I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Greer SEPTEMBER 18, 2011

I NEVER IMAGINED I COULD be so excited about meeting a man’s parents. That’s usually the part that annoys me, the part that means that we’re getting too close. It’s the part I try to avoid. But it has been almost four months now, and Parker was going home to North Carolina, and he wanted me to come with him.

I have to say, as much as I love him and as brilliant and wonderful as I think he is, I was definitely prepared to have to pretend to like Cape Carolina. I thought it would be Podunk, but I was totally wrong. I mean, it’s small. But it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Parker and I stayed in the guesthouse, out on the end of a wide peninsula. There are views of this pristine blue water with marsh grass interspersed. And Mrs. Thaysden has impeccable taste.

Parker and I jumped off the dock and swam and kayaked. We lay on the teak chaise lounges at night and looked at the stars and talked for hours. I told him I loved him, which I have never done first. But I do love him. And I love his town, and its amazing coffee shop and two of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to and a handful of perfectly curated stores. It’s totally noncommercial and super quaint, like Palm Beach was about a million years ago.

And his parents are a total dream. His mother is this tiny woman who wears pearls all the time. She was soft-spoken and cooked this amazing meal for us. I have a feeling that Parker had a super-traditional childhood with a mom who stayed home and a dad who worked and his grandparents, like, two miles up the road.

It worried me because that’s not what he would be getting with me. When I told him that, he laughed. And he said the most perfect thing: “Greer, I love you for you, who you are now and the woman you will become. The last time I checked, you fall in love with a person, not a lifestyle.”

He’s right, of course. But I have seen more people than you can imagine fall in love with a lifestyle and not a person. And, at a certain age, I understand how that can happen, how the search for the love of your life can become the search for a person you could be happy with.

Is it crazy that I’m almost positive Parker Thaysden is both?

Amelia LEGACY

PARKER DIDN’T SAY ONE WORD as he drove me to my old apartment, and I loved him for that. I was deep in thought about what I wanted to say, what Thad might say. And I felt this dark sadness wash through my very veins. Last week, I had been professing my love for the entire world to read. I had been that sure of my happily ever after. And now here I was: alone. Well, except for Parker.