Ryan and I met at the airport in San Francisco. We were going on a cruise with some mutual friends. He says it was love at first sight, I had to take a second look...mostly because the way he expressed that he liked me was by poking my shoulder, and interrupting my reading. He thought I was beautiful, I thought he was annoying (and possibly drunk).
A couple of days into the trip, we went to a beautiful black sand beach on the island of St. Lucia. I was having problems with my little sister, and I just started talking to him, crying even, and he just listened to me, and told me that everything was going to work out, and told me he had gone through the same thing a couple years back, with one of his brothers. We bonded that day on the beach, and that's when I think we started falling in love.
The next day, the stop was Barbados! We went for a walk on the beach, and he passed a Bougainvillea bush, and picked me a flower, and put it in my hair. We kept walking along, and met with the rest of our group. When we got there, I realized I had dropped the flower! He told me to wait for him, while he walked the mile or so back to that bush! He later told me that he thought I lost the flower on purpose, and that if I lost the second flower, he would know I didn't like him, and he would just swim out to sea. I still have that flower today.