Queer couple Ja’Mel Ware, 32, and Alphonso Mills, 29, avoided each other for months after they first met at The Vision Cathedral of Atlanta in 2018. The avoidance—a result of excitement, fear, and an internal knowing that the journey they were about to embark upon would be different than any relationship they’d ever experienced—was cemented during a recent Thanksgiving trip to Disney World. It would prove to be a full-circle moment for Ware, who until recently associated the “most magical place on earth” with one of his most painful childhood memories.

“All boys grow differently.” It’s a phrase that Ware, who was assigned female at birth, often heard from his late mother while growing up in Detroit, MI. “She always told me the story about the two-spirits that she felt inside of me,” said Ware.” So my mother knew who I was well before I did. She never used the language of trans but she knew that I was different and would be different,” he said.

Ware, who was born with HIV, tells The Reckoning that his mother did all that she could to prepare him for what she believed would be a difficult life ahead. Ware says he vividly recalls his first trip to Disney World as a Girl Scout being one of the most painful moments of his childhood after a troop leader disclosed his HIV status to the adult chaperones without his or his mother’s permission.

“When I got down to Florida, everything all of a sudden changed,” said Ware. “The person that I was supposed to room with…this person that I’d known since I was four-years-old, their grandmother didn’t want me in their room, and she gave no explanation. It turned into this trip where I wasn’t allowed to play with anybody and nobody wanted me around. Deep down, I knew it had something to do with me being HIV-positive,” he said.

Ware is also convinced that his status led him to be kicked out of the private school he attended during his fifth-grade year.

“I think it was my first moment of understanding that people will dislike me simply based on something that I had no control over,” he said.

So for Ware, the road trip from Atlanta to Orlando with Mills provided an opportunity for him to make new memories with the man he first crossed paths with at church through an earth-shattering embrace that could have only been divinely ordered.

“At the time, we sat on opposite sides of the church,” said Ware. “He kept turning around, but I didn’t know who he was looking at, but I kept catching his eye. He’s very attractive,” said Ware of Mills. “I was like, I wonder who this man is looking at? You know in the church service it gets to the point where you have to get up and go hug your neighbors? So now this man has gone from the front left all the way to the right middle to give me a hug [laughter]. In that moment…in that hug, I knew that this was the man that I would be with for the rest of my life. I felt it so deeply in my spirit, and I think it terrified both of us because we didn’t talk for quite a long time after that. But I never forgot that. And every Sunday I would look for him and he’d be in the same spot every Sunday, but nothing happened for months,” he said.

Mills, a military brat who has called Atlanta home for the past 12 years, and is also living with HIV, says he’d never dated a man of trans experience before dating Ware, but allowed himself to be open to the possibility that the man he was meant to be with could look different than he initially envisioned.

“I couldn’t have personally thought of Ja’Mel when I thought about my partner because he is beyond what I even asked for—in terms of understanding, in terms of love, in terms of showing me compassion, in terms of letting me be me,” said Mills.

“I have always had this image of who I would be with, and in that image, a man was never that person,” said Ware, who also identifies as bisexual and exclusively dated women before meeting Mills.

“But what happened when I met Alphonso in that first embrace, I knew that I’d met the person I was supposed to be with. So I had to sit with myself and unravel all of these ideas about what I thought my life was supposed to look like, so I could accept what was being presented to me. It was life-changing,” he said.

The truth shall set you free

The people in Ware and Mills’ life also had their own ideas and expectations about who they should be, and those expectations didn’t fit within the restrictive constructs of gender and societal norms, which was in direct opposition to the truth they were both discovering about themselves.

“I had other kids telling me that I was gay before I even really knew what it was,” said Mills. “To the point that I was being called “Karamo” at school,” he said. A reference to former “The Real World” reality star Karamo Brown, who was the first openly gay Black man to appear in a reality television series, and a source of one of Mills’ early crushes.

Ware, who recalls rejecting female attire as early as age 7 for more male-centered clothing, was also starting to transition despite a lack of support from the adults in his life and went to great lengths to have his outward appearance match how he felt inside.

“I would take all of my boy clothes and I would hide them at my best friend’s house,” said Ware.

“I would get dressed in the morning, go over there, change clothes, and go to school. That was the first transition. I’ve never identified with this female body or what it is to be a girl or to grow into a woman. These things just don’t match with me at all, but I was terrified to take that leap,” he said.

“I didn’t come out to my parents about my sexuality until I had to come out about me being HIV-positive,” said Mills. “So I had to do all of that in one swoop,” he said.

Mills tells The Reckoning that although his parents are supportive and affirming now, they initially struggled with the reality of having a gay son who is also living with HIV.

“I said it and I put my head under a blanket and I cried for two hours,” Mills recalls in the moments after he revealed the truth about his sexual orientation and HIV diagnosis to his parents.

As for Ware, he discovered that his truth would be less of a surprise to his relatives after the response he received from a letter he wrote to his step-grandfather informing him of his transition.

“I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. I thought I’d killed the man,” jokes Ware. “I finally picked up the phone and he goes, ‘I’ve been waiting on you to call me. I got your letter.“

“I said, so why didn’t you call me? He said, ‘cause you’re wasting paper telling me shit I’ve always known.”

Alphonso Mills accepted Ja’Mel Ware’s marriage proposal at the Coral Reef Restaurant.

Till death do us part

Ware may have failed at surprising his step-grandfather, but he was moments away from pulling off the biggest surprise of his life as he and Mills sat down at a table flanked by an indoor aquarium inside Coral Reef Restaurant at Epcot Center. Every detail of the evening had been meticulously planned by Ware along with restaurant staff, with dessert ultimately taking center stage as the main course.

As their server approached and placed their desserts on the table, Mills’ dessert was plated with a simple question written in chocolate.

“He was in such shock because the plate said, ‘Will You Marry Me?’ said Ware.

It was the beginning of an out-of-body experience for both men, but especially for Ware, who was now nervously searching all of his pockets for the ring.

“Once he came to, he grabbed both of my hands and he said a prayer, and the only thing I heard was ‘God be in everything that we do.’ And he looked up and he said yes,” said Ware.

“I see this as more than an engagement, but this is a moment that he took to say, ‘I am committed to you and to us,’ and I want to make sure that he knows that from me as well,” said Mills who is planning his own engagement surprise for Ware.

“From the very beginning it’s been about honesty and transparency,” said Mills. “We don’t want to fall into the norms of what heterosexual relationships are like, not what gay relationships are like. We want to be what works for us,” he said.

And for Mills and Ware, that has included silencing the noise and healing from past hurts to be whole and present for each other.

“Trauma will tell you that you don’t deserve it [happiness]. I had to deal with that,” said Mills.

But even more than before, Mills is in awe of his Creator when he looks into his future husband’s eyes, saying—“Oh my gosh, God. You actually gave me what I asked for.”