Happily Ever After

I wasn't sure what was going to happen once we got back.

I mean, technically he wasn't mine. But he was mine first, right? And I didn't kidnap him and make him go to Kiawah with me. He did that on his own.
I didn't force him to fall in love with me again or pull any tricks to mess with his mind. I didn't do the oh-so-flattering, "Please take me back, oh please please" thing. Nope. I just went with whatever happened. A risky move for my damaged little heart, but one I was willing to take.

When we got home on Saturday, he called me that night asking if he could come over. I didn't push him for a "so where does this leave us" talk. I decided to let him figure this one out on his own. The answer was pretty obvious to me, but this needed to be his decision.
That night, we just talked about things. He was going to kiss me, but then said, "No, that was only a beach thing." So he eventually left.

Sunday afternoon, he called me to tell me he couldn't stop thinking about me all day, even when he was with Katie.
That night, Brad ended up having a dream about us. He woke up from it at 4am and couldn't get it out of his head. He wrote me a letter, since it was too early/late to call. Brad doesn't write letters. Not unless he really has something to say.
Apparantly in the dream, he had been away for a really long time and had just come back. In the dream, I had this boyfriend and was pregnant. I was wearing a shirt with all these numbers on it, but the two largest numbers were in the middle and it said "27". We were sitting in his family room talking, and I told him I thought it was a boy. Brad said that he got really upset and angry.
(sidenote: Most likely just a coincidence. Who knows. But I had Noah right before I turned 27.)
(sidenote #2: why he dreamed I'd gotten pregnant with a boyfriend, I don't know. I had a loooong way to go to get that deep into trouble. Just wanted to point that out. lol.)

He couldn't shake the dream.
He had realized that he couldn't live without me. He didn't want anyone else, and he didn't want me to be with anyone else. He loved me, and I was all he wanted. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, and that was it.

He asked me to come over the next day, so I parked in front of his house. We sat in the car, and I made myself very clear this time. If he wanted to be with me, he was going to be with only me. No more Katie, no more Maureen, no more whoever else there might've been. I don't share my boyfriends. A relationship with me means staying with me even when stuff gets tough. We figure things out and work through them.

As I said all of this, he just stayed silent. Finally, he kind of laughed in disbelief. "Yeah?" I asked. I was waiting for the, "Yeah right, there's no way I can tie myself down like that" or something to that extent. Instead, he said, "For the first time in my life, I'm willing to do it. I don't want anyone else. I just want you."

It wasn't long before he broke it off with Katie.
The only thing I remember from that whole incident was that all of her girlfriends ganged up on Brad. They made him come over so they could fuss at him for it. That's ok. That's what good girl friends do. Plus, nobody knew that originally, she was the "other woman" in the scenario. Brad didn't exactly go around telling the story to everyone. It didn't matter what other people thought (something he was going to end up teaching me).

We were inseparable after that. It's pretty convenient living right down the road from your boyfriend. It was almost like we made it a goal of ours to see eachother every single day. If he had to work, I went to visit him. If we had homework, we did it together. Everything was finally perfect. He treated me like a princess, and I followed him around like a lost puppy. His mother loved it.
Once when they were out eating lunch together, he asked his mother, "So who do you think is prettier, Hailey or Katie?" She replied, "Now don't get me wrong, Katie's a cute little girl and everything, but Hailey is strikingly beautiful." This was almost as awesome as if Brad had said it himself. When she was in the hospital, Brad went to see her. As they were sitting and talking, she asked if Brad liked me. He said yes. She said, "Good. I want you to date Hailey." At this time, we'd already been dating for like 6 months, but we had to keep our "steady" relationship quiet for awhile. He was still 16, so this was going to take some time.
He thought this was so funny, and just said, "Ok."
However, his dad still wasn't convinced. He liked me as a person, but as a serious girlfriend for his son? Not so much.
My mom gave up. She figured I was old enough to make these decisions on my own (within reason), and the more she fought it, the more I wanted to be with him. And had it not been for my dad, I'm not sure if we'd made it in the beginning. He's the only reason we got to ever be together.

Finally, all of the drama was over.

We spent all of our time together. Our dates pretty much went back to how they used to be: lots of time with the family, running errands together, going to the movies, going out for ice cream, and alot of dinners at Chilis.

For a late graduation present, he and his mom made me a blanket. Each patch had a meaning. The background was covered in MnMs. When he got sick as a kid, his mom would give him MnMs and called them "magic pills". He told me that if I ever got sick to wrap up in the blanket and let the MnMs work their magic. He had big patches of the MnM characters on it. There were patches with kitties on them, because I like cats. There were some Pokemon patches, because at the time, he used to watch Pokemon with Kalyb and liked it. :) There were soccer patches, since he obviously liked to play soccer and also we played it at the beach. He also took one of his flannel shirts and sewed the sleeves on each side, so that if I ever needed a hug and he wasn't around, all I had to do was wrap up in the blanket. In the middle was a big Monopoly board, so if we ever got bored, we could play together. I couldn't believe he did all of that!
I still sleep with it every night. :)


We were madly in love. We made eachother crazy, but we were crazy about eachother.

And we lived happily ever after...

Well, not really.
We went through alot to get to this point, including (but not limited to) me going away to UNCG while he prepped for his mission, his mission and all that entails, Brad coming back early due to the Dr telling him he was going to die, certain church leaders refusing to release him even though he asked to be, deciding to stay home, series of TIA strokes, serious surgery, countless hospital/ER visits, recovery, family drama, Bible/BOM/temple/my-way-or-the-highway wars, college, me freaking out about us not being able to get married (a constant worry for me), graduation, breaking up one more time over religion and medical misunderstanding (Brad thought his medication stopped working), dating other people, Brad having an epiphany and begging for me back again after 2 months, and then finally...

after ALL of that, he proposed.

Christmas Eve 2006, Brad picked me up to take me to my grandparents' house for a Christmas party. Before we left, he asked me to take a walk with him. He stopped in the middle of the road right in front of our buddy Nick's house (who lived next door to me). This was the exact spot we had met when we were 8 years old. He got on one knee with the only light coming from a nearby street lamp and the twinkling lights on the houses. He asked me to marry him, and I of course said yes.

THE END.