For months, Joey was just the dog-walker, the cute guy who passed my house in Detroit most days. My housemates called him the “underwear model.” We knew each other vaguely, until he and a friend visited me in Grand Tetons National Park back in 2010. There, a love spell fell over me.

Whipping around on a wooden floor and feeling the indoor breeze blow through my hair has brought some of the best feelings in my life. Back in the day, as I smoothly glided to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, followed up with The Gap Band’s You Dropped a Bomb on Me, my eight-year-old self never felt so free. Doubled up on layered socks, sometimes even tripled, with the cute fold over so each color could be seen; I always tried to make a chunk of my front hair stand as far up from my forehead as it could, only to have it draped down to the side- I looked good in those skates. With the music bumped up, neon lights illuminated and a disco ball glimmered in the middle, I skated around the rink until the sessions ended. From childhood into the present moment, I belonged in this scene.