, he says he came out on top with insurance claims because not only was he attractive and funny, but also smart.

And then one afternoon, toward the end of spring, there was a ping on my laptop while I sat in my dorm room. You remember AOL’s Instant Messenger, right? I still remember our usernames. In the days before texting, it was the cool thing to do. There was this brief moment, as if he were extending an olive branch.

After that, we brought out the white flags and began this weird post-enemy process of becoming …friends.

via

A bestie who was sitting with me in my dorm room one afternoon was passing the time on a silly website. She immediately came up with his name, and did the mature thing: combined our names on The Love Calculator. These were the days before Facebook, and all other online options serving up daily procrastination for studying. And there was this:

via

I dismissed it with a laugh, proclaiming that he was old.

Because when you’re a freshman, anyone legal is ‘old’. {Oh, to be 22 again.}

Then, summer. From the original Let’s Make a Deal to tiny events that kept occurring in various encounters, it felt as if these little things: coincidences and weird events were happening in this borderline funny and significant way. And I had no idea how I felt about it.

We were both back home {both of us from the same hometown} so I invited him over for the afternoon. When I told my mom who was coming over, she informed me that we’d known their family forever. Since I was 4, as a matter of fact. 

Pause: It was recently revealed to us, that his parents nearly purchased the house right next door to my childhood home, before we moved in. WHAT. Probably for the best that we’d always almost crossed paths, because then we would have been the weird neighbor kids.

But back to 1999: A few nights later, we were headed to dinner, but it wasn’t a date, because we were just friends {remember that, teenage self} and I caught myself realizing how funny he was. And that maybe I really liked the fact that his nose actually went ever so slightly to one side because he broke it when he was little playing baseball. And I’d never really found brown eyes so enticing before… And he had a smirk when he talked about something funny but I couldn’t stop looking at those lips…

Cue overactive train of thought: Nope. I shook it off. Just friends. Funny, good convos. That was it. End of story. I was done with dating anyone exclusively. He was leaving in the fall for grad school, so his stable, mature life choices were practically a train wreck with mine. I would have no part of long distance shenanigans. And let’s not forget the most important part: I needed to be young and enjoy life. Besides, there was no way he was interested, and he knew he was cute.

Danger Will Robinson, Danger. Maybe he saw me as a challenge and this was a game. We needed to return him to the friend zone, and fast. Besides, I had a date the next night with someone else, and I wouldn’t get roped in. Not me.

But I kind of wanted to. 

His lips were still moving. And I caught myself gazing at them. He was talking about jumping out a second story window when he was little to play parachutes. I’d become lost in my own girl rationale.

Stop it. 

We went downtown after dinner, to a fun spot in five points, and we were sitting on a bench, people watching. A man appeared and sat next to Jamin. It was literally as if he evaporated from thin air. “Look at that angel right there,” he said. I turned around looking for an angel in the general direction he’d just pointed, and then realized he was talking about me. I felt my cheeks grow warm while this total stranger assumed we were together. I suppressed my laughter, because what on earth was happening right now? “You hold on to her. She’s a beautiful angel. Don’t you ever let her go.” And with that, he left, just as quickly as he’d appeared.

Why yes, I am a beautiful angel, thank you sir said no one ever. So we forced a laugh at the awkwardness of it all, and changed the subject quickly.

He pulled into the driveway of my parents house, and I thanked him for a good time. Keep it casual, I whined to myself. I’m pretty sure I gave him a pat on the arm or something. Maybe even a punch on the shoulder with the word pal in it somewhere. I was wrecking my own friend date. He doesn’t like me anyway. I hopped out of the car, practically tripping over myself to get to the door and let myself in.

The next day, I was at work. I’d proudly joined the ranks of Bed Bath and Beyond for the summer, at the bridal desk, of all places. Complete with disgruntled customers who demanded free wrapping and then griped about tape placement and finding their bride, I was ready to zap someone with one of those little bridal guns. I was bent over, squinting at that green screen for a customer when someone tall sauntered up to the counter. There Jamin stood, and he was holding another olive branch, but this time, it was a bouquet of flowers. A compilation of some of my favorites, he just stood there, smiling slightly under his baseball cap, like it was some kind of joke. I secretly wondered if it was. My coworkers literally swooned. {I later made sure I cleared it up while they laughed at me: We’re just friends, I proclaimed dismissively. They mockingly nodded.}

It was my break, so I gratefully grabbed a momentary escape from the world of overhyped {moms of} brides to be, to grab a smoothie around the corner. I sat the entire time, sipping while he wore another smirk through an entire conversation. Walking back, when I finally asked him what he was smiling at, he pointed out that I was still proudly donning my gargantuan BB&B name tag. He thought it was cute. I pulled off a chuckle whilst silently managing my inner mortification. 

Summer was coming to a close, and we’d kept it casual. I could feel change coming in my bones, knowing it was only a few weeks before he left for Nashville, and our season would be over. About ten of us met up for dinner at a local dive for a friend’s birthday, and he was there. Afterwards, we headed to a local park with everyone, out of sheer boredom. It was there in the dark that someone had the idea to play hide and seek. {Yes, we were twelve. And for the record, sometimes hiding in the dark as a pseudo-adult is fun.}

A few rounds were played and suddenly, I was it. I’m fast, but also klutzy so there was this awkward combination of my competitive side taking over, but not wanting to die by nailing myself on the monkey bars because let’s be honest, it’s probably how I’ll go.

I spotted him across the deck of the main play area, and realized it was just him. And me. This was it. He was going down. I sprinted awkwardly in flip-flops across the slick wood, but he didn’t look worried. He walked casually toward me, because if anyone had this, he did. I half expected him to shove me to the side and do some type of super human spin move that left me as ‘it’ again. It was only then that I realized I was the one who was cornered because he didn’t care. He pulled me forward by one arm, and suddenly I was trapped.

If I’m completely honest, it was kind of willingly.

That was when he leaned in, and kissed me.

{…to be continued – part three is here!!}

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