(Sorry about that lapse of time. Photos due to a bride so it took priority  )

So let’s catch up:

“We got incredibly close over the next couple months. We had a lot of classes together and both had a detached air about our senior year. He didn’t grow up with these students so he wasn’t too attached and I had already said my goodbyes a year before thinking I wasn’t going back so was trying to deal with a new attitude and environment.

Then the drama began. Because how can you have a high school romance, with out a little drama?”

I feel like the work “drama” defined my experience in High School. I fluctuated between several groups of people, and sometimes none. When my parents left Ecuador to move back to the States for good, I was thankful for the chance to start over. To be a new me. I had left behind false impressions, bad impressions that were justified, and a reputation that was 50% true, 50% easier for people to make up than actually take an interest in me.

When Naph and I started hanging out more he finally felt comfortable to ask me questions about myself that he had heard through the grapevine. He was the first person, in all my years of high school, to have asked me if what people were saying about me behind my back was actually true. And the crazy thing about it was that I knew that he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to rule me out because of what people said.

As we hung out more, his relationship with his girlfriend became more tense. I don’t think it was because of me per say, but high school romances are fickle and dramatic as you very well know and when he and I hung out it wasn’t either of those; it was care-free, fun, without intentions.

I started falling for him around February but quickly told myself it wasn’t worth it. We would be graduating soon and going our separate ways. His home base in the States is in the south and mine is in Maine. His family was still located overseas, mine was back for good, no reason to travel back to Latin America again. So, for the first time in my life, I didn’t act on my feelings. I just let us be friends. I prayed that I wouldn’t get emotional, jealous or frustrated with his choices in his relationships and, for the most part, I was granted that peace.

His relationship soon came to a breaking point, but not until he had asked her out to the Junior/Senior dance. I had gone out and purchased 3 dozen roses for him to give this girl during a school concert. She said yes. About 2 or 3 weeks later they broke up. In that time he and I had begun to hang out more and more, and their relationship became more and more unstable and finally dissolved.

Very quickly after that I knew that my feelings for him were real, and strong, and wouldn’t be let down easily but I was still able keep it out of view. Unfortunately, he started liking me.

At our high school, the seniors had a concession stand that helped raise money to fund the senior trip and other functions. One night it was my chance to work the stand and Naph came by to ask me what I wanted for dinner so I didn’t have to leave the booth. This was something we dorm kids did all the time since our dorm was on campus and not a far walk. However….he offered to make me something from scratch, which he did…and brought back to me in front of two other girls…one of which was his ex-girlfriend. And thus, more rumors began, and more drama flared up and more and more I regretted being allowed the chance to move back to Ecuador and graduate.

About a week later, on a Tuesday night, I asked Naph if he wanted me to pick up his dinner from the dorm. We were at a basketball game and I was headed back to pick something up anyways so I offered. He said yes, there was a tinge of flirtation but I didn’t want to hope so I just got him is pizza and watched the game.

That weekend I had a girlie night with some girls and they asked me about Naph, if I liked him, if we’d date if I had the chance, all those prying questions that girls ask. And I knew the secret was out, I hadn’t hidden it as well as I thought I had. So I confessed to them my feelings, but that my intentions were to not act upon them. I just wanted to graduate and start again in the States.

The next Wednesday changed everything. Wednesday nights many people in our school participated in different volunteer/ministry opportunity. Naph and I worked with one that mentored middle school students. This Wednesday, however was when all the leaders got together and had our final hurrah. Naph and I walked to the house where the party was at. We began to flirt a little bit more, getting close to a potential, revealing, conversation. Unfortunately, at the most important moment we were picked up by a missionary who was on his way home. So I knew the conversation was done.

The party came and went and it was time to walk home. This time it was an uninterrupted walk. Uninterrupted until I tripped and practically face planted. We were laughing so hard that Naph took a little stumble too and we had to hold onto each other’s arms in order to stay standing. As we recovered, we began to talk of other things, more intimate things. Like what we wanted in a relationship, who we thought God was preparing for our spouses. Soon our hands were intertwined and we were in a flirtatious daze. We had on one more block to go until the school where we had to pretend like the past 10 minutes never happened.

Then a white Suburban pulled up. The window rolled down. And a part of my distorted past called out my name surrounded by a haze of cigarette smoke. My stomach dropped and I knew these past 10 minutes would be all that I’d get to enjoy with this handsome man I thought could be my husband some day.

Until next time

Don’t worry. There’s a happy ending.