I met Dallin on a Tuesday.
I'm kidding. I have no idea what day I met him on. The only thing I'm sure of that day, was that it was pouring rain, I had a new job, and he was sitting in the store that I was going to work at.I walked in and didn't realize that he was also an employee, probably because the first thing I saw was a plaid shirt... PFFFT who even wears plaid shirts anymore? (was my thought, yes, but I was in a particularly cruel mood that day. I, in fact, own about 3 plaid shirts)
I shook the owner's hand, shook the manager's hand, and then was gestured towards Damon to shake his hand. Yah. I didn't quite catch the name so I just inserted a D-name in my brain and looked straight at this 20 year old who was deceivingly older looking, bearded, grinning too broadly at me, man. It's an important detail to know that I had just hit that point, not more than 3 weeks before, where I had completely and utterly sworn off men. I was done-zo with them. The lot of em. Fools. Nothing but trouble. Not worth a flick of my shiny hair.
Oh he grinned at me. Bleck. No way Jose. He said I smiled, then after that moment, I acted as if he was the most vile creature not worth my precious time on this earth bothering being courteous. And it's mostly true. I took his aggressive kindness to mean he was to be my nemesis. Men. Can't live with em, can't live without them being really nice to you when you REALLY WOULD RATHER HIM NOT.
The really fantastic part of this story is just this: Over my random, sporadic romance partners, I have cultivated a list of the perfect ways to approach me in courting. Some of this list is conscious, but I think a lot of it was unconscious only to come to light after I realized I had gone from loathing the blonde man to actually really, really what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-me-liking him. I needed to trace the reasons he made me swoon.
French Fries. This was the first one I remember. He came in one day from his tour guiding, asked everyone if they wanted something while he went to lunch and I said "french fries!" with a smile. I was being difficult. Why would he buy be french fries when I had gone days evading his smiles and trying to ignore his kind questions? Bless his heart, he brought me not only a box of french fries, but Crinkle Cut even, which as everyone knows, is better than all over versions of french fries and I don't scientifically know why I just know that it's true. I was truly humbled. I decided I would be nicer.
Hair compliments. Some days I came into work from the beach, surfing, swimming without showering. My hair tends to get wavier than normal and have more volume. I would agree that it's my favorite style, air dried from the ocean. One day the man walks in and says "Kelsea, did you do something to your hair or does it just look like that?" and I'm like, on the verge of blushing and say "Oh, um no I just got in from surfing" and he says "Well it looks really good like that". Sheesh...
The Office. He quoted it ALL. THE. TIME. Curse my weakness for a great Michael Scott impression. He was breaking my will with movie and tv quotes.
Lord of The Rings, old skool cartoon musical. We had an employee BBQ. Everyone was there. I was quiet because that's what I do around people I don't know really well. Sometimes I wanna cry thinking about that knight in a leather jacket (because of COURSE he was in a leather jacket, romance) who walked in, saw my panicked face, and spent the whole evening coercing me into talking to him about everything. Turns out the bad-a$$ motorcycle rider was actually the lead for Footloose in high school. And when he bit into the finger-sized carrot, fate bit into our lives. He claimed if he could bit through such a large carrot, he could easily bit off a finger. I, of course, began talking about LOTRs, Frodo loses his finger, and then, because NO ONE WOULD UNDERSTAND THE REFERENCE, I started singing "Frodo of the 9 fingers, and the ring of doom". Guess who totes tripped balls hearing that song? He knew exactly what I was singing and we instantly realized we needed to spend more time together.
I won't tip-toe around it, Lord of the Rings. That really sealed the deal. I knew that he was sweet to all the employees. But rambunctious. But brilliant. But hilarious. But courteous. Overall, we were on the same pace with everything. So, yes, I won a pair of movie tickets from work for selling lots of tours. And yes, we got free burgers because of the deal between our shop and the Kahuku Grill. Yes, we had the most perfect and most free first date in the history of spontaneous first dates and yes I spent a better part of 20 minutes ranting about feminism and yes we both sheepishly admitted that as our scary movie started, we really really hated scary movies.
Over the next few months, he came over to my house, managed to get every single Krebs member to like him (a feat not many can pull off, there is a lot of personalities to please in one house), he sat in the car with me on hour-long drives to town while I took the younger kids to football, basketball, gymnastics and every time I looked over in panic and said "I'm so sorry this is so boring" he would immediately reply "Oh, I really don't mind, I just like spending time with you, I don't care what it is we do". We did a lot of errand-runs together. A lot of killing time while the kids have practice together. There was maybe three movies and 6 meals total. The rest of our dates were impromptu walks after work, inviting him to go to the beach with me and my 4 siblings, sometimes 6 siblings. He surfed with me once. It went badly.
And I couldn't help it when we danced behind the house at my brother's wedding. He said Al Green was playing. All I knew is he was the sweetest thing and dancing with him was the best thing that had ever happened.
A few weeks after that, he had left for Philly and I didn't know when I would see him again. He was gone for a little over a month. Then he called one day and told me he wasn't having it. He wanted to move back. So he did. And it was on a Sunday after church, he and Kendall decided to have a spit-wad war on the grass outside of BYU-H. It went on for a while, then when we drove him home, he was spitting spit-wads like a 5 year old, trying to hit passing cars that I realized I loved him.
But it wasn't until even a few months after that, after a long family trip, that I saw him again. I met his fantastic family and after his bonfire performance, we snuggled up and finally told each other what we had known for a while.
And I'll tell you what. The time I have spent with Dallin have been, simply put, the greatest. But the plans we have for the future are the greatest as well. I'm putting my heart and soul into this man because he has done the great kindness of doing the same for me.
#4luversonly
