Lights dimming. Heart thumping. Here we stand at the bottom of a staircase, sheepish, embarrassed, yet excited in a way that dominates our other feelings, your hands in mine, we look into each other’s eyes and I lean in; lo and behold, I miss my mark almost completely, you give a soft laugh that lightens the mood immediately, and our own little inside joke is born in that moment, a joke that would carry on for months and would be the topic of our conversations, conversations that started with “Remember when;” nicknamed the Awkward Eye Kiss, it made both of us laugh for minutes on end, made me miss you even more than I did in the beginning, two thousand, nine hundred and twelve miles apart, but the AEK seemed to bring us closer together.