"Happy Sabbath." "Hi." A little wave. That was our language—the polite, passing kind you give to someone you see every week but don't really know.

Then came one Sabbath afternoon in 2019.
I don't remember the sermon. I don't remember the potluck. But I remember Tevain crossing the room afterward with something different in his step. A twinkle in his eye. That smile—the one I'd learn to read like a map of his heart.

"Good word," he said. "I didn't know you had all of that in you."

I'd just been talking—nothing profound, just a thought from the lesson that had spilled out before I could stop it. But he'd been listening. Really listening.

My modest reply: "Thank you."
That's all it took. A thank you. And suddenly we weren't nodding and moving on. We were standing there. Talking. Digging deeper. Watching the afternoon light stretch across the fellowship hall floor while everyone else seems to have faded into the background.

The conversation lasted longer than a minute. Long enough for me to notice he wasn’t just curious, he was invested. Long enough for him to make me feel seen.

Unbeknownst to me, standing there in my Sunday-best-on-Saturday, I had just said opened the first page of a love story that would last a lifetime.
I just didn't know it yet.