For those of you who don’t know the story of how we met, Parsons had a welcome week for the Freshman who were about to start classes. A random nightclub in Greenwich Village hosted an event for Parsons incoming Freshman, that was known as a “Stoplight Party.” If you are single, you wear GREEN, in a relationship, you wear RED, and you wear YELLOW if… you are feeling flirty? Regardless of the significance of yellow, Ryan was wearing green and Allen was wearing a shirt with every color imaginable, which seems like a fine idea, but Allen’s jaw was wired shut from having broken it a few weeks prior.

One moment late into a night of intense dancing and drinking a lot of water (we were not of drinking age yet), a Drum-N-Bass remix of Adele’s “Set Fire To The Rain” came on and both Ryan and Allen with their respective groups of friends ran back onto the dance floor. Their friend groups began to dance together and upon noticing the fervor with which Ryan and Allen were dancing, their friends pushed them together, proclaiming, “you two should have a dance off!” So have a dance off, they did.

Once the song completed, both Allen and Ryan were parched and walked to the bar together to get some water. Allen pulled out his phone and opened the Notes app, writing “I would have kissed you on the dance floor but my jaw is wired shut.” Ryan read the message carefully then looked up to meet Allen’s gaze as he smiled, showing the mechanism holding his teeth closed and jaw in place.

More notes were written and the night ended with Allen walking Ryan to the train station, with a plan made to meet the next day and shop on 5th Avenue.

And here we are 12 years later.