Darious: After living in New Jersey for 12 years, I moved to Philadelphia in the summer of 2014 to start pharmacy school at the University of the Sciences. The first time I laid my eyes on Alicia was during our first day at our Honors writing class. We didn’t talk much that day, but we exchanged our pleasantries and worked on different group projects during the first few years of college. At one point in the curriculum, I started asking Alicia for notes or help with exams once a week, but she had no idea that I was actually doing fine in school. I was just looking for excuses to talk to this wonderful person I found myself falling for. After many more conversations about things outside of school, like our families and our plans after graduation, we found that pharmacy school and fate had an unexpected and sweet friendship in store for us. Although I always wished I had gone to Rutgers Pharmacy School with all my friends from high school, attending USciences and getting to meet Alicia ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Alicia: After getting to know Darious and becoming better friends, I also found myself falling for the kind, funny, and intelligent person he is. However, it took a funny incident for us to work up our courage and tell each other how we truly felt. At one point in our clinical skills class, we were paired together for a blood pressure measurement test that neither of us had prepared for. Naturally, we were both extremely nervous and fumbled a lot as we demonstrated the blood pressure measurements in front of our instructor. On top of that, we nearly scared our instructor because Darious turned out to have a concerningly HIGH blood pressure (and I mean high enough for the instructor to recommend that Darious visits his family doctor). To our luck, the instructor was in a gracious mood and we walked out with passing grades, laughing about that disaster of a test. This shared moment then led to us finding excuses to study together and finally revealing our feelings for each other, as well as the true reason behind Darious’s HIGH blood pressure that day. The rest is your typical friends to soul mates love story…a story that we’re excited to continue as we make memories for a lifetime.

Alicia: On the day of the proposal, Darious first took me back to the place where fate brought us together: USciences. He then led me around to different spots on campus that held important memories for us as we reminisced about our journey from being strangers in college to best friends in love. When we got to our last stop on campus, Darious suddenly went down on one knee and started talking about how he had been waiting for this moment for the longest time (almost making me cry). However, he ended up faking me out and said “I’m not proposing to you here, we have one more stop to make”. While Darious had the biggest grin on his face and was happy that he threw me off my guard, I remember being a little upset and laughing at myself for not expecting this from him ahead of time. After all, the man did make his way into my heart with his jokester personality. Following that unexpected twist to the day, Darious took me to a beautiful state park and officially asked me to accept a lifetime of his jokes and love. Although I had to think about it for a few seconds after his prank earlier that day, my answer always was and always is yes to forever with him. We then spent the rest of our day and weekend with lots of love, laughs, and celebrating with our family and friends. And now, we can’t wait to celebrate the next big day of our journey together in September with more of our family and friends around us!!!