Patrick and Michelle
At first he was just a friend, someone to spend the time with, someone who I could wear my pajamas and no make up around. Little did I know, every day I spent with him, I was falling more and more in love with him. I was not ready to open my heart up again. It had been ripped and torn, and I could not stand any more damage. But over time it stopped hurting. Everyday I spent with Patrick it was healing, he was mending it. He was closing the holes that had been torn, until it was whole, and his.
The first time I met Patrick was at Church. Tara, my roommate was engaged to his best friend and roommate Alex. Alex had been over to our apartment earlier that week. Tara had decided to switch apartment because she didn’t want to stay with the same roommates. I can’t thank her enough. Of course I immediately asked Alex if he knew any cute boys because as much as I didn’t want a relationship I still wanted to date and meet new people. He told me he knew just the guy. So that week at church his roommate Patrick showed up. He sat next to me and the first thing he said was “you have nice ankles.” He was funny, we got along well, and he quickly became a good friend of mine. Later that week he asked me on a date. Apparently Alex told him to pick the prettiest roommate of Tara’s and he would set it up. So he picked me (aww…)
The night of the first date came, but it wasn’t a blind date, so I wasn’t nervous I knew Patrick, and had seen a lot of him that week. Alex was his only roommate, and they are practically brothers, grew up together, so there is no separating them. But when Alex was all disgustingly in love with Tara, he needed some kind of break. So we would hang out a lot. My brother lived down the hall and he would be over all the time too. So Patrick, Michael and I would spend time together almost everyday. Mainly we ate together; cooking is always more fun when you are doing it with your friends.
I didn’t know what we were doing for our date; all Alex told me was that it was going to be fun. So I got all cute, and Patrick picked me up at my house. We started walking down the hall, and ended up at his house. As I walked though the door, I was pleasantly surprised that actual boys lived in this apartment. It was clean, music was playing in the background candles were lit and a fondue pot on the table. It was a fondue date. Patrick had prepared everything, and it was all pre-sliced and measured out waiting in the fridge. He started out by telling me a little of the history of fondue which was a surprise to me, this guy thought of everything. Apparently fondue comes with rules of etiquette, and one of those rules, which Patrick was sure to point out, was that if you drop something in the pot you have to kiss your date!
The first course was cheese, then onto the meat and finally the chocolate fondue. It was one of the best dates I had been on. It was so much fun just talking to him, learning about him and his family. There wasn’t any of the nervousness that usually accompanies dating. It was just nice. After dinner we watched Cinderella Man, good movie. Half way through Patrick asked me if he could put his arm around me, it was so cute that he asked that of course I said yes. Now the debate in my head was like this…. “He is nice, I like him, but not like that, I cant deal with that right now. We can just be friends right? I hope so…” half way through the movie there was a knock on the door. Someone from church was going around handing out Home Teaching assignments. Guess who his home teachee was… me. It must have been a match made in heaven. At the end of the date he walked me home, hugged me at the door and told me he would see me around. As soon as I got inside the roommates swarmed wanting to know what I thought and how the date went. I told them it was great, and that I really liked the date and Patrick but I wasn’t ready for a relationship. Mt roommate Katie game me great advice. She told me that she kept a date journal of all the dates she had ever gone on and she would be brutally honest about the person going over the whole date and putting the pros and cons down. So I did that as soon as I went to bed I wrote my date diary. The only con I could find was that his nose was a funny shape. Everything else was wonderful.
After the first date, I saw Patrick almost every day. We had a group of friends that did everything together. A normal week day would usually end up with Michael Patrick and Alex at our house doing nothing at all. That summer was amazingly busy for me. I was working 3 jobs as a lifeguard, 24 hour fitness, and a wedding coordinator. But the times that I would come home I would usually bump into Patrick at my house at least once a day. All summer it was Patrick, Michael, Alex, Tara, Katie, Kyle, and me. Every activity, almost every dinner it was this group of friends. Weekends were the best especially Sundays. We would always have a Sunday dinner. Sometimes the boys would make it sometimes we would make it. And then of course after ward prayer was movie night with the infamous Ghirardelli triple chocolate brownies. Summer breezed on by, and it was by far one of the most fun and most busy summers I have ever had.
The time was fast approaching when Alex and Tara were going to get married. So two weeks before the wedding for the fourth of July we all went up to Idaho to Tara’s house. Alex, Tara, Kyle, Katie and Patrick went up first, but Michael and I had to be a school or work until later that day so we ended up getting there later. When we got there we played basket ball against Tara’s parents and Kim Tara’s mother is amazingly good at basketball I was so embarrassed getting schooled by this tiny soft spoken woman! The next day we went boating on the lake, at lunch and spent the night talking and just hanging out. Then for the fourth of july we went to watch the parade in the morning, then that night we rode out bikes to the river to watch the fireworks. We hit a couple of roadblocks on the way, Kyle biffed it on his bike, and Katie lost her phone. But for the most part it was a wonderful night, and when we got back to their house we did our own fire works. The Walker family was more than generous to us, and it made for a wonderful weekend away.
Two weeks later we headed back up there for the wedding! The drive wasn’t too long, but we had a car full! We got to the tux store right before closing, Patrick was part of the wedding and he had to get a tux, let’s just say he wasn’t thrilled about the $100 rental fee! The weather was gorgeous, Tara and Alex were so happy. On the way home we packed the car full of presents for Alex and Tara and drove the whole night back to prove. Halfway through we dropped of some of the stuff at a relatives house and switched the cars around I wanted to ride with Patrick so bad…But had no luck.
