How it started...

I was in a  relationship for over 3 years with an amazing guy. I loved him with every fiber of my being from pretty much the beginning. I didn't announce it into the universe until I felt that moment it should be said. Even when he spoke it, I held back for another 3 months. The idea of saying "I love you" is said so lightly in my generation and I never really understood that. It's a massive, heavy thing.

It consumes you; it changes you.

As sad as it was at the time, he ended the relationship in March of this year. He is someone I will always love and he's said the same regarding me; it's just that the form of love evolved. It went from romantic love to friendly love. We were just best friends by the end of it. He's important to me and always will be. He taught me so many things about myself and about the type of relationship I want to be in.

And for that I will be eternally grateful.

I began to hang out with a friend of mine fairly often. I had called him the night of the breakup that I wanted to make sure we stayed friends despite having known him through my now ex. We went to the movies one Friday night and had a great time. We would snapchat each other every once in a while but it was pretty stationary for about a month.

And then my mom died.

It was rough at the time (and I'll talk about it in detail another time) but the hardest thing those first few days was handling telling people. That Friday after that fateful Wednesday, I texted Reece seeing if he was busy that night to go get drinks. He was supposed to go see his parents, so I said I'd wait for him to come back. He didn't know til later that afternoon that I wanted to drink in honor of my late mother. His car wasn't working as well as it should for a 2.5 hour drive, so he offered to hang out.

He distracted me from 7pm until 4am that Friday night. We watched t.v. and went to dinner and just talked for hours. When he left to go home, I was sad that the conversation had to end. We went out the next night with my best friend and his girlfriend for food and hung out at my house afterwards until 3am again.

I almost asked him to stay the night; but I didn't.

He didn't come over that Sunday night, but we started texting every hour or so to see how our days were going. That following Tuesday, the 21st, I got really drunk on wine and Angry Orchard. My roommate had a friend of hers staying with us for that week so we decided to make frozen pizzas and drink. I was snapchatting Reece while drinking when my roommate said to invite him over. I jokingly texted him about it, but I thought for sure he wasn't going to actually come over at 9 something at night when he had work the next day.

He arrived at 10 something to a very drunk Marina and her two girlfriends.

We drank and talked, I sobered up some so I knew I was in control of myself and wouldn't say anything dumb. I did anyways, but it was ok.

He knew me, I knew him.

And the communication of our relationship began to develop.