Tom and I were in the same freshman dorm at Duke. We weren’t really friends at first, but had a lot of the same friends. It turns out that we both broke up with our respective high school relationships the same weekend in September. I can tell you I was pretty sad. Some of our mutual friends including Annie told me there was a guy on the first floor who had just broken up with his girlfriend too – and was pretty broken up about it. At the time Duke still had a homecoming dance (an informal, no tickets, on the quad thing). Tom would tell you that he suggested we go to the dance or that maybe we just decided we should go to the dance, since we were both heartbroken. That “or” should tell you that Tom is wrong. Plus I’m telling this story. I suggested to Tom that we go to the dance – that it would be good for both of us to get out and relax a little. Either way, we went to the dance. Here’s a picture of Annie, Tom, and I about to head out.
We had a good time with a bunch of friends and danced together quite a bit. I remember that a couple times when Tom seemed to really be enjoying the music he danced with his eyes closed and I thought that was pretty cute. I think he did that frequently – closing his eyes and having a bit of a sideways smile when he was dancing to music he really enjoyed.
Even though many Duke friends didn’t believe us, we were largely just friends for the next many months. After one fun night in Kville (tenting for basketball) Tom and I were leaning on each other. This led a fraternity brother to question our just friends status, and Tom infamously replied, “I was drunk, she was drunk. Otherwise we would have fallen over!”
Eventually on spring break in Florida with Dave and some of my sorority sisters we decided to give it a chance. In hindsight we called it official on March 14th – Pi Day. A nice coincidence, I think.
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