There I stood… Reid to my left—mysterious, humble, thoughtful, older man with a stunning smile. Isaac in front of me—silly, loud, hilarious, younger man who was much less threatening to my carefully-laid plans for my future. Should I accept Isaac’s invitation for a drive and enjoy an evening of laughter and silliness? Or should I decline the invitation and continue my conversation with Reid?

The truth is, it wasn’t really a tough choice at all. I knew the instant that the words came out of Isaac’s mouth that I was going to disappoint him. Remember, I was high on those giddy twitterpation hormones, and I was dead set on getting into Reid’s head, so it only took me a moment’s thought before I looked at Reid and then looked at Isaac and said, “Umm, I think I’m actually going to stick around here.”

I’ll never forget the look on Isaac’s face. He was clearly shocked. He had been given no warning that anything inside my head had changed. I am sure he had expected me to smile and cheerfully accept his invitation. He was stunned into silence for a minute. Then he looked at Reid and back at me, and I watched it dawn on his face that he understood what must be happening. He said something like, “Oh, okay,” and slowly turned and walked away. I felt a little bit bad, but mostly I was relieved to have Reid to myself again. Read the rest of this entry »

Reid smiled back, and then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. He said…

“Hello, Lani!”

And, for a moment, the world stopped spinning. Really! Or maybe not, but that’s kind of how it felt in that instant. From Reid’s end of things, he’d say that there wasn’t anything particularly significant about his remembering my name. He just used to be really good about remembering people’s names. But I tell him that he’s lucky he did, ‘cause, the truth is, I don’t know if we’d have ended up getting hitched if it hadn’t been for his excellent name-recall. For me, it was that very moment, hearing those beautiful words—“Hello, Lani”—that really catapulted Reid onto my radar screen.

I’m not really sure why those two little words had such a profound impact on me, but they really really did. It wasn’t just that he remembered my name. I think it was the fact that I didn’t expect him to remember my name. I was really taken by surprise that someone who had barely made a blip on my radar screen was greeting me personally. It shocked and enthralled me. All of a sudden, the cogs and wheels in my head started spinning and speculating and reading into things. All of a sudden, I was determined to get inside of this Reid character’s head. Unlike Isaac, he was a quiet, mysterious, keep-to-himself sort of guy, so there was so much I suddenly wanted to know about him. I don’t think I thought of anything else for the next few hours. Read the rest of this entry »

Never ones to pass up an opportunity to converse with new friends, we decided to chat with his roommates (whom we had never met) instead. At first it was just one or two of them, and then a third showed up… some kid who liked to run. I think his name was Reid or something…

He was a scrawny one. Looked like a high school kid rather than a college student. He was nice, but I think I forgot his name two seconds after he told us what it was. I have a way of doing that with names.

And I continued to hang out with Isaac off and on. When I was with Isaac, I don’t think I ever stopped smiling (or laughing). But after several weeks of silliness, it was starting to wear me out a bit. I often thought to myself… umm… Okay, Isaac, enough fun and games. Let’s be real for a change. I don’t think I ever did feel like we had a real conversation. Read the rest of this entry »