MFEO - Part II

I remember when Scott came home from his mission quite clearly. As is usual, he spoke in Church that Sunday after he got home. When the meeting was over a lot of people (including all the girls our age) rushed up to the front to congratulate and welcome him home. Not wanting to be "one of the girls" and not knowing him all that well anyway I refused to go up despite my Mother's encouragement. Plus, he was off to BYU and I was living at home while commuting to the U of U. But he came home for the weekend every once and a while (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother's Day) and I couldn't help myself by dressing with particular care on the Sunday's I knew he would be there.

As the semester was wrapping up in April (2005) Scott was planning on going to Seattle to sell home security systems and I was all signed up to go to Italy for the fall semester and then to be a volunteer for the Winter Olympics in Torino. I was even considering going early to teach English for the summer as some of my fellow classmates were doing. But I never felt very good about that so I was planning on continuing to live at home and working to save up monies for the upcoming Italian adventure. I had my airplane ticket (one-way mind you) and had already paid the initial fee. Scott signed the contract for the home securities job and immediately afterwards felt so strongly that it was the wrong thing to do that he got out of it and decided to move home for the summer and spend some time with the fam while working and saving some money. Both of us were looking forward to a dating-free summer; Scott had had some frustrating relationships at BYU and heck, I was going to Italy!

So Scott moves home one week before the U of U semester ends and me being the Young Single Adult leader decided that it was my duty to call and invite him to the Family Home Evening Activity that night. I would never have had the courage to call him had it not been for the excuse of "it's my Church calling." Scott, who had been sitting around playing the guitar wondering what he was going to do all summer, was excited and showed up in his red car. I of course happened to be wearing my cutest jeans and felt that it was my Church-bound duty to be extra friendly to the new guy. It turns out that only one other person showed up for the activity so, as I had a paper due the next day, we canceled FHE for the night. But initial contact (read "flirting") had been made.

The next week my finals were over and I was able to dedicate more time and energy to my suddenly demanding calling. The next week I texted Scott (texting was less nerve-wracking than calling) and some others to see if they wanted to go on a bike ride. However nobody but Scott and me could do it so...I remember it so clearly. He said, in his text of course, that they had a couple of old bikes in the garage that he could resurrect (I thought he was so funny, still do actually). So I show up, coincidentally in the same pair of jeans, to find him working on a couple of old purple Huffies. Soon we were off and we talked and talked. We asked each other all kinds of questions like what books we liked and what we wanted to do with our lives. It was great! I was surprised at how relaxed I was considering I was alone with 15-year-old crush Scott Neuner but I didn't even crash!

When we got back to Scott's house he asked me if I wanted to go get slurppies. Overjoyed to think he wanted to spend even more time with me I said that was a great idea so off we went in his red car. Scott bought the slurppies (he said I could get the bigger size if I wanted to) making it an official date. We then drove to a park by our houses and sat at a picnic table slurpping our slurppies and talking until it was dark. That Sunday he was called (by my Dad the Bishop mind you) to be the other Young Single Adult leader. I was excited to say the least but knew that we couldn't go on any more dates because we were now in a calling together and that would just be too weird. But we could have lots of planning meetings!