Matt and I grew up in the same small town, and we went to the same school. He was a senior when I was a freshman, so we didn't run in the same circles or have many interactions. Matt, however, has a very vivid memory of meeting me one night at a soccer game. After our game, a group of friends and I were watching the boys game. Matt was sitting close to us in the bleachers. We all joked and laughed during the game, and I apparently made him feel included in our little group. Fast forward nine years, Matt and I became reacquainted when he added me on snapchat. (That sounds very millennial of us.) He quickly became my best friend. We went on our first date to Murky Waters in Ocean Springs where we made a lot of connections and realized we hadn't been so distanced growing up. Later, I accompanied him to his ten year high school reunion where I was introduced to several of his high school friends. At the end of the night, I asked what one of his friends had said to him earlier. It became clear I had never been an afterthought to Matt when he told me his friend said, "After all this time, you finally got her, huh?"

Things came full circle on a Wednesday night after going out to eat wings at Murky Waters. We came back to Matt's house, and I put on our song Cover Me Up by Morgan Wallen. Then, Matt asked me to dance. We were talking about how one day this would be our home, and we could dance in the kitchen whenever we wanted. Matt asked me to pause the song and restart it, so we could dance to it again after he finished doing something upstairs. Earlier that day, he had picked up my ring (unbeknownst to me), and he had it waiting upstairs. He had not planned on proposing that night, but this struck him as the perfect moment. When he came back downstairs, he was teary eyed. We started dancing to our song again. Matt bent down on one knee and asked me to marry him. It was perfect. The two of us, alone, in our future home dancing and crying in the kitchen to our song.