Brittany met Nick in the living room of his college townhouse, at a house party at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. His roommate Matt had invited her - after flirting with her, poorly, earlier that day at a mandatory club president meeting. Nick pulled up a chair next to her, and they talked for hours. On her way out the door, she broke his heart: she told him she actually had a boyfriend back home. She went back to her dorm that night and texted her ex that they needed to talk.

They kept showing up at the same weekly house parties in the Fairfax townhouse - card games, drinking games, beer pong partners (losing terribly), coffee and bagels on the weekends. Somewhere in there, without either of them quite noticing how it happened, they became best friends: Jeopardy marathons, Nintendo Switch on the couch, learning to cook together with an unnecessarily expensive meal delivery service two college kids had no business buying. One thing led to another, and Brittany found herself at Nick's mom's cabin in Massanutten, saying "I love you" for the first time in a hot tub on a freezing mountain night.

Adopting Bean first, back when they were still clueless. Moving 500 miles together to the shittiest apartment. Grad school, bullshit jobs, moving apartments and moving again. Adopting Finley, on the theory that two years of Bean had taught them plenty about how to train a second dog. (Yeah, right.) Finding a beautiful community of friends along the way and becoming part of each other's families.

Nick proposed on his grad school graduation day, after earning his PhD at Ohio State. For years, Brittany - and her mom, and his mom, and their sisters, and their friends - had hounded him about when he would propose, and he always said the same thing: "after grad school." Somehow she still didn't expect it when he took off his cap and gown and produced a strange fanny pack (which she immediately told him never to wear again) - holding an engagement ring. Both families were there. Dinner that night was at Marcella's, one of their favorite Italian spots in the city, celebrating a graduation and an engagement at once.