It's a really long story, so read it if you want to....
It was 1996. I was in a
really bad relationship with my high school "sweetheart". We both moved to Santa Cruz to attend UCSC. He promptly decided he wanted nothing to do with me, but he also thought he still "possessed" me and would stalk me, then come to my crappy basement apartment in the middle of the night and yell at me. He even hit me a few times.
Phil had moved to Santa Cruz with his girlfriend to get away from the cold of Minnesota. His girlfriend treated him like shit, but she was all he had and they lived together, so he needed her income to help pay the rent for their crappy apartment in the beach flats by the boardwalk.
I worked at the Del Mar movie theater on Pacific Garden Mall (the main drag downtown). Phil worked at the pizza place a few doors down. I used to go into Pizza My Heart every day, and the guys would refill my Diet Coke for free. Phil edged them all out of the picture by giving me free pizza when ever I wanted it. Slice of cheese. This was also
Santa Cruz, so he would often offer to smoke me out to get me through the late show. We used to hang out at the theater and watch movies and talk and laugh.
I used to wear this one dress, that, when I stood in the doorway of Pizza My Heart, he could see right through. He would flirt with me all the time and his line everyday was "what color are your underwear?" I would sometimes show him just the color of the sting of my string bikini. He would go wild...
One day, after much flirting and free pizza for me and movies and underwear teases for him, we went behind the theater (on April 7th, 1996) and made out. A few days later he told me come over to his apartment while his girlfriend was at work. We promptly got down to business. See Abominominous'
Save a Pony From the Glue Factory for reference to this story. Anyway, I came over to his place a few more times while his girlfriend was
there and she didn't like that at all(and I don't blame her!). I, in the meantime had dumped my "boyfriend" (April 14, 1996 - my birthday). Phil's girlfriend kicked him out and he moved into a roommate situation in a house not too far from where I lived. My living situation at the house where I was living was weird and I had moved my stuff up to the creepy attic. Needless to say, I never once slept up there because I would climb into Phil's bedroom window every night.
We talked and talked for hours, every minute we were together (and not having sex!) There was also a lot of weed and drinking involved.
One day, while I was supposed to be in class, we slow danced in a deserted Burger King, wearing those cardboard crowns, with the names "Darla" and "Bo-Dean" (Phil had written the names on in black Sharpie - we still have those crowns). That sealed the deal for me. It was romantic! He proposed (on a whim, with no ring) in the parking lot of a gas station on Soquel that same day and I said yes. He asked me to move with him to Minneapolis and I said yes. I dropped out of school and we moved in August, right before the new quarter was about to start.
He proposed to me again a few years later with a real ring and we got married exactly three years from the day we first kissed (April 7, 1999).