When I received a full-ride scholarship to Ohio State, it was the first time I felt I had outperformed the budget. But even then, the card my mother slipped into my suitcase—Come home soon. You belong here—wasn’t an invitation of love; it was a leash.
Everything changed in the spring semester of my junior year when I met Marcus Ellison. We were in an advanced statistics class, and while most people struggled with regression models, Marcus handled them with a calm, methodical grace that mirrored his soul. He was biracial, an engineering major from Cleveland raised by a single mother, Kora, a retired librarian.
Marcus didn’t just see the numbers; he saw the stories they told. Our first date was at a taco truck where we paid in crumpled singles and quarters, talking until the stars came out about building something that mattered.
When Marcus proposed three years later, it wasn’t with a diamond, but with a promise at our tiny kitchen table. I called home that night, my heart hammering against my ribs, hoping for the “Sunshine Treatment.”
