Preston will tell you that the first time we met was on a bus headed to an all-night party event for our church youth group. I was in the 6th grade. He was a freshman in high school. I have no recollection of this meeting at all, but apparently I made fun of him for sleeping on the bus. From this point on, Preston’s vision of me was tainted and I had to work hard to overcome this first impression.
I don’t remember the specific moment that Preston and I met. All I remember is gawking at him while he played the guitar on stage in the youth worship band. I thought Preston was so hot! So did all the other young girls in the youth group. He was the topic of many giggly conversations with my mid-high girlfriends. This obsession gets awkwardly pathetic…so let me go on and embarrass myself. We had a code name for Preston among my group of friends. We referred to him as “Pumba”…clever huh? I knew everything about whom he was dating, where he was on summer vacations, and I had his home address and phone number memorized. CREEPER! I even wrote a 7th grade English paper called “The Perfect Day”. It was a fictional story, of course, about the day that Preston asked me out. I got an A.
At the point, Preston and I had never actually spoken to each other. He needed nothing to do with me, and I was too scared to ever talk to him. Our only exchanges consisted of an occasional AIM message like, “Wutz up?” “nm u?”
Around this same time, Preston had his brother take this picture of him…hehe! (He’s going to kill me for putting this up here!) He thought this pubescent picture was so great of him, that he sent it to nearly every girl from the youth group over AIM, including me. (This gets even more pathetic. Just wait.) I thought this picture was so great that I made it my background on my desktop. When questioned by my parents, I told them it was a Backstreet Boy! I printed off the picture and took it with me to school. I can still recall sitting in the cafeteria and showing it to Marcy Cook and Hannah Combs. Then I hung it in the inside of my locker!
So there’s no question about it, I was a little obsessed. I once cropped our two heads out of other pictures and placed them onto this sketch of Tarzan and Jane.
Don’t think that Preston was completely clueless about this obsession either.
Towards the end of middle school, I got to know Trey, Preston’s older brother. He came over to the house a lot and hung out and got to know my family. Trey was well aware of my crush on his little brother, and did what he could to help. He would drive me by the golf course where Preston worked and we’d casually stop in “to see what he was up too.” I never said a word. Once, after hanging out together, Trey asked Preston to take me back to my house because he was “too tired” to do it himself. One time he told me that he asked Preston, “So you think you would ever go out with Leah?” and his reply was, “Well, I can’t say that I would NEVER go out with her…but definitely not anytime soon.” (Good thing he included a little disclaimer there, huh?) Ok, so nothing progressed there, obviously. I was immature and slightly annoying, and he was just way out of my league and completely uninterested.
Fast-forward four years. I went on with my life, matured a lot, and dated a couple other guys during my early years of high school. Trey and I remained really good friends and hung out pretty regularly. I hadn’t given Preston any thought really. I knew that he had gone off to college in Louisiana and I sometimes saw his picture on Myspace, but we hadn’t ever spoken.
On New Year’s Eve of my junior year, Preston was staying with Trey for winter break, but I didn’t know this. Lauren (my best friend) and I were going to meet up with Trey at a New Year’s party. After finding out that the party was cancelled, Trey invited us over to his apartment. He mentioned that Preston was in town. “So the four of us could just hang out.” The whole way over to Trey’s apartment, I was getting nervous. I hadn’t thought about Preston in so long. All I knew was that he had gotten even hotter, and now I was older, and newly unattached…. Maybe this time there could be something. On the way there, I was briefing Lauren about him and filling her in on the obsession I had when I was younger.
We all had a great time there that night. We played board games, watched some TV, and ended up visiting till 5am, just talking. I can’t say that I left feeling any real chemistry between Preston and I, but we had definitely picked up a friendship. We kept in touch from time to time over AIM or Myspace…but we weren’t pursuing each other at this point by any means. Preston knew he would be back for his spring break in mid April and the four of us made plans to hang out again when he was home.
So April rolls around, and Preston came back to Plano. The four of us hung out the first night he was back in town. Preston had never “toilet papered” a house, and Lauren, Trey and I decided that everyone needs to have that experience at least ONCE in his life. So we enjoyed the pranks of youth that night, and stayed out late at the park and at Trey’s place.
This time there was definite chemistry. That next day, Preston sent me a message on Facebook to tell me how much fun he had had the night before and how he wanted to hang out sometime just the two of us.
DING DING! Leah finally wins! The four of us spent every day of Preston’s spring break together. That Saturday night, I was over at Trey’s house hanging out with the guys and their cousin Aimee. We watched a movie and Preston held my hand for the first time! Aimee and Trey gave him so much grief once I left, I’ve since heard. That next morning, Easter Sunday, we met at church and sat together. Before he left to head back to Louisiana, he pulled me aside and asked if I’d like to keep pursuing this long distance, and obviously I consented! Three years of long distance later, here we are… engaged!
It is so funny for me, still to this day, to think that I ended up with THE Preston Collich. If only I could go back in time, knowing what I know now. I would have encouraged that silly young girl to keep on obsessing…. one day it will be mutual and one day he will ask you to marry him!
