Hitched

JUNE 14, 2003

The thin line between "just friends" and flirtatious is hard to discern. Sure, you might notice a few clues--a playful glance here, a lingering conversation there--but how do you decipher true meaning without risking embarrassment or, even worse, rejection?

Well, sometimes you just do it.

That's exactly what Mary Milstead did.

In January 2000, Mary was 23. She'd worked at Nike's Beaverton campus for a few years before she met Ron Toms. Ron introduced Mary to Nathan Metcalfe, a friend from college. The two ran in the same social circles that first year, but they weren't the kind of friends who'd call each other up to make coffee dates.

Still, by the fall of 2000, Mary could tell that Nathan was kinda-sorta, maybe flirting with her.

"He was holding my hand too long at parties," she says.

Nathan, on the other hand, says the hand-holding Mary remembers may not have been such a telltale sign. "I remember being excited to see her, but I don't have any recollection of flirting with her," he says. Then again, Nathan doesn't completely rule out Mary's theory. "It's possible I was flirting with her," he concedes. "But not on a conscious level."

By the time Christmas came around, Mary knew she wanted to do something about her own, growing attraction. Both were spending the holiday in Portland (he's from Ohio, she's from Texas) with other, geographically orphaned friends. The group went to a Christmas Day movie, and Mary remembers trying to score a seat next to Nathan. No luck.

Later that night they went to a friend's house for holiday festivities. At one point, Mary and Nathan were sitting on the front porch at

the party with a friend. When the friend got up to go to the bathroom, Mary made her move.

"I decided to go for it. I verbally requested a kiss," she recalls. Nathan--smart man that he is--obliged and planted one on her.

Over the next few days, Mary wondered about that night. Was the kiss just for fun, or was something serious about to begin? "The worst thing would be that we remained friendly," she says.

Her concerns were addressed one night upon her return from a concert. Sitting at her front door was a box of animal crackers with a note from Nathan, asking for a date.

"Things went pretty fast from there," Nathan remembers.

In the fall, Nathan accompanied Mary to her hometown of Austin and made good with the parents. When Nathan returned home, he says he was thinking wedding thoughts. "I came home and told my housemate, 'I'm gonna marry that girl.'"

Meanwhile, Mary, still in Austin, had come to the same conclusion. She called Nathan on Halloween night and, a little tipsy, blurted out another request. "She called me all sweet and said, 'I want you to ask me to marry you,'" Nathan recalls. "She stole my thunder!"

The day she returned, Nathan made his own move and popped the question. She said yes.

The two agreed not to rush the walk down the aisle. By the end of last summer they'd picked a wooded retreat in Aloha as the site of their ceremony, and they sent out invitations.

Both describe the day as a casual, no-stress affair. The couple asked close friends and family to participate by walking down the aisle with special relics from the couple's life together.

When it came time for the ceremony, Mary followed the rules and waited patiently for her turn to say, "I do."

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