How We Met/The Bus Story

I’m not much of a gushy person but with what happened this weekend I thought I should share the “How we met story”, which we also call the “Bus Story”. It happens to be Ryan’s favorite to tell and it played a big part in this weekend.

You may find this a bit shocking, but we met at a race! I know, I know, huge shocker, never saw it coming. We were both at the Run Wild for a Cure race in June 2009. We talked for like 2 secs after the race. He mentioned being a teacher and that some of his students were volunteering at the race and I instantly assumed he was a couple years older than me. And that was pretty much then end of our convo.

The Bus Story

A couple more months later, September 2009, we ran into each other at another race, The River Run half marathon. You take buses from Rocky River high School to the starting line in Berea. I was waiting for a friend to meet me to get on the bus, but she was running late. I eventually just boarded the bus without her because we were running out of time and the busses were getting ready to leave. The bus was already crowded and there were not many open seats so I sat down in the first open one I saw…..which happened to be next to Ryan. We didn’t talk and didn’t know each other’s names. Shortly after sitting next to him, my friend called, saying that she was on another bus with open seats. I got up and left to join her.

Throughout the next couple of years we started seeing each other at more races and slowly realized we had some running friends in common.  We started talking more and became pretty good friends. Some things in my life fell apart last summer and I was pretty down a lot (sorry no blog about it), but Ryan and I just became closer and better friends because of it; I easily dubbed him my best friend.  I had slowly developed a crush on him, but we were such good friends that I didn’t want to lose that. Luckily, he broke down first and told me he had feelings for me. I am so glad that he did because I seriously was kicking myself for falling for my best friend. Trust me, I couldn’t stop smiling for, well, I am still smiling about him telling me how he felt.  The next morning I was almost convinced that it didn’t happen and even asked him if he had too much to drink when he told me.

Ryan pacing me for a race just days after he told me how he felt. Awww

We had our first date over pumpkin tacos at Deagans in Lakewood. (But I was so nervous about everything that I refused to call it a date, even though I knew that’s what it was).

I know this is a little choppy and all over the place, so my apologies. My head is elsewhere today.

To clear up the choppiness, check out the timeline I made. I framed it and gave it to Ryan for Valentine’s Day. Cannot believe I am sharing this with you guys, but here you go.

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