this one-shot is dedicated to my best friend, jess.

and people would say we're the lucky ones

Looking back, Kirsten Cohen truly believes it was fate that brought them together that day (or cupid). There is just simply no other explanation for the miracle that was meeting him – her Sandy Cohen.

…

Kirsten Nichol inhaled deeply, the fresh hair filling her lungs. She could feel her anxiety and unhappiness lessen ever so slightly. For the past month, there has been a heavy, unmovable weight on her chest; the weight that was guilt, heartbreak and sadness all rolled into one big emotion. She was absolutely exhausted – physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting.

It wasn't just university life. Sure, the curriculum for her art history degree piled up more and more every day but it was nothing she couldn't handle (she was Caleb Nichol's daughter after all). She thinks (knows) the root of her angst stems back to that dull August morning that she unilaterally decided life with Jimmy Cooper simply wasn't enough.

There was a small part of her that feels guilty for not loving him enough to stick around for the long haul, but that was when she knew it wasn't love. At least, not the kind of love she wanted to have forever…so one thing led to another and here she is, quietly mulling through her days and nights, endlessly searching for something more.

…

At first, she doesn't think anything of the fact that someone is standing in the middle of the quad advertising for something (probably another party she'll be invited to but won't attend, another business venture she'll be asked to show to her father, another school event she won't participate in) so she's a little surprised when she sees someone campaigning for politics. Almost immediately, she's filled with annoyance because she hates politics (okay, she doesn't hate politics, but it's one of her father's favorite things so that kind of makes it one of her least favorite things).

He turns around and grins at her, grins at her like she's just another face in the crowd (years from now, she'll laugh at the idea she thought she was just a face in the crowd). She has spotted him around campus once or twice before but she never paused long enough to talk to him or to know him. It isn't until a warm September afternoon that she really sees him for the first time.

Suddenly nervous, she hugs her books tighter to her chest, smiles shyly at him when he puts himself directly in her path, grinning wider. "Mondale Ferraro!" he says to her, handing her a pamphlet.

"No, but thank you." She attempts to move past him when he steps in front of her again, still his features light with amusement.

"What are you? A republican?"

"Yeah, I suppose I am."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he smiles. "Did you catch it from your parents? I heard it's hereditary."

She can't help but laugh. "I guess I did," she says.

He reaches into a box on the table behind him and hands something to her. "Well if you don't want a pamphlet, have a pin. It's on me." He's charismatic and endearing and persistent but so, so charming and she wonders why she never talked to Sandy Cohen until right now.

She smiles at the object and then at him (she didn't know it then, but all her smiles would be at him, to him, and for him). "Well, I might wear it – but only because it's so stylish!"

"Well hey, if you're not a pamphlet reader, I could take you to coffee." Her heartbeat accelerates and something erupts in her belly (not butterflies, too big and too powerful to be butterflies). And she's so nervous because she thinks this is the start of something wonderful. "I could tell you all about why Mondale and Ferraro are going to lose."

"If you're so sure they're going to lose, why bother with the campaign?" she asks, but she's not judgmental – she's genuinely curious.

Sandy simply replied, "Because it feels right."

And she smiles - truly smiles for the first time in what feels like forever. A real and honest, make your heart ache in the best way possible smile and then they're laughing. Laughing like the funniest joke in the world has just been told, laughing like two best friends that have a world of secrets between them and it feels so, so good and she just knows. She knows it from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, knows it in her very soul that meeting Sandy Cohen was fate.

…

Years later, as she sits in bed with a smile on her face, she'll smile at her husband as they recall the day they fell in love – really fell in love, for the first but not the last time (never the last – they fall in love in new ways, every single day).

"I guess I had fate on my mind when I got you this gift," she says warmly.

His face lights up immediately, memories of warm September afternoons and things that are so uniquely Kirsten flood his mind. "Where on earth did you find this?" Sheepishly but with a laugh, she admits that she turned the house upside down and he muses, "If it hadn't been for Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, there never would have been a Seth Cohen."

"There wouldn't have been a Ryan," she adds.

"And whoever this is going to be," he smiles. He extends his hand and rests it against the flat plane of her stomach, where their next dream grows. "All because of that one day – my lucky day."

She shakes her head, tears welling up in her eyes as she gazes at her husband with so much adoration, love and affection and utters, "No. My lucky day."