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The rest, as they say, is history -- and a lot of boring, mushy-gushy love stuff that we won‘t go into details about here.
The two stayed at the café all afternoon, so long that Zarzour actually missed an important team meeting before dinner. He didn’t care.
Gretchen, he discovered, was from North Carolina as well, growing up in a small town much like Bunn, but located in the Western part of the state. She played volleyball and softball, and cheered during basketball season for her high school. She could have played small college volleyball somewhere but wanted to go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in international studies and minored in Chinese language study.
She loved China, though she admitted to being homesick at times. She had agreed to a two-year term as a teacher at prominent university in Beijing. This was the second semester of her first year, so she still had a ways to go yet before coming home for good.
Andrew boldly invited Gretchen to the Phillies’ season opener against the Dodgers, which might explain why he pitched so well that night. Gretchen didn‘t mind a bit meeting the entire Zarzour clan right off the bat, and hit it off immediately with his mom. Even Andrew‘s dad was impressed (“She‘s with you? Wow! You've outdone yourself.”).
It was tough parting when the Phillies finally left China to come back to the States. But the two agreed to write and email often, which Zarzour did faithfully at least a couple of times per week. Andrew even went back to China over the summer (after his injury) and got to see his brother playing pro ball and his new sweetheart during that trip. His love for Gretchen grew all the more, and she was pretty smitten with him as well.
One thing led to another, and Andrew and Gretchen eventually got married after she returned to the states. Their log cabin in the Western North Carolina mountains was a wedding present to his new bride, something she had always dreamed about and wanted…
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