My first pearl necklace was given to me by my cousin. I know, weird.
We met at a family reunion that was being held at a huge hotel in our city. There were like, 30 family reunions going on that same week, so when a cute guy who approached me in one of the hotel boutiques, I didn't think anything of it.
He was a little over six feet, dark-skinned with a shaved head, and he looked like a thicker version of Tupac, complete with long, curly eyelashes.
I saw him staring at me through the glass. Brothers say I'm thicker than a snicker: an exquisite DD rack, waist that curves in, round hips and thick, curvy legs. They also like my naturally long hair and dark chocolate complection.
He caught me coming out of Atelier with a bag on my arm and asked me out to lunch. We had mad chemistry. He was a real estate agent who had played football. I'd just gotten my liberal arts degree and was still unemployed. But we liked the same music and shared a similarly cynical sense of humor.
He struggled to keep eye contact, but his gaze kept falling to the top of my plump, luscious cleavage peeking out of my top. I let it slide because he was so cute, I knew before he asked that I'd go out with him again.
It wasn't until the next night that we realized we were related, when we saw each other at the banquet--but by then, of course, the seeds were sown.
We lived on opposite sides of the same big city and started dating, but we didn't call it that. We called it getting to know a new cousin. One night he came by my apartment with a sci-fi movie and a huge bottle of wine. We watched it and talked late into the night. By the time we started yawning, I genuinely worried about him getting on the road.
I told him he could just sleep on the pullout couch. But we kept talking, and eventually I fell asleep on the pullout with him. Naturally as we slept, we ended up spooning.