The next couple of months were busy with school and work, but I could always count on seeing Patrick. He moved in with Michael and I was over there all the time or they were at my house. I remember on day after a long day at school, and only a couple hours till a full night of work, I went to Michael’s and wanted food. Patrick was there and he just offered to make us some amazing mushroom hamburgers. He was so sweet, he would do random thing all the time that just showed how sweet he was. He really started to grow on me. He was my best friend I could talk to him about anything. One night he came over and there was a thunder storm outside so we opened up the porch door, turned the couch toward the door, turned off the lights and just watched the thunderstorm, and talked about everything.
One night Patrick’s co-worker wanted to go on a double date, so of course I would go with pat. We ended up going to Chuck-E-Cheese it was the most fun I have ever had! Patrick and I played shooting games; I kicked his butt in the Basketball game. Then we kicked some little kids out of the photo booth and we took like ten pictures together. Afterward we went back to his place, and made some Snicker doodles for his work the next day. It was the best night!
Over the six months that we knew each other we probably saw each other almost every day. Even when I moved apartments I knew I could get Patrick to help me move he was always there when I needed him and whenever he was not there I noticed. He tried a couple more times to get me to date him, but I was just not ready yet. Then around October things changed. I had see the ex and realized that he meant nothing to me, and he had no hold over me whatsoever. I realized then that I had been falling without realizing it. Falling into something that was so comfortable I didn’t even realize it at first. I was had been falling for Patrick ever since I met him, and now I knew I wanted him. But Patrick had started to give up, after 7 months of trying to get me to date him he decided to branch out and date other girls. This was just not ok with me. He started hanging out with another girl named Megan, he was the FHE parent with her and they were baking and having fun together. He was having fun without me. I realized then that if I did not take him someone else would. So that night I went to their FHE and then Patrick came to mine. After that there was a football game on. Patrick came over to my house and we watched the cowboys destroy someone. Not sure who but they won!
During the game something changed. Now that I knew I was ready to date, I could let myself be completely free and open with Patrick. I started holding his hand, and I think he knew that the stakes had gone into his favor. So he went home but soon thereafter he texted me and said he couldn’t concentrate on his ARABIC homework. I was doing homework too, but I invited him over. We started watching Lord of the Rings. But this could have been the first movie I had ever watched with him. Things were different now. My heart was pounding, and I was nervosa. We were cuddling on the couch; finally I turned to him and kissed him. Right then the puzzle pieces fell into place I knew I was where I was supposed to be. This felt right this felt like home.
The next weeks were the happiest of my life. Patrick and I spent every waking hour, and some of the ones that should have been sleeping, together. Every night after the first movie, we would watch the LOTR; we finally finished all the Lord of the Rings. They are now my favorite movies.
I am not sure how it happened but I knew. After a couple of weeks, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of eternity with Patrick. We were best friends and that friendship allowed us to know each other in ways dating never would have allowed. One night we grabbed a calendar and picked out a date- a date to get married. Don’t ask me how it happened, but we knew. Everyone thought we were crazy because it was so fast, but it worked out perfectly.
A week or two later we drove with my brother and sister to my home. I wanted my dad to know him and for Patrick to have the opportunity to ask my dad’s permission. It was a fast visit and I don’t think my dad really liked the idea of me getting married, but he said that we had his blessing. On the way home we stopped to visit Alex and Tara, thanks to one minor change in Tara’s life changed mine forever. They still couldn’t believe that we were getting married, no one really understood except up. We knew it was right.
We knew we were going to get married and we had the date December 20th , now we just needed to get officially engaged. We went to look at rings and I found one that I fell in love with. Patrick told me one night that we were going to go out to dinner so to get dressed up nice. I had a cute black dress and some really cute blue heels. We were going to dinner in Salt Lake. On the way up there Patrick got a “phone call” from the restaurant telling us that they needed to push our reservations back. We were fine with that so Patrick asked me what we should do with the extra time. I jokingly said lets go shopping, he didn’t really like that comment. He quickly changed the subject and asked me if I had ever gone to the top of the conference center. There is a really big beautiful garden up there. I had never been up there but wanted to go, so that’s where we went. He said that he knew one of the guides that worked there and we could skip the rest of the tour and go straight to the top- usually you have to go through the entire half and hour tour before they let you on the top. So we got there and Patrick asked for his guy, and he wasn’t there. They said the shift was changing and he might be there by then. So we waited around and looked at some pictures. But my feet were killing me, sure my shoes were cute, but they hurt, and we had to walk a couple of blocks to get there. So finally the guy showed up and took us to the roof. He let us walk around and look at all the flowers and plans. So we roamed and wandered. I was complaining about my feet so I walked to a bench and sat down. Patrick started telling me why the garden was built on top of the building. Apparently President Hinckley wanted a more secluded place for people to come, to get away from the world. A place that young men could take their girls to propose “So following the prophets council… you need to stand up, and I will get on one knee... Michelle will you marry me?” he pulled out the ring and slipped it on my finger. I pulled him up while I was jumping up and down and kissed him. We then walked down to the melting pot, and had a wonderful fondue dinner. It was October 16th. Two months and 4 days later we were married for time and all eternity in the San Diego Temple. That day I started my happily ever after, and so far I would not change anything. No matter what this life throws our way I know Patrick will be there for me, and I will always have him, not just in this life but for forever.
I hope your day was full of love and happiness. Ours was. We went to the Steak House "SaltGrass" to eat steak and then came home and watched Wall-E! I love that movie. It was one of the movies that Patrick and I saw before we were dating. You know the whole time how Wall-E wants to hold EVE's hand- well Patrick felt the same the whole movie. But now he can hold my hand- whenever he wants!
