“Trying to get cool?”
Neither of us really wanted to be at that party. It was a birthday, and also a football game, and neither of us cares about football. It was very hot. We had been quietly noticing each other all afternoon and saying nothing about it — one of us afraid of rejection, the other sure he would not be interested.
Then he went outside to cool off under the misters, in what he still insists was the least flattering way possible, and she said: “Trying to get cool?”
He made a joke. It was a bad joke. She lost interest for about a minute, then told him he had not asked for her story but was getting it anyway — and he turned to face her and listened. We talked for five hours, until the stars came out. He asked for her number as she was leaving, and we have talked every day since.
A few months later, the two groups of friends who brought us to that party stopped speaking to each other. That evening was the only time those circles ever overlapped. There was no second chance at it.
Which is where the rings come from. There is meteorite in them — rock that travelled for billions of years, survived the fall through the sky, and was found. It felt like the right order of unlikely.
The two of us come from very different worlds, and so do the people in them. Our friends and families have never all been in one place — different circles, different corners of our lives, most of them strangers to each other. That is rather the point of this evening. Every one of you shaped one of us into someone the other could meet under those misters. Bringing all of you into the same room feels like the proper way to start.
So please join us for a celestial evening among the barrels. Starlight, warm light, and everyone we love in one room.