Our love story - Chapter three

When I came home from Liberty for Christmas break, Ben would come over sometimes to pick up Brandon or drop him off.  He would often stay and visit with all of us and I didn’t mind his lingering one bit.  One day my mom ever so nonchalantly mentioned that she wondering if picking up Brandon wasn’t the only reason we had been seeing so much of Ben.

Gulp.

Seriously? She couldn’t possibly mean…

No way.  But it was true; she was on to him.  I didn’t dare let myself believe that he could actually like me, but hope has a funny way of hanging on in your heart against all logic and reason.  So hope I did.  And you can imagine my absolute shock and panic when my sister ever so nonchalantly mentioned that she had given Ben my screen name.

I’m sorry, you what?

My sister and I had both wanted this certain download for our computers and when she found out that Ben had it, she took the initiative to tell him that we wanted it and give him both of our screen names. Wonderful.  I’m mean, I was completely embarrassed but it really was wonderful because he called me up a few days later and we videochatted for an hour.  And I of course freaked out afterwards but thought I would never hear from him again when I went back up to Liberty for Spring semester…but I did! He IMed me around once a week and wore out just about every excuse I think he could possibly come up with to talk to me. 

Hey, I heard you were reading a new biography and I wanted to get the name of it…

Hey, I heard your sister was sick and I wanted to check on her…

Hey, I’m a really slow typer, do you mind if we videochat instead?

I loved every single excuse but loved the moment when it was simply,

Hey, I just wanted to see how you’re doing…

I treasured our conversations.  We would often videochat for hours and I could feel myself becoming more and more comfortable with him.  He was so easy to talk to and we talked about everything…Jesus, our families, what was going on in our lives, what we had been learning, silly stuff, serious stuff, anything and everything.  He was becoming less of this distant crush I adored and more of a dear friend (that I adored).  However, the more we talked the harder I fell and I started to get afraid that maybe I was letting myself get too attached to him without having any idea how he felt about me.  I was so afraid of my heart being broken and felt the need to protect myself.  But just as I was contemplating pulling back…

After squeeling with delight (thank goodness this was a typed conversation and not face to face) I said yes in the most relaxed way I could think of so as to not blow my totally chill I’m so used to this because I go on coffee dates all the time demeanor that was masking how I really felt - just kidding I’ve never been to coffee with a guy before in my life and I want to marry you so that makes me especially nervous.

After scouring the closet of every girl on my hall for the most. perfect. outfit. possible.  I headed to Atlanta for what would turn out to be one of the sweetest little mornings of my life.  

(And by the way, my ichat automatically saves all my conversations in an archive so I just pulled it up and took a screen shot of the bubble. Just in case you were wondering.)