And so they meet...

Picking up where we left off with young Ricky and Bethany in early 2002 before we met. No photos for this post.

In January, 2002 I had just began working my first "beauty shop job" and Ricky was working at the Co-Op. I was going to my parents church where they had just began a group called "young college and career" which is nothing more than an underground singles group in disguise LOL!

I, along with a few friends, went to the first few gatherings of the groups. And this is where the story of us begins. . .

A lady in our church gave me the name and the numbers to two guys who she thought would like to join our group. These guys did not attend the church but she thought would be interested in coming, and she mentioned that she thought one of the guys, Ricky, would be a good match with another girl in the group (I told you, singles group in disguise!). Well, I didn't know what to do with their numbers so I tried to pass them along to the guys in the group so that they would call and invite these guys but they didn't want to call someone they didn't know (yeah, cause its so much more comfortable for a girl to call 2 strange guys!)

So, I called them. First the one named Ricky and then his friend. The first get together that Ricky came to was an in-house Bible study. The house was about 30 minutes from our town so everyone met at the church and rode in groups together. It ended up being me, my friend, Angie, another guy and new-comer Ricky all riding together to the study. I think everyone in the group knew Ricky was supposed to be getting set-up with this other girl (although I am not sure anyone informed him of it!)

That night went good, but remember that I had just had my little young heart hurt and was not looking for a relationship, so I really didn't pay Ricky much notice. That was around the first week of February. The next get together was on Valentine's Day at a Mexican Restaurant. Seriously, I don't know who planned for 15 or more singles to get together on Valentine's Day but that is just depressing. HA! For some reason I arrived early that night and sat at our big reserved table in the middle of this restaurant full of couples out celebrating Valentine's Day. How pathetic. Finally someone else from our group showed up...yep, it was Ricky. I was so relieved to see someone else. We talked and he let me borrow his cell phone and I couldn't open it. Every time I tried I took the battery off of it. He would laugh and put it back on. We sat there together for probably 15 minutes before the others started trickling in. It was during dinner that I got the feeling that Ricky was kinda interested in me. I have no idea why but that made me panic. I can still remember what I was wearing that night. I had worn this red long sleeve shirt that had these belled sleeves (or angel sleeves lol) everytime I would go to dip a chip into salsa, my belled sleeve would (unknown to me) nearly fall into the salsa,. Ever the gentleman, Ricky would reach over and hold my sleeve up. That was when I realized something was up. When dinner ended I whispered to my friend to get ready to make a run for it with me. That was made impossible, however, when we realized the waiter had put everyone's food on separate tickets except for mine and Rickys!! He was ever the gentleman and paid for mine, I thanked him and quickly got out of there. My friend and I ran to my car and sped out of the parking lot.

Angie looked at me like I was crazy and I explained that I thought he was going to talk to me and she asked what was so wrong with that. I couldn't answer her but just told her I wasn't ready for a relationship yet.

Everyone has their own version of romantic, but looking back I can see how all these little events were pushing us towards each other and I didn't even know it.

The next post in this series will be our first date, stay tuned.
By the way, some of these memories I didn't even realize I had until I started writing this. I will be so glad when I have all this documented in a blog book.