Him

Let's start from the beginning

My love story with Corey is my favorite of all time. Honestly, I think God knows that I like a challenge, so Corey was not an easy catch by any means. I think if he hadn't been so hard to get, I would have easily gotten bored. Don't get me wrong, Corey is the perfect man for me, but I do think the chase is what kept me intrigued. Hooked really. When I fell in love with Corey, I knew that there could be no other guy that I would be able to love as much as I love him. 

Our love story begins when I was an inexperienced 18 year old in my freshmen year of college. I had been sheltered, I mean really sheltered, my whole life by my loving, yet let's face it, overbearing parents. Pre-K through senior year of high school was spent at the same, small private school in the same small town. I had the same 5 best friends for the entirety of my life and could tell you the middle name of every student in our shockingly small school, as well as both of their parents names, where they lived, what their favorite color was, what they ate for breakfast---you get the idea. 

Being that I grew up in a small, boring town, most of my extracurricular activity was spent at church. If we wanted to do anything remotely fun, we had to drive at least an hour away, and we did just that with our youth group on a regular basis. I had strong morals instilled in me at a young age and I was adamant to follow them. Admittedly, a percentage of my moral compass was out of fear of my mom's wrath if she found out I went astray. And believe you me, she would find out. Detective work is not a necessity in our tight-knit, gossip mill of a town. 

To sum up my before-college-self; I was the president of Students Against Drinking and Driving, in multiple clubs and sports teams, made straight A's with the occasional B that I would be reprimanded for, I had never had a sip of alcohol, was a sworn virgin until marriage, I couldn't fathom the idea that a regular person, outside of perhaps an inmate, actually did drugs, and so on. Boy was I in for a slap in the face when I got outside of mommy and daddy's house and took on my first taste of independence in the real world!

The moment my parents left me two hours away from home in my dorm room was an unforgettable memory. I thought to myself "what next?" and sat on my tiny bed staring in disbelief at my new roommate, Rachel, who also had the 'deer in the headlights' look, her already big brown eyes looking even larger or more alert than they had two hours ago when her parents were still here helping her unpack her things. Should we get dinner? How do we get dinner? What do we do after dinner? What do I normally do with my free time anyway? What if I need to poop? I share a bathroom with three other people, that's so awkward. A small and cold bathroom completely covered in dingy white tile that was not quite as unblemished as it probably once was.

As my first few days of college pressed on, I quickly got over the lost puppy feelings and began to relish in my newfound freedom. I remember the first night that Rachel and I hung out with friends. Two of my high school classmates were attending a neighboring university, so we went to their dorm to hang out with them and meet their roommates. Darren, the resourceful guy that he is, had a suitemate with a fake ID that we would later find to be extremely useful. In result, sitting in the middle of the room on the sink that Darren and Kyle share was a bright blue bottle of Skyy Vodka. The bottle almost seemed to glow brightly under the fluorescent lights of the naked, overly brown dorm room. I kept battling back in forth in my head between coaxing myself in reassurance that my parents are two hours away and there was no way that they will find out if I have one drink and at the same time trying to push away the guilty feeling like I was about to get into trouble. 

Darren poured some of the vodka into two cups and mixed it with orange juice. It was fairly gross that he used his finger to mix it and I found myself wondering when he last washed his hands, though I've always known Darren to be fairly well-polished. Darren held out the red solo cups to us and said "Rachel and Ava, welcome to our humble abode and cheers to getting out of the shit hole known as Aulander, at last!" Rachel nonchalantly grabs her cup and looks at me expectantly.