Our Story, Part 3: "There's No Chance"

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

A day or two after the ice cream almost-date, I was at the Madison Public Library when my phone rang. It was my cousin McKenzie. (She's coming up in this story a lot, isn't she?)

"Hey, Bre," she said. "Are you dating anybody?"

The answer was a complicated one. I had been dating someone, but he had recently graduated and moved away. I was pretty sure it was over, but things were left unsaid and undone. But I gave her the simple answer.

"No. Why?"

"I think my cousin is going to ask you out. He asked if you had a boyfriend and I told him no, but I wanted to be sure."

There was a bitterness I couldn't explain in my voice when I said, "Well, tell him good luck, because he didn't ask for my number."

(This is where I have to give a shout-out to Ryan Kunz, who had been on the Scroll staff with me for a couple semesters and who went to high school with Ryan. He gave Ryan my number. To repay him, we've promised our firstborn son will have the middle name of Ryan. He can draw his own conclusion about that.)

The next day I was eating a bagel at a cafe in Rexburg with my roommate when I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. Ryan Olaveson had somehow found my number. He asked me for a date that night. I said yes.

Ryan Kunz (the phone number passer), Ryan and Geoff (who we double dated with).
Without them, that first date might never have happened.

We went to a faculty jazz concert and I wore a red lace skirt with a black top. It was a double date and after the concert finished, Geoff Nielson took his date home. I walked to Ryan's car, assuming I'd go home too. While I waited for Ryan to unlock the door, I looked up at the sky. It was a clear night and the stars seemed extra bright in my rural hometown.

"Do you fancy the night sky?" Ryan asked in his recently returned missionary South African accent.

I admit, I laughed a little inwardly. But it was cute. So I told him I did, indeed, fancy the night sky and we spent the rest of the evening sitting under it and talking.

But really, I spent the evening talking while he looked at me. I couldn't get a word out of him. He would tell you he couldn't get a word in, but it's whatever. I went home exhausted.

As I was accustomed to doing, I called my sister when I got home. She asked how the date went. "It was fun, but there's no chance of a second date," I said. "He wouldn't say a word and I had to keep the conversation going all night. It was exhausting."

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Ryan texted me the next day—Saturday—but I was busy shopping and told myself I would write him back later. I didn't. The morning after that I talked to the guy who had graduated and moved away. That conversation verified that we were done and done, now and forever. 

I sat on my bed waiting to feel sad, but the feeling never came. What did come, though, was the thought that I should text Ryan back. McKenzie seemed to think he was a good guy. She'd told me all kinds of great things about him. His friends spoke highly of him. Maybe, I thought, Just maybe I can get him talking.

Ryan (on the far right) with other missionaries in Mdantsane, South Africa.

So I asked him about his mission. It did the trick.

We spent hours in the Hart building at BYU-Idaho looking at his mission pictures. He told me about his service, about the country, about the people in Africa and about his companions. It got late and he told me that his mom was coming home from Quilt Market that night, then he told me all about her business. He talked and talked in that funny accent all night. And I started to see why everyone who knew Ryan Olaveson loved him so much.

I think I maybe started to love him a little bit then, too.