How we met

Marta’s Side:

I met Juan for the first time when I rushed for Theta Tau, a co-ed engineering fraternity at USF, and interviewed him. We shared a common interest in video games and romance anime, so it was easy to chat together.

Juan was further in CS and I looked up to him as an upperclassman, and to be totally honest, I likely would not have passed one of my core classes had he not explained pointers and addresses in simple terms after one of our fraternity meetings. Something I’m pretty sure he said in passing to help an underclassman, but something that stuck with me and helped my understanding of some core programming essentials.

We would occasionally get dinner or lunch together post fraternity meetings (will never forget the time we were in mission BBQ and the pledge of allegiance started playing) but the first time we ever ate together, we had thai food and Juan ordered the spiciest level of fried rice on the menu, then proceeded to not eat it so he wouldn’t be tearing up and blowing his nose in front of me. I always wondered why he decided just not to eat that night until he told me the reason many years later.

When Juan graduated during my second fall semester, he expressed wanting to be something more than friends. I said, no, ew,  men, and turned him down, but that didn’t stop him from sending me cool pictures of his hikes and discussing anime with me after he moved to Seattle for work.

We kept in touch while I finished my degree, and when I interned at Nike near Portland, Juan visited me for a weekend and I went to visit him in Seattle with our friend Esther on another weekend. When I said I didn’t want to take the bus back, he offered to drive me home in the middle of the night / early morning (we barely made it in time for me to go to work btw). When I told my host in Oregon about Juan visiting and how I wasn’t into him, she said “You never know what might happen.” Look at us now.

Sometimes Juan would visit Florida and if I had time, I would go get boba or see him at a fraternity event.

The pandemic starts, and Juan is sending me tons of snapchats of him playing the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy 14. To be fair, my brothers had started playing it when it initially released and I kept seeing great things about it on Twitter and other social media, so once the Animal Crossing high wore off I finally took the plunge and started with the free trial. I told Juan that I was starting to play and he was so excited, I asked if he wanted to start a Discord call. I didn’t really think he would agree to it since neither of us were the type for calls, but he hopped on and helped me get started in the MMO.

I can’t recall how many calls we had, as there were numerous, but many were 5+ hours long as Juan would chaperone me to different parts of the map to complete the main story. I’d stay up late into the night just hanging out with him and it devolved into talking about our days, life, the pandemic, and then further into purely watching anime together.

Juan then traveled to Florida for his birthday, and we went fishing together as a good social distancing activity (neither of us knew really how to fish) but we had fun! And caught some small fish.

The turning point was really when we spent Juan’s birthday together, which also happens to be our fraternity’s holiday “Founders Day,” where we looked at gundam models together, got shaved ice, and met with our brothers at World of Beer near USF, as was tradition. I realized I had enjoyed my time with Juan so much, I didn’t want to think about where we would be as friends if he started being in a serious relationship with someone. It was also his last day we could hang out before he left back for Seattle, and I didn’t want him to go.

I mulled on my feelings for a bit, and wanted to discuss them with Juan over video, when Juan messaged me after returning home. We BOTH ended up confessing (Juan first, again) and the rest is history :)