A Love Like in The Movies

PLOT OVERVIEW

A College Christmas Party, December 2015 at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida

Joey was DJing the baseball team’s Christmas Party when his friend from the team came up to him and whispered, “I met my future wife tonight,” and pointed across the room to Josie. Joey looked up, saw her for the first time, and the room melted around him. Joey, having never been much of a romantic before, who had never been in serious relationships or felt too excited about girls in the past, felt an irrevocable shift–an undeniable recognition. He didn’t say it, but he thought, no, that’s my future wife.

Josie, meanwhile, spent the night flirting with a basketball player, unaware of the cosmic shift that happened so nearby, not knowing that the happiest moments of her entire life were waiting for her behind that makeshift DJ booth. 

May 2016, in a crowded Fiddler’s Pub

Josie (bold from a few drinks) walked up to Joey and greeted him as if they already knew each other: a small, fleeting encounter she would quickly forget and he would always remember. Soon after, the semester ended and Josie went home to Chicago, planning for a fall abroad in Paris, while Joey stayed in Florida. But he took the drunken “hello” at the pub to be a sign that maybe Josie was interested. So he reached out to her on Facebook and Twitter; little notes that didn’t want to come on too strong but knowing deep in his bones what would come of them. 

Josie assumed he was a womanizer who couldn’t possibly have any serious interest in her (he was three years older in grad school, was a DJ, pitcher on the baseball team, so handsome he could get any girl he wanted…there was no way he would be interested in her), so she brushed off his messages, responding shortly here and there assuming he must be messaging many girls (as any good womanizer would).   

But when the little green bubble popped up: “I hear you’re spending next semester in Paris–that’s so cool! How did you choose Paris?” Josie was especially surprised why he would want to talk to her knowing he couldn’t even see her for six months. She had no idea that Joey wanted to get to know her as soon as he could, however he could. 

In August, Joey cut off any conversations he was having with other girls, the deep knowing pulling him toward the girl who brushed off his messages. Josie boarded a plane.

An apartment in Paris, October 2016

By Halloween, Josie decided she was too intrigued why this uncatchable man who could have any girl he wanted was continuing to be so persistent, and decided to fully engage in the conversation. She was just a few Facebook messages away from a cosmic shift of her own. The depth and curiosity of his questions, how he said so many things that amazed her and impressed her; the way he spoke about his family, how he preferred Frank Sinatra, the way he was amazed by all the things about her that were objectively uninteresting. He seemed to like the version of her that she liked most too.

Love is a funny thing, one minute you are brushing off messages and the next you are staying up all night to keep talking to a boy. 

The conversation continued for weeks. And then Joey started calling—insisting on making the calls so she wouldn’t pay the long distance fees—and the two strangers would talk on the phone for hours. When she got back to Chicago in December, gifts were waiting for her from the cute DJ on the baseball team. 

The Atlantic Ocean and cell phone towers between them, they were already enamored. 

January 2017, Winter Park, Florida

The first night Josie returned to campus, at the encouragement of her mother and friend Carolyn, the three of them went to see Joey DJ at a bar downtown. He greeted her mother first. 

Their first date was cancelled by a tropical storm, so instead of the fancy restaurant he had planned they watched Anastasia and talked in the living room of her college apartment through the entire night until Joey had to leave for baseball practice in the morning. Josie kept thinking she had never been so herself with anyone before. Joey said “I love you” two weeks later. 

Nine years and multiple lifetimes later, and the stars never left their eyes.