Lauren, Zeb's Nephew Luke, and Zeb

We met when we were about 8 years old for the first time. (We might've met earlier than that even, but our memories of each other start at about eight.) I remember swimming with Zeb and his sister Rachel at my grandparents' house back then. Don't remember too much about those few summers, but when I saw Zeb years later, I recognized him.

In 2004 (Right, Zeb?), I was working at Sportsplex, our family business, manning the front desk when Zeb came in to work out. I recognized his name when he signed in, but I couldn't decide where I knew him from. While he worked out (for what, 5 hours, Zeb?), I thought about it. (It was that feeling you get when you hear a song, and you know you own the CD and know all the words of the entire album, but you can't think of the band's name.) By the time he passed by the front desk to leave, I'd remembered. Swimming at Mama Jo's.

Maybe he was surprised that I'd recognized him, because he didn't say a lot except confirm that yeah, he'd swam there. Remembered the slide into the deep end of the pool. We talked for a few minutes, and he left to head back to his family in Port Charlotte, Florida.

Apparently, (and sorry if this is giving away too much, Zeb), he thought of me the whole drive down to Port Charlotte. He even asked his dad, Mark, how to get in touch with me.

A few months later, I went to the Denney family Thanksgiving at my cousin Renita's house, and Zeb and Mark were there. I was shocked and got shy and embarrassed. I don't know if Zeb really knew whether to expect me there or not, but I think we were both equally quiet that day. He did ask me for my email address that day, though.

We emailed back and forth for a few months, but at that point, he'd been deployed to Iraq, and I'd moved to New York. I was "sharing" my neighbor's wireless internet signal which was spotty at best, and Zeb was on a ship in the Gulf, so our emails just kind of dwindled until we didn't talk any more.

Years, and I mean years, went by. Five years, actually. Earlier this year, I was sweeping my kitchen floor, and Zeb's face popped into my head so clearly I could've touched it. I wondered what he was up to and decided to look for him on, you guessed it, Facebook.

I found him and emailed him. Asked him where he was and what he was doing. He was in Virginia about to buy a house and move back to Carrollton. Get out of the Marines. I was in Atlanta, about to end my lease and move back to Carrollton. We emailed a few times, then started texting and talking on the phone.

He said to me early on, "Maybe it's okay that it didn't work the first time around, because I've learned things, and I know you've learned things, and we'll be better this time." That was it. He was it. I knew it. And I hadn't even seen his face in about six years.

When he did get back to Georgia, we saw each other as much as we could. Four months after we started dating, he proposed to me beside a creek in the mountains of North Carolina one morning over coffee. Before he'd finished talking, I'd said yes. He said, "Do you need to think about it at all?" I answered no.

Now, a couple of months later, we're about two weeks away from gettin' hitched. We're both excited for our life together to start. On about our second date, we started a list of things we wanted to do together: go camping, grill hamburgers on a beach, capture bigfoot alive. Now, I know the list is irrelevant, because anything I do, from here on, I want to do with him.