how i met your father: our love story, part xiii

here's the next chapter of our story. if you're just tuning in, you can read the previous chapters by clicking the link how i met your father in the labels sidebar. on another note, can someone make me a button for this? or teach me how?

we spent the next several months emailing and it wasn’t until my birthday at the beginning of summer that michael first called. while it looked like we took our relationship slowly this time, we were actually barreling forward. we had enough history to know about each other and the rest of the time i spent in manila was about deepening that relationship.

my teammates and i had planned to stay in the philippines until spring 2003. with that timeframe in mind, i had subconsciously decided i would determine whether i knew michael was the one a couple months before i came home.

as the summer turned to fall, michael entered his last year at purdue. he invested his free time into attending job fairs and looking for potential jobs. he told me all about each opportunity and i listened patiently, wishing i could be with him to experience what he was telling me.

until one night.

we had been talking on the phone when michael mentioned to me a job option for a large corporation which would have him moving around the country every six months for two years, learning new facets of the operations. as a business student, it was a great opportunity. he talked about it as though i would wait for him those two years, living my life hundreds of miles from wherever the job took him.

that night, i realized i never again wanted to live apart from this man, separated by the pacific ocean or several states.

that night, i realized he was the one.

unfortunately, it was about six months too early. or so i thought.