Twelve years in the making.

Alex and James were set up as friends - or at least that was the party line. 

James's boyhood friend played matchmaker, knowing that Alex was feeling anxious about her big lonely move to NYC.   Andrew told Alex all about James and she was a little bit curious, Andrew told James nothing about Alex and he was perfectly ignorant as to her very existence.  They met at Cafe Algiers as a trio, James kept on rolling up the sleeves of his thermal tee, avoiding eye contact - he wasn't expecting a girl to be there.  Alex was nervous, asked too many questions.  James was very good looking, but maybe a little mean she thought.  James was perfectly opaque - curious but aloof.

In New York they would pass each other on the street, exchange hellos, nods or cigarettes. That obscure, handsome boy - Alex would think when she saw him across campus.  Oh that girl, I know that girl - James would think as he took a sip of his beer and Alex flitted out of his view.  

December came and they sat down next to each other at a friend's holiday party - suddenly so very glad to see each other.  Something had shifted and they circled each other throughout the evening.  Alex wrote down her number on a scrap of paper - "Call me for serious" - read the note.  

"I thought you had given it to me just to be nice" - he would later say to her.  "That's not a thing" - Alex would say for the rest of her life.

One morning they woke up together, and then twelve years later James dragged Alex through waist deep snow out to the Edgartown Harbor Light, without proper gloves and with a windchill well below zero.  In between that first drowsy morning in James's dormitory single and the buzzy, exhilarating, and icy trail out to the lighthouse that afternoon, Alex and James grew up.  They fell in love as kids and after thousands of nights and thousands of days, James got down on one knee and did the whole thing.

And now they are doing the other whole thing - and making honest people out of each other.  And you all get to watch.