"I would love to know about how you and Drew met and fell in love. I'm a sucker for a love story!"

Asked by Maria.

I posted here about how we met and our first (super awkward) kiss. And since yesterday was the anniversary of our first official date (9 years ago!) it felt like a good time to consider that saga. 
So fast forward about 2-3 weeks from that awkward kiss and Drew texted me that he liked me. 
I don't think I responded to it. Bitchy huh? But I didn't know what to say! I was sort of seeing this other guy at college. Except not really since he was gone and I was still in high school. But Still. I wasn't looking for any sort of relationship. It was 5 months before I graduated and then I was heading off to Northern Iowa. And he had committed to going to college in Denver (12 hours away from where I was going to be.)
But he was persistent. 
He started bringing me lattes to work. He worked just down the street from where I worked and he got off at 5:30 and I didn't get off till 6 so he would bring me a carmel latte (the way to my heart) and offer to drive me to play practice.
Oh yeah starting that January we were cast as two of the leads in our senior school play who just happened to be 'boy friend/girlfriend' in the play. Convenient. So we had play practice 3-4 days a week from 6-10 PM so we spent a lot of time together. And I started to return those feelings. 
We kept is secret for a while. I'm not really sure why, but I didn't really want our group of friends to know. We had all been such good friends, I didn't want to mess up the group dynamics by announcing 'Oh hey, were a couple.' Or something like that. 
I think the first time we 'came out' of the secret relationship closet was spring break about a month later. I had spent the week before spring break in Hawaii on a cruise with my sister, and when I got back my mom was in North Carolina with my little brother if I recall correctly, so I threw a little party for some friends (sorry mom..) and by the end of that night, well everyone knew. And apparently no one was surprised. We must not have been doing as good job of keeping it secret as I thought.
I still refused to call him my boyfriend though. I didn't want anything serious. But when you accidentally fall in love with your very good friend, it's bound to happen. 
We were pretty much inseparable from the start. We did everything together. He became my absolute best friend. 

And that's enough for now! I'm going to try to dig up some of those old play pictures!