Ben & Airy's Episode 1: Celtic Nights & The Duck

Introduction

Ariel and I first met on January 4th (or 5th?) of 2014. I tried impressing her by showing off a huge hole in my sock. A couple of weeks passed, however, and we talked a little more. These talks led to the following events. Now, whether my account is more accurate than Ariel's account...Well, we will leave that up to the readers to decide. Enjoy! :)

Ariel's Account

While I was working at flower shop I sort of won a free ticket to the Celtic Night show that evening and I was pretty excited about it because there were videos in the MC showing cool dances and bagpipes and stuff. While I was still pretty excited about it, Ben showed up and I showed him my free ticket and he volunteered to go with me if I was going alone. I was kind of glad because I wouldn’t have gone if I had to go alone.

When we got there we were told we were only allowed to sit in the bleachers. But then of course I saw that there were tons of closer spots! Whatever. We got a nice spot at the top with a good view and there were relatively few people around us.

We had gotten there pretty early so we had plenty of time to just sit and talk for a while. He spotted his friends way across the gymnasium and tried really hard to get me to see them. He told me a lot about his brothers which I really wasn’t paying much attention to. He didn’t know this about me but I just really struggle remembering names without faces. But he continued to regale me with stories about his siblings, his past semesters, and his sock. I told him that I had duck I was planning to cook up.

I didn’t notice at first but he was gradually sitting just a little closer to me. I thought for a while that it was just natural shifting of the body during animated conversation but it didn’t seem to change even when the program started and we weren’t really talking anymore. It was a pretty long first half of the performance made almost agonizing because of Ben sitting way too close. I kept thinking, “Does he not see that we’ve moved along this bench at least five feet??” and I couldn’t think of a non-awkward way to tell him that I really didn’t want to cuddle him.

After about the fifth fake out ending we decided to just leave the concert because “it was just way too long” but I was really thinking that I needed some space. So we were walking back to our apartments and I thought things were pretty comfortable again, it’s not like he was walking too close or anything. Then as I get to my complex he says casually, “Yeah, just let me know when that duck is ready.” I think, “Great, what if I wanted to eat my duck? I barely even know you and you’re just gonna come eat my food?”

Next day, I’m cooking my duck. By the way, it takes a long time to cook frozen duck and make it soft-ish to eat. But when it was finally done I thought, “I don’t really like this. Who can I feed it to?” So I gave some to each of my roommates but there was so much that there was still left over. And in the back of my mind I hear Ben’s voice say, “Yeah, just let me know when that duck is ready.” So I pull out my phone and send him a text and he was there two minutes later. He kept saying it was good and I just kept thinking how weird he was cuz it just wasn’t that yummy. But I was grateful that he got rid of it for me.

Ben's Account

On January 16, 2014, I stopped by Ariel’s apartment to grab some cookies from her room mate Elisabeth. Elisabeth was in class, but Ariel was home! Even though Ariel was my FHE sister, it was the beginning of the semester, and I did not know her all that well. For that reason, I was naturally surprised when she invited me to go buy a flower from her on the BYU-Idaho campus the next day. I thought, “Okay, okay. A super cute girl just invited me to go buy a flower from her? Heck yeah. You better believe I will be there tomorrow at 1 PM.”

Sure enough, I was there at the Manwaring Center on campus at 1 PM buying a flower from Ariel. Long story short, that same night, Ariel and I were attending an Irish Celtic Nights music show thingy (something like that). It was pretty obvious she did not want to be there with me. She was originally planning on going home for the long three day weekend (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), or--if going home fell through--she was planning on going to Utah. She made it super clear that being with me at this show was her third and last option for the weekend. Even still, I was happy to be with her, and I knew from the very start that we were going to be best friends.

The show was alright. It was a little too long for my liking, honestly. And it was too loud in there for me! And so, naturally, I was trying to scoot nice and close to Ariel so that I could hear her without any problem and talk to her before the show, during the show, and after the show. In the middle of all our conversations, she mentioned that her teacher had given her some duck and that she was going to cook it in a crock pot. I told her that sounded delicious and that she should definitely let me know if there were any leftovers. I walked her home--but not to her door--and I could tell immediately that Ariel thought I was a little strange, which I was honestly kind of okay with because I really just wanted to be her friend.

The next day, I was goofing off at my apartment when I got a text message on my phone from Ariel mentioning that she had some duck that I could try. I had honestly forgotten that I had told her to let me know if she had any leftovers, and so I threw on some shoes and hurried on over to her apartment.

The duck was so delicious.