Our origin story starts and restarts on a pedestrian plane: the parking lot. The first time, Brandon was leaving Austin Bouldering Project late when he was accosted by me, an enterprising enterprise sales executive, looking for intel on the company whose shirt he was sporting. We ended up talking, and even though he couldn't see what I looked like in the dark, Brandon asked me out. We climbed together a few times and knew we had that spark, but he in his restless period left to travel the mountains of Peru. We met again by chance two weeks later, this time in the parking lot of the Dallas-Austin Megabus. The twist was I was now the restless one. I'd been laid-off, which was embarrassing, and I was planning to move to SF. What I didn't know was that "expiration date" relieved pressure for Brandon, and we began spending a lot of time together. This part of our story ends with an Austin job offer (gotten while in SF, of course), and it ends happily because Brandon decided within a month that he and Moose wanted to stay to be together. Now we can't wait to write the rest with you... Writer's notes: You all know 2,000 words wouldn't suffice for either of us. We'd each written a version, which was characteristically complete with pictures in Brandon's case and totally unfinished in mine. This was my attempt to combine stories while Brandon's away. I was truly surprised to learn new things reading Brandon's copy, even though I'd hearing it told by him live, and heck I was there when it happened! That perhaps is some of the beauty and pain of relationship: you can know someone so well and live the same timeline, yet still not know their full story.  Likewise, I hope this reading closed some gap in context for you before you join us in the high deserts of New Mexico. I also hope it kindled in you memories, real or to come, of the loves you've been privileged by providence to have and to hold them more perfectly as each of us longs to love and be loved perfectly.