Long before the proposal in the Florida Keys, before the dog-filled home in Denver and the loving life Chris and Karli have built together, there was a truly terrible job.
Karli was ready to leave Minneapolis. She wanted to be closer to her sister. She didn’t need the stars to align, just a paycheck and a place to land. True to form, Karli didn’t fuss over finding the best job around—it didn’t have to be perfect, only a temporary way to get from point A to point B. Chris was moving, too—from the familiarity of Fort Collins to the buzzing big city to the south. He needed work to make it happen, too, but unlike Karli, he was anything but easy breezy. They met in a training so cringe that Karli couldn’t help but laugh. Chris, on the other hand, hosted thoughts that looped and spiraled as they crafted a vivid narrative of just how big of a mistake he had made. It turns out, though, that the truly terribly job was the best thing that happened to them because it’s where they found each other.
Surrounded by silly sales goals and clunky corporate jargon in a training that can only be described as thoroughly cringe, Karli’s lighthearted ways managed to get Chris to giggle, too. Somewhere between the awkward ice breakers and an employee handbook screed, they decided to have lunch together. What became a day-one escape became a frequent occurrence during which Chris’s anxious mind would whip up dramatic, worst-case scenarios while Karli would listen and smirk, gently poking reasonable holes in each one. She kept him from spiraling and he, without even trying, kept her endlessly entertained. Karli became Chris’s rock, a stable and steady place to land. Chris became Karli’s favorite person to spend time with because time with Chris was anything but boring.
It was through ad hoc hangs and post-work happy hours with colleagues that their friendship grew into love, slowly and then all at once. One day, after one such happy hour, Chris worked up the courage to kiss the pretty girl he’d had a crush on since that fateful day in the training room and, without knowing it then, they had the first kiss of the rest of their lives.
In the years that followed, Chris became a dog dad to Tre, the black lab love of Karli’s life. They lived together along with one of Karli’s best friends from Minneapolis who took to outdoor adventures with a level of carefree planning that pushed Chris’s worry to its limits. They rescued dogs and took trips to Fort Collins and North Dakota to get to know each other’s families and each other’s roots. Through many evenings spent binge-watching TV together from a dog-filled sectional, through the ups and downs that lovers weather with each other by way of simply passing the years together, they became each other’s family.
It’s the family-making kinda love that Karli and Chris share that th
