We "met" in highschool...

We were both day students. We both rowed. We even shared mutual friends. But I don't remember exchanging one word with him while at St. Mark's. He was just "Flagg," the lanky kid with a blonde bowl-cut (sorry, Matt, the truth must be known).

But when we did finally meet, it was at St. Mark's. My sister was graduating and he was there with a couple of our mutual friends. I was having a party later that day and wanted to invite these friends, but he was standing right there. Ever the gracious host, I couldn't NOT invite him. 

Cut to later that evening. I had little-to-no expectations, but he ended up being the life of the party. (I even tried to convince one of my friends to hook up with him.) We drunkenly bonded over whatever was playing on the stereo, and I decided that we should be friends. 

Later that week, we got together after work. Then we got together the next night. And the next. And the next. We'd meet at my house, cook something out of Cooks Illustrated, eat way too much, listen to music, and talk about books, school, our lives. I think I was smitten after that first week. 

After a couple more weeks, I was pretty sure he felt the same way, but all had been quiet on the make-out front. So one night, when we were at his place, I took matters into my own hands. As we were saying goodnight, making plans for later in the week, I went in for a kiss. But about halfway to his face my brain started screaming "ABORT ABORT ABORT." So instead of following through or pulling back completely, I hit somewhere between his cheek and his mouth. (A moment now known in our mythology as simply "the attempt.") 

Needless to say, I booked it out of there. Aaaaaaand proceeded to write him a very long, very awkward Facebook message trying to explain myself. Good lord was it awkward. (And to my continued horror, it remains in the hinterlands of the internet, waiting to be re-read.) The last thing I wanted was to ruin this friendship, since I CLEARLY must have misread things.

But, lo! He did feel the same way! It was just that he, um, HAD A FREAKING GIRLFRIEND AND NEVER ONCE MENTIONED HER TO ME. We saw each other practically every day for a month and I had absolutely noooo idea. But apparently things hadn't been good for a while, and I was the catalyst to end it. That weekend he went to Maine for Fourth of July, and when he came back we were together, "officially." And it's been that way ever since.

All portraits by Ashley Caroline Photography.

Francesca and I are in New York...

We just attended a wedding, are climbing the stairs to an apartment we’ve rented. It’s the perfect spot. It’s been two days of playing house and married in Brooklyn—but that doesn’t prevent me from executing an all-time-worst proposal. As in, I’m not a romantic, but this story makes me look like a fucking bonehead.

At this point, on the stairs, Francesca is somewhere between tired and angry. She isn’t expecting anything, and that’s not because I’m slick or want to surprise her. She is expecting Apple TV, imagining morning New York, and remembering dinner.

Dinner was outside at dusk (ideal), so I did the least romantic thing: rather than letting a fantastic moment remain fantastic, I started to worry. Mind you, there was reason to worry we were indulging a fantasy there, at that overpriced restaurant, a few blocks from our yuppie pad. There were three years of distance relationship; there were two PhDs; there was a lot on my mind that spilled out disorganizedly. I said the mid-twenties are terrifying. She said that’s not exactly what a girl hopes to hear. Tired, maybe angry.

We get to the apartment, open the door, Francesca walks in and puts keys on the counter where I follow her and unnoticed get on a knee, to which she turns and says, and I quote, “Are you serious?” Which is fair. And, to be clear, she doesn’t say that in a way that’s tear-eyed or excited. She’s genuine.

Francesca hasn’t been idly waiting for me to get my shit together. Several months before New York, she proposed to me … with a bag of Funyuns … which I promise makes sense. Francesca believes; she is fervent, and occasionally I have to follow her: “the attempt,” while cute, is mostly gutsy, the more so since it failed—and has succeeded—so fantastically.

So there I am, on a knee, and to answer the question, I am and always have been serious for a million unexplainable reasons. They are as simple as good friendship. They are as complex as their repetitions and parallelisms. They shift, they rearrange, they surprise.

The next day, we went to look at rings. Most places were awful, not Francesca at all: dark, glitzy, somehow impersonal. But one was about right: open, bright, airy, and despite a weird penchant for shitty pottery, on point. A salesperson opened a case with fifty rings in it, and—without discussion—we picked the same one.