And God Blessed the Broken Road, Part 3

To catch up, you can read Our Love Story here.

My future-husband and I spent most of college apart, not really hanging out. Every once in a while, I would see his name pop up in the AIM friends list and wonder what he was up to. But he had his friends and I had mine.

Our paths crossed again in our senior year of college. We hadn’t seen in each other in at least two years.

It was September, and I was once again involved in a production in the college theatre. I had auditioned, and unfortunately, wasn’t cast. Over the years, there were many auditions that didn’t go my way, many parts that I didn’t land. That’s the life of an actress and I am prepared for it. But as a senior, it kind of sucked that I didn’t get a mainstage role in my last year at the theatre. I thought I kind of deserved it after all the blood, sweat and tears that I’ve put into the program. So not getting cast – kind of sucked. And I wasn’t happy about it.

My assignment that semester, instead of being cast, was the publicity team for the production. It was an obvious choice, because PR was my major after all. Since I was the only one of the committee that had a car, I was assigned the role of putting up posters in the Central West End, since no one else could easily get there without a car.

To be fair, I should have put up those posters earlier. I was sulking for most of the production, annoyed that I wasn’t cast, and wondering what was going to happen if I didn’t get cast the next semester and didn’t have any recent credits on my resume when I graduated. But things were busy with school and my internship, so I avoided putting up those posters until the week before the show opened. I put it off as long as I could.

One Wednesday after classes, I loaded up the posters and my route list in the car and drove to the CWE. It’s a neat little neighborhood of great restaurants and coffee shops and old homes near the campus. Lots of the managers of those places allow us to put up posters to promote the show. We had a list of those, and that was where I was supposed to go. St. Louis Bread Company was the first stop on my list.

I walked inside the restaurant and started looking around for the manager, to get his permission to put up the poster. As I stood in the entrance, holding a poster and push pins, I heard someone call my name.

Thinking that it was someone calling another “Jessica,” I didn’t turn around right away. When he called my name again, I did turn and saw him. Future-husband sitting on one of the comfy chairs near the window, with a book in his lap. He was smiling.

I went over to say hello and we started to catch up. Honestly, I have no idea what I said in that meeting. It went by in a blur. I remember I put up the posters and then went back to hang out with him some more.

We exchanged phone numbers and a promise to Facebook each other when we got back to our dorms. We had graduated from AIM to Facebook in those few years of college. He asked me if I wanted to get a coffee sometime and catch up, and of course, I said sure.

I had to finish putting up posters and he was waiting on someone for a meeting.

The best part of this story? Husband wrote down the time wrong – he was an hour early for his meeting. I put off the poster work until the very last minute. Something pushed me to do the posters that day.

And the name of the play we were producing that semester?

“All in the Timing.”