our story series: the introduction

every couple has a story. here's ours:

autumn 2010, my roommates and i were settling into our new lives as sophomores at regency apartments in provo, utah. one of my roommates tara and i had roomed in building one during spring term and spent several weeks with gaping holes in the kitchen ceilings due to a mold outbreak and although we got a month of free rent (i hope the cancer's worth that $100 later in life), we requested having our contracts moved to building two for fall/winter semester. i don't know why we thought that building two would be better, or safer, but ultimately, our move precipitated many wonderful friendships and marriages. so roommates, tara and i say "you're welcome".

it was halloween and half of our apartment-tara, katie and i, had been assigned new home teachers (lds.org) who set up an appointment for that day. earlier that afternoon we all dressed up in white shirts, jeans and colorful cardigans and took "roommate" pictures up in sundance. yeah, that's a thing BYU girls do. our home teachers were two roommates from promenade 17, adam and matt. only adam was busy that day, so one of the other roommates, cory, came over with matt. normally these visits are about 30 minutes or so, but i recall them staying over for several hours. they asked us lots of questions including our favorite foods, and i remember us all saying things that started with a "p"-i said pumpkin, tara said pudding and i don't remember what katie said. they chatted, matt played guitar, we laughed and then they left.

however, cory left behind his keys (probably on accident). immediately katie snatched them up and ran into the back hallway with them as she heard cory come back for them. he searched everywhere and beginning to panic, left empty-handed. we, being the sweet girls we are, made a batch of jell-o and stuck cory's keys in the jell-o mound. YUM.

later that evening we dropped of the jell-o at cory's apartment and i'm pretty sure he was mad/disgusted/relieved. i mean, holding someone's keys hostage in a gelatin dessert is a pretty cruel trick for halloween. i remember him coming over to our place because as katie and i walked back with him to his apartment, i was holding onto katie because i can't see in the dark, and cory grabbed my hand to help me too. and so then i grabbed katie's hand to make it less weird (for me, since cory doesn't really think about social implications like i do). we went to adam's room to sort through his extensive movie collection for a scary movie and returned with "secret window". so it was about six girls in our apartment and cory as we watched that weird movie and he sat by me and played with my hand (BOLD for meeting that day) and tried to show off his new ipad to me (something i could care less about). after the movie finished cory left and my roommates and i sat and talked about him and how fresh he was, by our somewhat inexperienced standards :) in retrospect, i realize that is just how cory acts-authentic and impervious to social norms.

he left with the promise of a date for two days later.