From age brand new to 25, I have lived (but for a brief tenure in San Francisco that doesn’t really count), in Colorado.

I love Colorado. It inhabits me, tucked inside somewhere behind my ribs, closely incased with my heart.

It’s the first place I ever loved. It has made an indelible mark in my soul.

And, like all first loves, it had to eventually come to an end.

DP and I met in a copy room beside a petulant copy machine and in front of a wall of mailslots.

I was there to make copies for a meeting; he was there to check his mail. What I didn’t know when I shook the hand of this tall, handsome stranger was that he knew full well the contents of his mailslot before ever stepping into that tiny room: nothing. He wasn’t there for letters, junk mail or paystubs, he was there to meet me. The new girl. The brunette girl. The brown-eyed girl (not to be confused with a Van Morrison song.) The recently graduated 22-year-old girl from Colorado.

He was from New Jersey (the brunette, brown-eyed girl held that against him for a while). He was an intern; she had just been hired, no more than a week before, as an editorial assistant in the same newsroom.

He was easy to talk to, and charming. At the time, he was also the only other employee even remotely close to her age. That they became friends was inevitable.

They bonded over their love for news. Their love for family. Their love for photography.

They bonded over a shiny nickel left on a keyboard (and the fact that no one else would get that reference). They bonded over the telling of stories.

When he asked her out, as romantic comedies have determined is likely to happen in these cases, she blanched. Not because she didn’t like him, but because she did. And for reasons better suited for another story, she couldn’t say yes then. If she did, she was certain their story would end before its time. So she said no.

It was six months more before they would revisit the question.

But revisit it they did. They started dating. They fell in love.

A year after that, they started a photography business.

And now enter to the present and back to the first person. DP and I are still dating. We’re still running (and pushing, and pulling, and cajoling) our photography business.

We live in Denver, Colo.

But changes are afoot, my friends. 2012 has been a big year for both of us in these first four months, and I can feel a vast muchness of new possibilities and promises ahead.

Stay tuned.

xoxo, a.e.